Clive Pursehouse

2 weeks ago | decanter.com | Clive Pursehouse

There are many terms for wine barrels in the many languages of wine. Whether called a ‘barrique’, ‘cask’, ‘foudre’, or ‘botte’, these terms refer to wooden vessels that both store and shape the wines within them. The main reason for the use of barrels in winemaking is a process called micro-oxygenation. This means that a small amount of air passes through the grains in the wood and softens or ages the wine inside. What is a wine barrel?

3 weeks ago | decanter.com | Clive Pursehouse

I did a lot of tasting in March that doesn’t really count towards my own tally. I one instance, I was backing up our Napa Correspondent, Jonathan Cristaldi, at Heitz Cellars, with an epic vertical of about 45 wines, which you’ll hear more about later this year. I also helped out our Sonoma Correspondent Ana Carolina Quintela on the Sonoma Coast. We tasted about 85 wines in one day with some of the region’s top producers. For my own reviewing, I just about hit 150 wines in March.

1 month ago | decanter.com | Clive Pursehouse

As you can no doubt imagine, our editorial team receive lots of wines for review. It was a banner February for me. With very little travel, I found myself tasting a lot of wine – nearly 250 different wines from the West Coast in fact, the vast majority of which were from Washington and Oregon.

1 month ago | decanter.com | Clive Pursehouse

The 2014 vintage in Washington State marked the beginning of evident warming trends in the region and beyond. It was a growing season that would break records for heat, but those records would be surpassed just a year later in the record-shattering 2015 vintage. For those who cellared wines from the 2014 vintage in the Columbia Valley, now is the time to open them. In the words of Kenny Rogers, knowing when to hold them and when to fold them is key when it comes to cellaring wines.

2 months ago | decanter.com | Clive Pursehouse

‘The whole thing started in [19]99 when I was visiting Oregon’, says Ernst ‘Ernie’ Loosen, explaining the origin of the Eroica collaboration with Washington’s founding winery, Chateau Ste Michelle. Having embarked on a joint venture with the Antinori family in 1995 at Col Solare on Red Mountain, Ste Michelle had shown an aptitude for international collaboration.