Australia is not just a wine region, and rather more than a wine nation. It is a wine continent -- the oldest, geologically speaking, on earth. Its generous climate and ancient, heavily weathered soils, combined with Australian pragmatic ingenuity in wine-making and wine-marketing, have brought about the biggest world wine revolution of the last two decades. Australia's greatest wines are now hugely sought-after, especially by those who cut their wine-drinking teeth on its friendly and accessible brands. Stylistically, too, many of them represent an ultimate: these are some of the deepe...

Bordeaux is the greatest pool of fine wine on earth.  Few red wines anywhere can match Bordeaux as mid-weight, refreshing reds with the uncanny ability to modulate, change and grow still more appealing with age.  Few red wines anywhere on earth are as digestible as good Bordeaux; no fine-wine region is easier, either, to understand, thanks to the all-important notion of the château.  This is a single property (often large: Château Lagrange in St Julien is larger than the whole of Condrieu, for example) producing a single grand vin every year.  Most chât...

The Northern Rhône has far less in common with its southern counterpart than nomenclature would suggest.  In terms of scale, it more nearly resembles Burgundy than any other region of France: growers have to make a living from four or five hectares here, whereas in the south many domains have 30 or 40 ha.  This is the land of the small grower who knows every inch of his soil.  Geologically, too, the Northern Rhône is the only fine French wine produced principally from granite soils (Beaujolais and Muscadet are two other, lesser examples).  In climate terms, t...

The Rhône valley, viewed through winemaking spectacles, has two distinct halves.  The northern sector lies between Vienne and Valence, a broken thread of largely hilly, granite-soiled vineyards (see below); the southern sector begins at Montélimar and billows into Provence.  This is a vast stonefield spreading through four French départements: Drôme, Vaucluse, Gard and Ardèche.  Over 25 times as much wine is produced in the Southern Rhône as in the North, most of it blends of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre (the ‘GSM' tril...