Wine Wyse

Somehow there’s nothing quite like the pop of a cork to get the party going – even if it’s just a party of two! Although caution cannot always be thrown to the wind whilst opening a bottle of bubbly. I have a new puppy and she doesn’t like loud bangs (I think fireworks had something to do with it!). Having made the mistake of letting a champagne cork out with a rather loud ‘pop’, every time she now sees a sparkling wine bottle being opened, she retires to a safe distance – such as the next ro...

Dijon is one of those cities in Eastern France which is far too easy to by-pass on the way to somewhere else, be it Italy, Switzerland or the south of France. A big mistake, since Dijon is a fabulously vibrant and historic city, filled with gastronomic delights and a wine lover’s paradise. Easily accessible by train (under 2 hours from Paris) to keep your green credentials intact, the manageable historic centre, crammed with a mix of grand 18th-century stone buildings cheek to jowl with medie...

Umbria is next door to the much better-known region of Tuscany, whose wines are revered worldwide. Anyone visiting Italy will almost certainly have drunk a bottle or two of Chianti and if lucky, some of the expensive and excellent Brunello di Montalcino or Amarone della Valpolicella. But the wines from the gently rolling hills of Umbria are far less known, and less expensive, even though they are quite stunning in terms of quality. One of my favourite wine regions of Italy, land-locked Umbria...