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The World of Fine Wine’s 78th Issue is a many splendoured thing. A few highlights, if we may. In Then and Now, Preserving Pleasure, Stuart Walton looks back at sumptuary laws enacted throughout history to limit conspicuous consumption. Simon J Woolf looks at the ‘rebirth of cool’ in Slovakia, arguing that “if there is a new holy grail in wine, it’s cool-climate regions”, and The Last Catalog is a typically poetic account from importer/writer Terry Theise on visiting his European growers following a three-year absence. Then, Harry Eyres tackles the thorny issue of ‘Minerality’ in Learning to live with undefinability.
On the tasting front (and forgive the Bibendum slant), Simon Field MW assesses a decade of Quinta do Noval and Noval Nacional, and Ken Gargett travels almost 3,000 to taste Max Schubert’s legendary Penfold’s Bin 60A 1962: “Someone had placed a spit bucket on our table. I don’t think anyone was ever going to use it”. In One Bottle, Andrew Jefford meets with François and Edouard Labet of Château de la Tour, writing, “We laughed a lot; father and son are both full of fun… But the wines were joyful and exuberant, too: broad-shouldered, generous, tender, animated. Perhaps that’s Clos Vougeot at its best?” Then, in one of three core tasting reports, Jasper Morris MW delivers his high-powered analysis and verdict on 2018 Burgundy.
Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg.: there are 226 pages in total!