Displaying items by tag: Andrew Jefford

Summary: 

Can you taste ‘minerality’? What do we mean by ‘terroir’? Where do aroma and flavour come from? Is too much attention paid to the role of the soil in discussions of the aromas and flavours of great wines? How rare are truly great wine-growing sites? These are some of the questions we aim to discuss in the upcoming Meeting of the Minds on November 25th.

Wine Scholar Guild Academic Advisor Andrew Jefford, speaking from France, will be bringing together a panel of key thinkers, educators, writers and experts in four countries to talk through these and other issues. Wales-based Professor Alex Maltman has had a forty-year teaching career, and now divides his time between writing about the relationship between geology and wine production as well as the influence of geology on other beverages and tending his own vineyard. California-based Professor Hildegarde Heymann teaches sensory science within the viticulture and oenology department of UC Davis, one of the world’s leading wine-educational institutions. Former plant scientist and science editor Dr Jamie Goode, speaking from the UK, writes, blogs and tweets about wine and wine science via his own Wine Anorak website as well as for The World of Fine Wine and other publications. Finally, speaking from Turckhiem in Alsace, comes Olivier Humbrecht MW, one of the world’s leading exponents and practitioners of site-sensitive winemaking and a widely acclaimed viticulturalist and winemaker.

This Meeting of the Minds aims to explore one of the most misunderstood yet also the most important topics in today’s wine world.

Host: Andrew Jefford

Andrew, Academic Advisor to the Wine Scholar Guild, has been writing about wine since 1988, notably for The Evening Standard and The Financial Times among other UK newspapers. 

He has columns in every edition of Decanter magazine and World of Fine Wine magazine, and is co-chair of Decanter World Wine Awards and vice-chair of Decanter Asia Wine Awards.  His books include The New France, Whisky Island and Andrew Jefford’s Wine Course.

Meet The Panel:

Emeritus Professor Alex Maltman

Aberystwyth University, geologist, teacher, writer

Professor Hildegarde Heymann

UC Davis, sensory scientist, teacher

Dr Jamie Goode

wine writer, wine judge

Olivier Humbrecht MW

wine grower, winemaker

Where are we headed? This is a question which all of us have probably asked ourselves at some point during 2020, as a global pandemic unfolds chaotically across a planet experiencing runaway climate change. Both challenges have directly affected French wine growers, with trade tariffs imposed by the USA on European winegrowers forming a third stress-inducing headwind.

Author of Inside Bordeaux, a book that has been described as the 'bible' by Le Figaro newspaper and a 'category buster' by Jamie Goode, Jane Anson has lived in Bordeaux since 2003. Here she takes a look at the wine trends that are shaping the region, its economy, its climate, the industry and its winemakers.

Wine is full of spirited debates, but few can argue that any subject matter generates more intensity these days than natural wine. Should sulphur be allowed or not? Do natural wines reveal terroir better than conventional wines? Has natural wine changed our notion of flaws?

Perhaps most controversial of all is the definition of natural wine in the first place.

These questions are constantly challenging everyone from wine critics and sommeliers to casual students of wine. We decided to bridge the topic with Wine Scholar Guild’s Academic Advisor and long-time columnist for Decanter and World of Fine Wine, Andrew Jefford, as well as Simon J Woolf, the noted natural-wine writer and author of Amber Revolution: How the World Learned to Love Orange Wine.

Summary: 

• What are the main tasting methods and what are their key characteristics? 
• How do different cultures, languages and sensibilities impact how wine tasting is approached? 
• Can we envision a more overarching and universal tasting method? 

These are some of the questions we will be addressing in the upcoming Meeting of the Minds on July 22nd.

Wine Scholar Guild Academic Advisor Andrew Jefford, speaking from France, will be bringing together a panel of key thinkers, educators, writers and experts in four countries to discuss a world of tasting methods. UK-based Professor Barry Smith not only directs the Institute of Philosophy at the School of Advanced Study at London University, but is also founding director of the Centre for the Study of the Senses/CenSes, which pioneers collaborative research between philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists. He is himself a philosopher of language and mind. Sommelière (and former philosophy student) Pascaline Lepeltier MS, speaking from New York, grew up and studied in the French tradition of wine appreciation but has spent much of her working life talking about wine to Anglophones. UK-based Matthew Stubbs MW is one of the wine world’s most experienced and popular educators, and has taught both on his own behalf and for WSET and IMW around the world. Finally, speaking from Nanning in China, comes Julien Boulard MW, one of the most brilliant of recent MW graduates and a wine educator in China whose mastery of Mandarin sees him regularly appearing on Chinese media.

Host & Panelists: 

Andrew Jefford

Andrew, Academic Advisor to the Wine Scholar Guild, has been writing about wine since 1988, notably for The Evening Standard and The Financial Times among other UK newspapers.  He has columns in every edition of Decanter magazine and World of Fine Wine magazine, and is co-chair of Decanter World Wine Awards and vice-chair of Decanter Asia Wine Awards. His books include The New France, Whisky Island and Andrew Jefford’s Wine Course.

