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FINEWINE


ISSUE 87 2025 ISSN 1743-503X THE WORLD OF


www.worldoffi newine.com Founder Laurence Orbach


Editorial Adviser Hugh Johnson OBE Contributing Editor Andrew Jeff ord Editor Neil Beckett


neil.beckett@worldoffi newine.com


Deputy Editor and Website Editor David Williams david.williams@worldoffi newine.com Tastings Editor Anastasia Edwards


anastasia.edwards@worldoffi newine.com Food Editor Francis Percival


francis.percival@worldoffi newine.com Chief Subeditor David Tombesi-Walton david@sandseditorial.co.uk


Team Assistant Kazumi Suzuki Designer Simon Murrell


Production Manager Clare Ovenell Subscription Manager Bhanusree Mukkera Special Projects Manager Jeremy Wilkinson


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Mother Nature, alienated by decades of disrespect, seems to be growing ever more fickle, giving too much one year, as Sarah Marsh MW explains in her account of 2023 Burgundy (pp.174–95 and her far fuller report on worldoffinewine.com), then taking too much away the next (pp.20–22). The rising threats from climate change are even forcing growers to consider abandoning traditional grape varieties that have been transmitters of their terroirs for generations, as Paul White highlights for Beaujolais (pp.24–28). Striking a properly serious tone,


F


Harry Eyres laments that human agencies are making matters worse in more direct and immediate ways as well. “Wine is under attack from various quarters. The guardians of our health, nationally and internationally, are taking an increasingly stern line. The World Health Organization announced in late 2022 that ‘no level of alcohol is safe for our health’”(p.18). Happily, there is hope and there are positive responses. Despite the whims of the weather, the two most recent Burgundy vintages show it is still possible to produce elegant, pure, terroir-transparent wines. Growers are following more sustainable practices—and researchers, scientific solutions—from new Gamay crosses in Beaujolais, to genetically edited grapes (pp.24–28; 128–33). Medical experts like Dr Erik Skovenborg are able to expose the “absurdity” of WHO’s “‘no safe level’ dogma, a tale of weak associations and methodological issues” (pp.90–91).


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Neil Beckett


ive years on from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are still living through troubled times.


Wine regions and styles and grape varieties that have been neglected and struggling for decades are having a renaissance, as celebrated here by contributions on Bourgogne Hautes- Côtes, Cahors, and Carcavelos, and on “thoroughbred workhorses” like Aligoté, Carignan, and Palomino (pp.46, 66–68, 108–19, 170). A new generation of passionate producers is honoring and taking over from their parents: Eléonore from Louis-Fabrice Latour, Cristina from Marimar Torres, Jamie from Fred Peterson (pp.92–94, 100–01, 148–53). And talented winemakers continue to strike out in new directions: Peter Gago and Caroline Frey with Grange La Chapelle, Pierre Vincent at his own domaine, Chris Wilson with Gutter & Stars, Zhang Jing at Jiabeilan (pp.58–61, 134, 154–57, 160–63). And for all of us, there continues to be the pleasure, release, solace, stimulus; the connecting, grounding, transporting, uplifting that wine has always offered. For a fortunate few, it may be via Romanée- Conti, Clos Rougeard, or Château Rayas, whose magic is brilliantly evoked by Michael Schuster, Simon Field MW, and William Kelley (pp.54–57, 136–41, 142–47, 158–59). But as Harry reminds us, it may also come otherwise: Apollonian appreciation of wine as an “art form […] one of the deep mysteries of our culture”; Dionysian abandon, “that ecstatic state when we ‘coincide with all the universe’”; or between the two, in a backstreet bar with a copita of Sherry, “feeling connected, however briefly, to this mortal life, the living earth, and the people you share it with”: “the deepest essence of wine.” 


“The deepest essence of wine is neither Dionysian abandon nor pure Apollonian logos. It’s feeling connected, however briefl y, to this mortal life, the living earth, and the people you share it with”—Harry Eyres


THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 87 | 2025 | 3


Illustration by Dan Murrell. Cover image: Harvest Horse by Thierry Gaudillère


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