Wine is the subject. Vintage is the dimension of time.
Wine and Policy
The European Parliament's public health committee adopted its Beating Cancer Plan report on 28 September by 27 votes to 8. Wine producers welcomed the language it kept. Health campaigners criticised the same words, and the report still calls for health labels on alcohol without further delay.
Burgundy shipped 19.1 million bottles to the United States in the twelve months through July, down 9.8 percent by volume and 21.2 percent by value, according to the Bourgogne Wine Board. Global exports rose in volume even as their value slipped.
At Singapore Wine Week's Grand Cellar Auction on 4 October, one 750ml bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1945 sold for S$80,000 before buyer's premium. The next lot, another bottle of the same wine, sold for S$100,000.
The forty-second Cape Winemakers Guild Auction raised R18.22 million in Cape Town, and for the first time in its history white wines averaged more per bottle than reds.
The current 904 arrives with 120,000 bottles, 97 points from James Suckling and a 97 from Vinous, and pricing that undercuts most luxury reds. It lands just as Gran Reserva becomes the category Rioja can count on.
The 2021 Brunellos reached the market from January 2026 after the appellation's mandatory five years of ageing. Early critical response has been strong: James Suckling named Eredi Fuligni's 2021 his Italian Wine of the Year after tasting 7,000 Italian wines.
After the 2024 campaign cut release prices by roughly a quarter, the 2025 en primeur releases tested whether the chateaux could hold the line. Mouton Rothschild led at 300 euros a bottle ex-negociant, while merchants measured every release against the 2022 benchmark.
South Africa's oldest wine estate, in continuous production since 1685, hands its leadership to the former Allée Bleue chief executive in a planned succession effective 19 October.
Bernard Magrez, owner of Chateau Pape-Clement and one of Bordeaux's largest vineyard holders, has named his son Philippe, 63, as his successor.
From the 2026 vintage, Chiara Pepe will head viticulture and winemaking at Domaine de La Chapelle in Hermitage, dividing her time between the Rhone and her family's Emidio Pepe estate in Abruzzo.
Drought, heatwaves and a shrinking vineyard area point to about 34 million hectolitres as Paris announces a €1 billion aid plan and a second mass uprooting scheme.
On Napa Valley's western and eastern ridgelines, two mountain appellations with very different histories carried the same questions into 2025: whether a cool summer would ripen evenly, and how far the Pickett Fire's smoke would reach.
The Consejo Regulador's panel tasted 2,176 samples before awarding the 2025 harvest the top rating, crowning Rioja's centenary year. Yet first-quarter sales fell 6.4 percent, with Gran Reserva down 35 percent.
The Wine Institute's first statewide preview reports picking several weeks ahead of schedule, lighter crops, and concentrated, aromatic fruit from Mendocino to Paso Robles. A fuller harvest report follows this fall.
The 2025 Beaujolais harvest ran at about half its usual volume after a summer of punishing heat. Yet in Tokyo and New York, the region's spokesmen reached for the same comparison: 2015, the modern benchmark for cru Gamay.
Mildew, coulure and a July hailstorm cut yields by a quarter and pushed Grenache to the margins. Syrah and Mourvedre stepped forward, and the result is a vintage of freshness, definition and welcome restraint.
Five auctions in New York delivered 97 percent sold and 62 percent of lots beating their high estimates, a week of records that suggests the top end of the fine-wine market has found its momentum again.
Liv-ex's first-half data shows the benchmark index inching into positive territory for the first time in years, with Italy leading, old bottles outperforming, and critics' darlings oddly lagging. The recovery rewards selectivity, not mere exposure.
Symington, Taylor Fladgate, Fonseca, Croft, Ferreira and Sandeman have all declared 2024, the first classic declaration since 2017. It is the broadest declaration in nearly a decade, and it is deliberately scarce.
From Sideways to Widow Clicquot to Drops of God, film and television keep returning to the same vineyards. These are the real places behind the frames, and what the camera did for them.
The Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos has created the label for Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2023, a drawing titled Paraíso. She is the first Portuguese artist in a tradition running since 1945, and her large-scale installation practice makes the small format a study in contrast.
The long read
The first auction devoted entirely to Chateau Haut-Brion, marking ninety years of Dillon family stewardship, raised EUR 3.4 million and set twelve world auction records, from a 1935 magnum to a jeroboam of the 1989.
An editor's selection of objects for storing, opening, serving, preserving, studying and living with wine. Not a shop.
