My most recent visit to Burgundy took place during the week of the annual Hospices de Beaune auction, although I got out of town before the gavel went down.  All week, there had been a frenzied excitement brewing in the bourgeois streets of Beaune; press and trade were whispering under their breaths that prices would be astronomical; that this year it would be the négociants not the producers who would be buying the Hospices barrels and that the results of the sale would affect the future of Burgundy wines for the next few years...

2020 will always be known as the third year in a great trilogy of vintages 2018-2019-2020 in Bordeaux. Yet the story behind the 2020s is much more interesting than just wonderful quality...

This is a land of rolling hills; of morning fogs (Nebbiolo takes its name from “Nebbia” the Italian word for fog); of contrasting climates from the icy winds of the snow-capped Alps to the warm influence from the Mediterranean Sea. The soils are rich clay at the bases and limestone on the summits of the hills...