Restaurants: dinner at La Trompette, Chiswick, with three interesting wines
Website: https://www.latrompette.co.uk/ La Trompette is one of my favourite restaurants in London. Tucked away in Chiswick, it has an upmarket
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California
Highlights: Arnot Roberts Gamay Noir 2023 El Dorado, California
This is a brilliant expression of Californian Gamay, from one of the state’s most interesting producers, Arnot Roberts. Arnot Roberts
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At Far Mountain, Rodrigo Soto is making some exciting wines from mountain vineyards in Sonoma
Website: https://farmountainwine.com/ ‘I was a below-average student,’ says Rodrigo Soto, recalling his formative years growing up in Chile. He spent
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New (2024 vintage) releases from Jamie Kutch, one of California’s leading Pinot Noir and Chardonnay producers
Website: Kutch Wines (includes videos of the vineyards) Over the last few years Jamie Kutch has emerged as one of
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Gallo, the world’s largest wine company, has three insanely large wineries in California
Gallo (they dropped the E&J bit in 2024) own the three largest wineries in the world. They don’t tend to
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Failla Wines: beautiful site-specific wines from some of northern California’s best vineyards
Website: https://www.faillawines.com/ Ehren Jordan is the winemaker and owner at Failla, and he’s quite a dude. He got his first
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Anthill Farms Winery: Californian elegance
Website: https://www.anthillfarms.com/ Anthill Farms began with 8 barrels of wine in 2024, and was started by three winemakers who’d met
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Cruse x Hirsch, tasting some Californian gems from this star partnership
Californians Jasmine Hirsch and Michael Cruse are partners in life and wine, and they came to London to share their
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Tablas Creek and Château Beaucastel: a Wine Society tasting telling the story of how a leading Rhône domaine fell in love with California
Jason Haas of Tablas Creek and Andrew Bayley (GM of Beaucastel’s UK operation) presented this really interesting tasting, telling the
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Books: The New California by Elaine Chukan Brown
Ever since I heard that Elaine Chukan Brown was writing a book on Californian Wine, I was waiting to see
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