Pascaline Lepeltier MS, MOF:

• 2018 Best French Sommelier
• Master Sommelier and Meilleur Ouvrier de France (MOF) 
• Highly qualified and experienced speaker and presenter
• Managing Partner at Racines (NYC) and Former Beverage Director at Rouge Tomate (NYC)

Matthew Stubbs MW:

• More than 30 years experience in the wine trade, from importing and distribution to running a supermarket wine department.
• Master of Wine since 1996, winner of the Bollinger Medal for the best tasting paper and the Listel Scholarship for the best Vinification paper.
• Actively involved with the Institute as Practical Examiner, seminar lecturer or mentor.
• Mentor to many MW students over the years and continues to help them fine tune the tasting skills needed to succeed in the Practical exam.
• Regular on judging panels for wine competitions, Panel Chair for the International Wine Challenge and co-President of the Sud de France Top 50 in China.
• Practical Chair of the MW Education Committee.

Julien Boulard MW:

• Born in Alsace, Julien arrived in China in 2003 after studying Mandarin at University
• After completing a Master's degree in International Affairs, he worked for five years for a wine importer in Nanning, China
• Founder and owner of Zhulian Wines wine school in China, offering both WSET and WSG programs
• His fluency in Mandarin, both spoken and written, as well as his wine knowledge and experience as a wine educator, enabled him to become a key professional on the Chinese wine scene
• He is a judge for various wine competitions in China and Hong Kong
• Read Julien's full interview HERE

Prof Barry C Smith:

• Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study.
• Founding director of its Centre for the Study of the Senses, which pioneers collaborative research between philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists.
• His current research on flavour perception involves collaborations with psychologists, neuroscientists, oenologists and chefs, and he has published theoretical and experimental papers on flavour perception in Nature, Food Quality and Preference, Chemical Senses and Flavour. 
• Editor of Questions of Taste: the philosophy of wine for Oxford University Press (2007).
• Frequent broadcaster, who regularly appears as a sensory expert on BBC Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet and BBC Two’s Inside the Factory. 
• Presenter of a 10-part series for BBC Radio 4 called The Uncommon Senses
• Frequent contributor to The World of Fine Wine and for seven years was wine columnist for Prospect Magazine.

Learn More About Wine Tasting:

• Member webinar: Taste Wine Like An MW with Matthew Stubbs MW

What is France’s greatest undiscovered wine region? Where do you find the greatest value for money in French wine? Where would you look around France to find potential fine-wine quality at affordable wine prices? Three questions … and from me the same answer to each: South West France.

Summary: 

There is, arguably, no wine mind more extraordinary, more capacious or better informed than that of Jancis Robinson MW.

After university studies in mathematics and philosophy at Oxford, Jancis worked for a short while in the travel business before becoming a wine trade journalist in 1976. Within three years she was the wine correspondent of the Sunday Times, and over the following four decades, her staggering output of journalism, books and media interventions has almost single-handedly transformed the wine world.

Every WSG student will be familiar with the reference books she has either created herself or collaborated on with others: they are the foundation of every wine library, and the starting point for every journey into wine education: Vines, Grapes & Wines (first published 1986), The Oxford Companion to Wine (first published 1994, now in its fourth edition), The World Atlas of Wine (written by Hugh Johnson, but revised and co-written by Jancis from the fifth edition in 2001, and now in its eighth edition) and Wine Grapes (with Julia Harding and José Vouillamoz, 2012). Leavening these reference monuments has come a feast of other books on wine subjects, including wine and health, wine and gastronomy, a wine course, wine’s ageing trajectories and specialist books on North American wines and Portuguese wines.

She became a Master of Wine (and the first journalist to pass the exam) in 1984. Jancis is also an accomplished television and radio performer, has consulted on wine for British Airways, has designed her own wine glasses and helps choose the wines served at Buckingham Palace. The copious awards she has won include six James Beard awards, the Grand Award of the OIV, an Honorary Doctorate from the Open University, the Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole in France and the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the UK. She is also the creator and chief contributor to the much-admired jancisrobinson.com, notable as a dual subscription/free access wine resource; she is also known to the Davos circuit as the wine correspondent of The Financial Times since 1990 (and has indeed lectured at Davos).

Wine Scholar Guild Academic Advisor Andrew Jefford talked at length to Jancis about some of the highlights of her long career and just how she managed to achieve so much; about her wine preferences (and dislikes); about wine education and its challenges; about the cultural significance of wine; about changes in the wine world over the past four decades – and about what the next decade might bring.

As a wine region, Burgundy embodies both the past and the future. On the one hand, Grands Crus that have been celebrated for centuries remain in the hands of multi-generational family domaines. On the other hand, outside investment, adjustments to the appellation system, and the realities of climate change (which have necessitated adaptations in viticulture and winemaking) have all combined to bring about change in recent years. This duality lies at the heart of modern Burgundy, and here to sort much of it out for us is acclaimed wine writer and Wine Scholar Guild’s Academic Advisor Andrew Jefford. Below, he takes a look at the numbers that have shaped Burgundy’s recent history, and what that means for its future.