by Caspar Bowes

I've just been out for a walk. It was the sort of walk that becomes essential in late afternoon to someone who has been indoors all day caring for an ill child. Isabella was awake much of last night and, after a short period of sickness, spent the hours of darkness very restless and with a raging te…

On the way to taste the wines of Jean-Luc Thunevin in a St Emilion side street. Note the Wistaria, which is adorning the facades of many a chateau at the moment The vines have become a great deal more leafy in the last week. The summery conditions are blasting them into their full growth cycle and …

The tasting room at Haut-Brion; a sample being poured with the chateau visible through the doorwayWe drove south this morning under pale blue skies that have remained locked over Bordeaux all day. It seems that flights paths bisect one another somewhere over Bordeaux's southern suburbs, for the blu…

Something of the Scottish baronial style about Lascombes; little Scottish about the weather, however: blue skies over Margaux We have just now crawled back into the hotel at the exceedingly welcome end of a predictably tiring day. Our mettle has been tested; our stamina fully explored. We are weary…

Chateau Pontet-Canet floats between gravel drive and sky A pleasant introduction to the qualities of any given vintage is the first day of the en primeur tasting week in Bordeaux. It's a day of reasonably relaxed visits to those chateaux that don't deign to show their wines at the big combined Unio…