The word 'botrytis' is one that you'll find from time to time on wine labels. It sounds like some kind of disease and in a way that's exactly what it is. It's the name of a fungus; a small, yeast-like variety that makes its living by infecting the skins of grapes under certain climatic conditions. More>>

Why exactly 75 cls has been picked as the standard sized wine bottle is not entirely clear, it has simply evolved into the standard size by custom, although it's now a recognised EU quantity for the retail trade. You could argue that the old imperial bottle of one sixth of a gallon may have something to do with it, but it could also be that 75cls is just about the right amount for a meal for two. More>>

I had lunch recently with Ross Brown the Australian wine-maker. He's recently taken over as CEO of the family-run business, Brown Brothers, which is based in Victoria. Over lunch we talked of wine and the wine business, and what became abundantly clear to me as the meal and our conversation progressed, was that the wine business is more than a little different from others. More>>

It's an old adage: invest carefully in a wine cellar and after a while you can drink for free. I've heard that on and off for years and in truth I've still to meet anyone who drinks for free.More>>

American wines in Europe are mostly understood as Californian wines. Since it's the state that produces the most wine by a large margin that's understandable, but it's worth bearing in mind that over half of the states of the Union produce wine. More>>

There aren't many good comedy lines that you can use about wine, but I've always liked 'I drink as I dress, Chablis.' I remember the first time I went there, about twenty years ago; my wife and I were driving back from Italy and as evening fell we were passing Auxerre. I had a brainwave; 'let's spend the night in Chablis,' I said. Flushed with the brilliance of this idea I continued, 'and whatever we have to eat tonight, we'll have either a Premier Cru or a Grand Cru to accompany it.' Never did words land anyone in such trouble. More>>

The biggest difference between Burgundy and Bordeaux is perhaps on the ground, rather than in the bottle. In Bordeaux the norm is for a chateau or chaise to sit in the middle of an estate and to have one owner. I don't mean necessarily one person - it could be a company or a partnership - but the ownership tends to be invested in a single entity. More>>

You could argue that the discovery of the effect of yeast on grape juice was one of the mankind's most useful ones. Certainly wine has given a lot of people a lot of pleasure for thousands of years. But you could also argue that a more recent discovery has given wine-drinkers something rather special that wasn't available to the drinkers of old. That discovery was secondary fermentation in the bottle. More>>

One of the greatest marketing coups in the history of the wine trade has been the branding of Champagne. From humble beginnings as a thin white wine, it was transformed into a sparkling wine and from there became one of the great branding exercises of all time. Today that branding is so omnipresent that if we want to describe the lifestyle of the rich and spoiled, we refer to a 'champagne lifestyle'. More>>

Although I know it's just the conditioning effect of a lot of expensive advertising, I still think ‘Champagne' when I think of the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. I'm inclined to make those New Year's celebrations last well into next week, so on the basis that you might be so inclined too, here's some ideas for budget bubbly.More>>

Somewhere in the dim recesses of pre-history there was a primal vine. It had a simple strategy for survival; to put its seeds into succulent thin-skinned fruits and then let every bird, reptile and mammal eat those fruits and scatter those seeds. Like first man, first vine hasn't yet been identified, but the common stock of Europe is the vitis vinifera, and in the Americas the vitis riparia. More>>

Doing anything only out of passion for one's art has an inherent nobility, especially when it's done in the teeth of adversity. In the world of wine Chateau Musar makes an excellent exemplar of this.More>>

A lot has been written over the years about the Irish flight to Bordeaux. Young bloods from aristocratic families that ended up leaving their names across the board of the drinks business: the negociants Bartons of Barton and Guestier, Richard Hennessy in Cognac, the Bartons of Langoa and Leoville and the Chateaux names like Lynch, Palmer, Kirwan, Boyd and O'Brien. More>>

Two things have been nagging at me ever since I discovered the delights of shopping in the Lidl supermarket in Arklow. It costs so much less than other supermarket chains that you can't help but wonder how big a margin the other multiples work on. Good and cheap olive oil, passata, tinned fish - but I digress, this column is about wine. So there it is on the wine shelves, Lambrusco Rose at €2.49 a bottle. Which brings me to the first of my unsolved mysteries. More>>

Chianti is probably Italy's best-known wine. There was a time, not so long ago, that the wicker-covered 'fiasco' was ubiquitous - every Italian restaurant put one on every table as a candle holder. As anyone who ever tried some of this can attest, the liquid in those bottles was a very variable thing. More>>

The first known vintage in Chile was that of Don Francisco Aguirre, who had planted his vineyard some 800 kilometres north of Santiago. The grapes, like most of those first arrivals in South America, almost certainly came from the Catholic church, through the hands of Father Francisco de Carabantes.More>>

In Ireland there are three main outlets for wine; restaurants, off-licences and supermarkets. Most people buy their wines in the second two of these outlets either by recognising a label that previously drank well, or by asking for help from whoever's behind the counter in the offy. More>>

Christmas is fast approaching, and soon there'll be that annual mad rush to buy presents accompanied by the dawning realisation that you really haven't a clue what you should be buying. I have friends that love wine, but buying them a wine that is exactly what they'd like isn't very easy.More>>

As we drove through the mediaeval town of Pons, past its fast-flowing rivers and statuary commemorating the pilgrims who travelled through here on the way to Santiago de Compostela, a road-sign with 'Cognac' on it made an appearance. We were getting close at last. We'd come to Cognac to see the process that produces the drink of that name and lunch was to be at Hennessy's headquarters on the banks of the Charente River. More>>