If the best idea is held in the tenderest hand, these Champagnes couldn’t possibly be more convincing. I was reading a catalogue for a retreat center offering various wellness/vedic/meditation/spirituality stuff, and at the end they printed a letter from a “satisfied customer” that gave me a feeling adjacent to an ice cream headache. The luckless author of said document made reference to “walking mindfully” or some such thing. I was surprised, because I couldn’t fathom how

Andi means to send me samples; he’s just busy and forgets. So it’s been a few years, and because of that he sent me what amounts to (mostly) a vertical collection of his two GGs, rather than the current assortment in its entirety. It would be churlish to complain, but those are highly interesting wines I’ve sometimes found to be closer-in to the soul of the domain. Should you be wondering, those wines include a Muschelkalk Trocken, an Oestricher Doosberg Scharfenstein (a ca

My immense regard for Prieler is surely no secret. This is a culling of recent bottlings, omitting the (often lovely) St. Laurent and the entry-level Pinot Blanc. If I knew the reasons for omitting them, I have forgotten. Let the (abbreviated) games begin. This will be good.

Jancis Robinson published a piece in the Financial Times and enlarged upon it on her website, about the many vagaries of bottle variation. She (and the redoubtable Tamlyn Currin) cited the many external factors whereby bottles of the same wine might differ. Many of them would surprise you, unless you were in the wine trade or handled shipping logistics. It needed saying, because wine reviewers are often taken to task for the divergences of praise (and ugh, “scores”) among d