The Week in Wine

Send us Fan Mail Pinot Blanc seems to be increasing its profile of late, with Don tasting a nice example from Alsace this weekend and Olly getting asked about the grape on the fencing piste! Olly enjoyed a Hawke's Bay Albariño over the weekend. This week, the recent 250th Champagne Roederer birthday bash gets the most eyeballs, while both the best-value Chardonnay and best-value Irish whiskey...

Send us Fan Mail Don drinks an Alsace blend from New Zealand producer Yealands while our end-of-month roundup is dominated by spirits headlines, with value Tequila and high-end Bourbon grabbing much of the attention in June. Bordeaux prices, the news that the worst is still to come for the French wine industry and a surprise show from Chile also add to the month's big stories. There's sp...

Send us Fan Mail Don has a Guinness with the rugby and Olly has a light red wine blend from a small producer in New Zealand (Halite). Don asks if winemaking nations correlate to soccer success and we look at some of the great, best-value Tequilas on the market at the moment. The news this week revolves around more trade tariffs although some of our stories span: investment interest in Napa; why UK...

Send us Fan Mail US soft diplomacy hits Don via a bottle of Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon while Olly is still enjoying the aftertaste of a Barolo from Rivetto. The best-value Tequilas tops our most-read stories of the week, closely followed by a fascinating story looking at why Chile isn't getting past the notion of good value. Other top stories include: Langhe's fight against climate...

Send us Fan Mail Star Wars, Soundgarden and My Chemical Romance? Wine-Searcher's US Editor W. Blake Gray talks to Don and Olly about the current state of wine in the United States. Blake looks at the state of the Californian wine industry (with a particular focus on Silicon Valley Bank's Direct to Consumer Wine Report which just came out); the state of Ohio's appeal to the US Suprem...

Send us Fan Mail "Two Englishmen talking about the weather..." Wine-Searcher's editor Don Kavanaugh bravely entertains David Allen MW and Olly Styles as the pair battle it out over the effects of the weather in the 2025 Bordeaux growing season. In the blue corner, David Allen MW defends Bordeaux estates from accusations that the weather patterns over the 2025 growing season (notewor...

Send us Fan Mail Don lauds a pair of 'workhorse' wines (a Côtes de Rhône and a Californian Zinfandel) while Olly enjoys a steely Riesling from the Saar. Two pieces this week tickle Don's fancy: wine's reluctance to engage in a class-based discussion (all while other aspects of DEI are frequently touched-on in wine marketing); and news that Ohio will send the interstate shipping...

Send us Fan Mail Our list of best-value Bourbon has readers arriving in droves, all while the main wine news continues to swirl around just how well (or not) the wine industry is doing, globally. Other stories in the last 7 days include a group of wine investors assiduously avoiding 100-point wines, while there is still interest in Bordeaux 2025, not least from the value end of the offerings as we...

Send us Fan Mail End of Month special! Too many wineries in California is the story that continues to dominate the headlines, alongside En Primeur coverage from Bordeaux. The best value Sauvignon Blancs of 2026 gets eyeballs while Mexico's push to shout down prohibitionists also makes one of the top stories of the week. The month of May was dominated by the stories coming out of the USA, with...

Send us Fan Mail The week is dominated by interest in the US wine market, with three W. Blake Grey stories driving readership. The stories span the current state of the market with recommendations that the number of wineries in the US drop to accommodate the size of the market; there is a glimmer of hope in the resolution of tariff disputes and the slowing of the decline (!) in the market; and the...

Send us Fan Mail When did supermarket wine labels start featuring their flavor profile prominently on their labels? Is the US three-tier wine distribution system unconstitutional? Recent rulings on Ohio may bring this question to the fore. Don't shoot the messenger? A piece on the right-wing press defending wine drinkers should not be dismissed because of the messenger. Meanwhile, our top 10...

Send us Fan Mail Is the world moving back towards big red wines, or is it just a generational thing? Don and Olly represent both parties this week with a big Argentinian Malbec  from Bodegas Estancia and an unusual California blend from Extradimensional Wine Co. Yeah! showing either an age-gap or simply a difference in tastes. We also review the etiquette problem of a host holding on to a bottle t...

Send us Fan Mail End-of-Month bumper issue! Don drinks a cyclone wine (Te Mata Awatea 2023) from Hawke's Bay's Cyclone Gabrielle vintage while Olly has a delicious Petit Chablis. We review the top stories of the week (our most-wanted Napa wines story blows them all out of the water and Olly wonders if the 2024 Bordeaux in-bottle retrospective is perhaps of more use to consumers than the...

