Few stories in wine combine ambition and risk quite like suitcase clones - vine cuttings carried across borders by growers convinced they had found material capable of improving their vineyards. Wine is built on lineage, and in places like Burgundy, certain vineyards - Montrachet, Romanée-Conti, La Tâche - are spoken of as though greatness can be traced through generations of vines, farming, and careful replanting. The reputation of these vineyards extended well beyond their borders, and for...

In front of me lies the remains of once immaculately plated dishes from Chef’s tasting menu launch for Spring - now mangled from tasting and lying amongst bottles of possible pairings. The very real role of the sommelier is to create the perfect pairings, and the utter delight of finding those; the reminder of how food and wine, when dancing in a harmonious pairing - can become something greater than the sum of the parts, or can very much not be . . . trial and error. Sometimes wines and...

It was a post from Véronique Drouhin on Instagram that caught my eye - rows of vines lit by candles - and for a moment it stopped me, because we’ve seen it before, and we know what it means. Burgundy had entered frost season again. From there, the picture filled in quickly, not through formal reporting at first, but through the growers themselves: more posts, more vineyards lit through the night, then a post from Domaine Lamy showing the same scene, a darkened vineyard alit with hundreds of...