For close to a century, Château Mouton Rothschild has been putting art on its labels, ever since 1924 when they helped Mouton’s young 22-year-old owner at the time, Baron Philippe de Rothschild, to change the way Bordeaux made wine. But what’s behind the labels?
Ken Gargett suspects that many wine lovers might be wondering just who John Duval is. However, the chances are very good that most wine lovers have indeed enjoyed wines made by John Duval as he was just the third man to be put in charge of Australia’s most famous wine, Penfolds Grange. Duval is now making sensational wines under his own name.
Effervescent red wine in Australia was originally known as “sparkling Burgundy” and is often still affectionately referred to as “Spurgles” in accordance with the country’s national need to shorten every name. Ken Gargett confesses that he is a fan and shares a few of his favorites here alongside the history of this fascinating sub-genre.
Once regarded among Burgundy’s top wine producers, Bouchard Père & Fils’s fall from grace was slow, steady, and irresistible. But as Ken Gargett reports, it is now making great wines again.
Château Pontet-Canet is a Fifth Growth in the 1855 Classification, but for the last 15 years has been considered the equivalent of a top Second Growth. Ken Gargett is a big fan of the 2015 vintage.
What do truffles, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, trout, elephant dung, and green ants have in common? These items and countless more have all been used to make specialist craft gins. Sure, gin needs juniper. But after that it is open slather. Indeed, it is hard to think of a plant, herb, root, flower, leaf, and much more than has not been used to make gin. And some of them are just batsh*t crazy!
We are seeing more and more releases of vintage and prestige cuvees from the great champagne producers. Latest cab off the ranks is the 2014 La Grande Année from Bollinger (and the Rosé from the same year). Ken Gargett tackles questions about it including: where does 2014 rank? Is it a justifiable release? If so, what makes it so?
As with every aspect of our lives, the world of wine and spirits is heavily regulated. Growing grapes, making the stuff, distilling, selling, even (perhaps especially) drinking it. Here Ken Gargett takes a light-hearted look at some of the newer and crazier laws and regulations around the world.
Popular? Bombay Sapphire is one of the most widely used gins and the fastest growing premium gin in the world. These days, with the gincredible popularity of the spirit, that means it is one of the most loved and drunk spirits on the planet. Ken Gargett takes a deep dive.
The first Black Tot Day was in 1970, the last day on which sailors in the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy were issued their daily rum rations (“tots”). Pusser’s has taken the exact recipe used by the Royal Navy when it discontinued the daily ration on July 31, 1970 and used it to make its rums, the only producer in the world to do so. Here, Ken Gargett fills us in on everything tot – he luckily doesn’t go “sipping the admiral,” though.