David Williams

England

Wine Journalist at Freelance

Wine Journalist at The World of Fine Wine

Wine Journalist at The Guardian

Wine Journalist at The Wine Gang

Wine journalist for The Observer, World of Fine Wine, Wine Gang, Wine Merchant etc http://t.co/0WnD9odBqG

Articles

Fortified wines to pair with the Easter treats

1 week ago | theguardian.com | David Williams

Vinte Vinte Chocolate and Port Tasting Box, Douro, Portugal NV (from £22, amazon.co.uk; virginwines.co.uk; tanners-wines.co.uk) For those of us who treat Easter as a kind of secular spring-Christmas, featuring similarly liberal doses of chocolate and booze, recent movements in the trades have conspired to make next weekend more expensive than ever.
Great Georgian wines to lift your Easter feast

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | David Williams

M&S Found Saperavi, Kakheti, Georgia 2022 (£11, Ocado.com; Marks & Spencer) At a time of year when many of us are gearing up to prepare a lamb-based feast for Easter, the food and wine culture of Georgia offers a novel way of approaching a meal that is, for most of us, rather less hidebound by family traditions than Christmas dinner.
Wines you’ll really want to Swig

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | David Williams

Domaine Gamiller Priune, Côtes du Rhône, France 2023 (£18.95, swig.co.uk) What do you look for in a wine merchant? Inclusiveness would be high on my list, by which I mean no snobby condescension or arch comments if you betray that you don’t know your chardonnay from your chablis (or, indeed, that you don’t know that chablis is always made from chardonnay in the eponymous part of northern Burgundy).
In the mood for spring: feel-good wines in sync with the season

1 month ago | theguardian.com | David Williams

Wine and food matching is one thing but it’s every bit as much fun to match wine with mood. Just as there are some wines that are best with curry, cheese or seafood, there are bottles whose characteristics – the flavours they call to mind, or simply something about the way they’re put together – seem to fit a specific moment or even a season.
Unearthing some special wines at Aldi

1 month ago | theguardian.com | David Williams

Unearthed Gemischter Satz, Niederösterreich, Austria 2024 (£8.99, Aldi) With changes in duty adding an extra uncomfortable squeeze to the inflationary pressures that have affected all grocery products, wine retailers are finding it ever more difficult to source good wine at affordable prices. Rare is the wine of character and taste at less than £8, or even £10, these days, and I can count the number of genuinely appealing £5 bottles I’ve tasted in the past year on one hand.
The many joys of Spain’s fruity garnacha grape

1 month ago | theguardian.com | David Williams

Alfredo Maestro El Marciano Garnacha, Castilla y León, Spain 2022 (from £23.35, aduv.co.uk; buonvino.co.uk) Over the past couple of decades, few would dispute that Spain has been one of the two or three most exciting wine countries in the world.
How tasting notes play conjuring tricks with our expectations

1 month ago | theguardian.com | David Williams

Remy Farbras Ventoux, Rhône, France 2022 (£7.99 down from £9.99 until 11 March, Waitrose) Whether the writer is being impossibly specific (Meyer lemon; kumquat) or maddeningly generic (“big’ or “massive fruitiness”), it’s rare to find a wine tasting note that doesn’t contain some kind of reference to fruits.
Colder and bolder: discovering the joy of cool-climate wines

1 month ago | theguardian.com | David Williams

Iona Elgin Highlands Sauvignon Blanc, Elgin, South Africa 2024 (£17.99, virginwines.co.uk) From ‘oak-aged’ and ‘wild-ferment’ to ‘single-vineyard’ and ‘hand-picked’, wine producers and sellers have a habit of dressing up descriptive phrases as implied shorthand for quality. They’re not alone in that, of course, or even the worst offenders: no wine term is as insidiously irritating as ‘pan-fried’ or ‘handcooked’.
This must be the place: the rise of single-vineyard wines

1 month ago | theguardian.com | David Williams

Over the centuries, winemakers have come up with all sorts of systems and terminology to talk up the quality of their wines. One of the best known and still most widely used rankings singles out time as the most important factor: the basic thinking behind classifying a rioja reserva or gran reserva as in some way special is that the longer a wine has spent ageing in barrel and bottle before it is released, the more refined it will be. The Guardian’s journalism is independent.
Montsant: Panel tasting results

2 months ago | decanter.com | David Williams

David Williams, Matthew Forster MW and Luis Gamiz tasted 86 wines, with 5 Oustanding and 38 Highly Recommended Montsant: Panel tasting scores Exceptional 0 Outstanding 5 Highly recommended 38 Recommended 38 Commended 5 Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their current-release still dry (or off-dry) red, white and rosé wines from DO Montsant No matter how hard you try to ignore it, the question that haunts any tasting of DO Montsant wines is always: ‘How do these...