Wine Blog - News, Events & Culture

14 July 2026

Breaky Bottom Goes Up For Sale

Fifty years of farming on the same chalk slope in the South Downs, and Peter Hall is finally ready to let go.

10 July 2026

Côtes du Rhône Wants You to Drink Its Reds Chilled

My fridge currently has a bottle of Grenache in it. Has done since Tuesday, when I read about the "Refresh Your Wine" campaign Côtes du Rhône quietly launched in the UK market this week, aimed squarely at getting younger drinkers to treat their reds, whites, and rosés the same way they'd treat a cold lager on a hot afternoon.

7 July 2026

Cantina Boccone Opens an Italian and Portuguese Wine Bar in Deptford

Deptford gets a proper wine bar before most of Central London has worked out what Alta Langa is. That's not a dig at anywhere, just a fact worth sitting with for a moment.

3 July 2026

Chilled Red Wine Searches Up 1,020% in the UK

The bottle had been in the fridge since Tuesday. By Friday, when I finally opened it, I'd half-convinced myself I'd ruined it.

30 June 2026

England's 2026 Vintage Looks Exceptional After June Heatwave

The vines at Nyetimber's West Chiltington estate are about three weeks ahead of where they were at this point last year. That's not a rumour or a hopeful projection from a PR email. It's the kind of thing growers are actually saying out loud, which they rarely do in June.

26 June 2026

English Sparkling Wins Best in Show at Decanter 2026

A magnum of English sparkling wine just beat everything else at the Decanter World Wine Awards. Every Champagne, every Crémant, every Cava, every prestige cuvée from every country that entered. On June 23, 2026, the judges gave Best in Show to a magnum-format English sparkling, and I think that's going to take a while to sink in for people who still reach for a French label by reflex.

23 June 2026

Tim Atkin Gives Argentina's First-Ever 100-Point Wine Score

The wine that finally got a perfect hundred from Tim Atkin MW isn't a Bordeaux. It isn't a Burgundy. It's a Malbec from Gualtallary, a high-altitude sub-zone in Mendoza sitting at around 1,500 metres, and on June 17, 2026, Atkin published what his score sheet had never shown before: 100 points for an Argentine wine.

19 June 2026

WineGB Awards 2026 Show British Still Wine Has Arrived

Forty years ago, planting Gamay in England would have got you laughed out of the room. Last Thursday, a Gamay won a top award at the WineGB Awards 2026.

16 June 2026

Trump Threatens 100% Tariffs on French Wine

The bottle of Chablis on your local wine bar's list by-the-glass might be about to get a lot more expensive. Or it might not happen at all. That's roughly where things stand right now, and the uncertainty alone is enough to cause real problems.

12 June 2026

Penedès Becomes the World's First 100% Organic Wine Region

The Penedès DO in Catalonia certified its last conventional vineyard out of the appellation on June 11, 2026, according to Wine Enthusiast. Every single one of its roughly 27,000 hectares under vine is now farmed organically. No other wine region of comparable size has managed this.