David Williams

1 week ago | worldoffinewine.com | David Williams

While a new manifesto by the Slow Wine Coalition has much to commend it, Nick Ryan finds a potentially fatal flaw. Lock a dozen people in a room and give each of them a tin of paint and a brush. Some will look up and imagine Sistine beauty. They’re the creative types. Others declare the room in need of a freshen up and assiduously apply their paint to the walls. They’re the practical people who keep things ticking along.

2 weeks ago | observer.co.uk | David Williams

David Williams Wine critic Orange wine is now so firmly established it may be bordering on the passé. Even so, many casual wine drinkers have yet to come across these bottles 1. Specially Selected French Rosorange Rosé, France 2024£9.99, AldiOrange wine is now firmly established in fine-dining circles to the point where it may even be bordering on the passé. Even so, many casual wine drinkers in the UK have still yet to come across this new-old form.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | David Williams

Waitrose No.1 Castillo Perelada Cava Brut, Spain NV (£11.99, Waitrose) At a time when the world is being pulled apart by aggressively idiotic nationalism, examples of multinational cooperation, however small, can feel particularly precious and poignant. Nowhere more so, perhaps, than in the Mediterranean, where the savagery of war in the east and the brutality of border enforcement in the north make a nihilistic mockery of the very idea of togetherness.

1 month 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.

1 month 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.