Send us Fan Mail Don opens rosé as a crowd pleaser to some dogged palates while Olly opens a De Moor Chablis for a mate. The most-wanted Tequilas tops our news stats this week while California hogs the rest of the limelight. Don looks at the latest out of Napa Valley where vineyards are getting tricky to shift and Cabernet Sauvignon may be on the way out. Talking of which, we look at a story cover...

Send us Fan Mail Don drinks a delicious Gamay while Olly has a Sauvignon Blanc from Italy and a fantastic Saumur rouge which leads to a confession about Cabernet Franc. We kick off quite a long list of bad news with Napa Cabernet and a recent article claiming that the number of Napa wineries will need to shrink. We also wonder if Napa Cabernet has changed in style? Are they all the same/are they s...

Send us Fan Mail Don finds contentment in two very different places: Martinborough Pinot Noir and Jim Barry Cabernet Sauvignon (and Shiraz). Olly has a magnum of Côte du Puy and a Dauvissat Chablis. Against the backdrop of a bottle of 1945 Romanée-Conti going for over $800,000, the last week saw readers looking into the US study that high by-the-glass wine prices are pushing diners away from wine...

Send us Fan Mail Don has a weekend of barbeque wines while Olly asks low-end Pinot Noir winemakers to stop trying to make a wine that Pinot Noir isn't – and asks for recommendations for enjoyable, cheap, honest Pinot Noir outside of his usual region of Marlborough, New Zealand! We face the possibility that more than one person might be listening to us and Don runs down the top wine stories of...

Send us Fan Mail The Hawke's Bay harvest is looking excellent (so far!), while Don is disappointed by a recent Mondavi Cabernet and Olly regrets a lager. The biggest story of the last seven days is that of California's much-reduced grape harvest while our Most Wanted Rieslings list also enjoyed the attention of our readers. Don waxes lyrical about Margaret Rand's piece on Pingus win...

Send us Fan Mail Don prepares for St Patrick's Day by limbering up with Guinness while Olly drinks a delicious 2020 Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru from Etienne Sauzet. The Most Wanted  Chardonnays and the Most Wanted New Zealand wines top the reader statistics while Don's story on the rise of Bordeaux wine searches in the last 12 months has him asking if the wine industry isn't seeing s...

Send us Fan Mail Don enjoys wine as beverage this weekend while Olly has a Langhe bianco that was delicious, but from an unusual combination of grapes. The Most-Wanted Chardonnays tops the readers' favourite articles this week with Don also enjoying a story about how wine is helping the US on the global diplomacy front. Olly talks about his article in which he asks if certain aspects of winem...

Send us Fan Mail Don drinks a 100-point wine and we have a look at the implications therein, including asking if we will ever see the likes of Robert Parker's influence in the wine world again. The news that Piedmont is facing crisis dominates readership figures for the second week in a row, while US Editor Blake Gray's coverage of the Premiere Napa Valley auction (which Gray says "...

Send us Fan Mail Unpretentious rosé and wines, nominally for aging, drunk too early. Don and Olly discuss the latest US Supreme Court ruling on tariffs (and what - if anything - this means for the wine trade). The Domaine de la Romanée-Conti tasting story keeps running while Don runs down some of the latest stories including the revival of the "new Old World" of Central Europe; how somme...

Send us Fan Mail Don drinks a delicious McLaren Vale Shiraz while Olly has a lovely 'Carignane' from Lodi. Don talks Napa Merlot, RTDs taking over the drinks space, an oversupply of agave in Tequila and the latest from the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti tastings. Olly asks if there are positives to untended vineyards in wine regions (keeping bird pressure down?) and Don looks at Spanish win...

Send us Fan Mail Montepulciano and the wonder of southern Italian red wines. Calvados and the flavour (or otherwise) of fruits in spirits. This week, Don and Olly discuss the California wineries for sale (and why it appears no-one is buying them). RTDs surge in the US drinks market. Is wine's answer to RTDs Vermouth? Olly talks a bit about his story on West Bank wineries. Footballing great Se...

Send us Fan Mail Don drinks a spectacular Champagne and Olly has a delicious Pinot Noir. This week's podcast covers the 2024 vintage in Burgundy and asks whether winemakers are especially honest about the weather and the struggles when their wines are good. They also ask whether most people actually like the taste of wine and other drinks, and whether or not wine really does need food. Can ag...