This is a tale of deception, daring, disaster...and deliverance.It also features skinny sheep and wine robots.It's the story of Marlborough, the iconic New Zealand wine region which is celebrating its 50th wine birthday, after vines were planted by Frank Yukich in August 1973.Yukich had risked personal financial ruin getting to this point. 'Wines from here will become world famous!' he declared. Shortly after which most of the vines died from drought.But no adventure story is without its supreme setbacks. And this story features everything from the Queen to gut-rot via shiny tractors.On the wine front, it's sobering to think just how far Marlborough has come in 50 harvests, from a shaky start to sensational Sauvignon Blanc and much more besides. It's a region helping set the global agenda for the wine of the future - and a tribute to the imaginative, resilient Kiwi spirit.This is a sponsored episode in collaboration with New Zealand Winegrowers. We taste and recommend the following wines from Marlborough:Brancott Estate Sauvignon Blanc 2022Brancott Estate Chosen Rows Sauvignon Blanc 2015Hans Herzog Zweigelt 2017Hans Herzog Spirit of Marlborough 2016Greywacke Sauvignon Blanc 2022Greywacke Wild Sauvignon 2021Lawson's Dry Hills Reserve Chardonnay 2021Blank Canvas Reed Chardonnay 2022Villa Maria Seddon Pinot Gris 2020Wairau River Pinot Noir 2021We love to hear from you so please do get in touch! Send us a voice message via Speakpipe or you can find more details to get in touch on our website (link below).All details from this episode are on our website: Show notes for Wine Blast S5 E2: Marlborough at 50Thanks for tuning in. Here's to the joy of wine - cheers to you!

'My wife suggested we make wine. I think in the hope of cutting down our wine bill...'It's classic John Malkovich. The wit as dry as his aged Provençal Pinot Noir rosé (yes, you read that right). In this epic episode, we get to know John Malkovich the famous actor of stage and screen - but also John Malkovich the fashion designer, the theatre director, and most importantly John Malkovich the wine producer.This truly is a man for all seasons. But Malkovich seldom abides by convention - and his wine venture in the south of France, Les Quelles de La Coste, typifies this approach. He's planted atypical wine grape varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon, Carmenere - and (whisper it) Pinot Noir. He's even blending them together...For the wine classicists, this is nothing short of vinous heresy.So the big questions are: Is this just another cookie-cutter celeb wine project, or is it different? What are the wines actually like? Come to that, what's John Malkovich actually like? Join us as we pose the tricky questions, hear from the man himself and give our verdict on the wines.Along the way, John advises wine producers how best to launder money, defines what talent is, explains why he doesn't 'do' pride, identifies the greatest honour of his working life and tells a horror story of how he lost his 'spectacular' 2017 Cabernet. We also touch on topics as diverse as the Marquis de Sade, fabric collecting, beer chugging, 'boom boom' wines, the importance of details, and how making wine can break your heart.As the man says: 'I don't consider anything I do particularly provocative. It's just what I do. Which just seems to provoke people...'We love to hear from you so please do get in touch! Send us a voice message via Speakpipe or you can find more details to get in touch on our website (link below).All details from this episode are on our website: Show notes for Wine Blast S5 E1: The John Malkovich EXCLUSIVE.Thanks for tuning in. Here's to the joy of wine - cheers to you!Foot note: This episode, and the entire Season Five of Wine Blast, is dedicated to the memory of Phil Tuck MW.

This bonus episode may be the last in the current season (4) but it's also a first - the first time we've ever recorded the pod in front of a live audience!A lovely bunch of people came together in our home town of Winchester to drink a glass or two of fine Hampshire fizz and bombard us with searching questions, from which wines we'd recommend for a large and varied dinner party crowd to the implications of climate change for wine.They even asked us what were the most pretentious wine descriptions we'd ever used. I mean, the cheek of it...We also touched on issues ranging from 'sulfite-free' wine to no/low alcohol, our favourite Chardonnay and rosé, which are the best wine regions to visit, the rise of English wine, multi-vintage versus vintage sparkling wine - and what wines you should ALWAYS have at home.In our introduction we also feature some recent listener feedback from a Napa wine grower questioning how he should explain terroir to visitors to a professor on how microbes (yeasts) can influence a wine's mouthfeel.We also feature a plug for our sensational value charity sparkling wine - please click here if you'd like to buy a bottle or two of Hope & Glory to help us raise funds for the brilliant Marine Conservation Society.As for the live Q&A format, we could get used to it. You have been warned. Wine Blast on Tour may be coming to a speakeasy near you soon...All details from this episode are on our website: Show notes for Wine Blast S4 E25: LIVE Q&A (Winchester).Thanks for tuning in. Here's to the joy of wine - cheers to you!

This episode opens by linking Oppenheimer, Covid-19 and wine - and proceeds to go big by focusing on the small stuff.Microbes. The invisible world of yeasts, bacteria and beyond.We're just starting to understand how important microbes are in terms of defining wine style and quality. Sure, yeasts ferment grape sugars into alcohol. But they also do a whole lot more, as fascinating new research is revealing. Previously, many definitions of 'terroir' (what might be defined as a wine's 'sense of place' or perhaps 'distinctiveness') were limited to the role of soil and climate. If you were lucky, human influence garnered a passing mention.Now it's becoming clear that biology - and in particular microbiology - has more of a say in how a wine turns out than what was previously thought. Time for the textbooks to be re-written...In this episode, we talk to world-leading researchers Professor Matthew Goddard and Ignacio Belda, to get to the heart of the latest thinking and science. Turns out there is such a thing as, 'the microbial face of terroir' - even single vineyards have unique microbial signatures, and there's a proven percentage we can put to how much a wine's chemistry is influenced by that microbiome from the vineyard to the fermentation and beyond.In short, wine is the product of invisible bugs as much as it is the product of human hand or climatic and geographical phenomena. The implications are profound. Not just regarding how we define terroir. But also in terms of how winegrowers should farm to protect their unique vineyard microbiomes, how winemakers should best manage their fermentations, even how we wine drinkers should appreciate our wines (while protecting our own human microbiomes - the two can work together!)There's even talk of synthetic yeast being developed that can not only craft specific flavours in wine but also inform a winemaker when a fermentation needs to be checked...This is a fascinating field of research, one currently reaching fever pitch right now, so we report on and discuss the latest findings, which will be sure to make you think about wine in a new light.We love to hear from you so please do get in touch! Send us a voice message via Speakpipe or you can find more details to get in touch on our website (link below).All details from this episode are on our website: Show notes for Wine Blast S4 E24: The Microbial Face of Terroir.Thanks for tuning in. Here's to the joy of wine - cheers to you!

Did you know that Germany is the third largest producer of Pinot Noir in the world?Or that one in three Riesling vines in the world grow in German vineyards - and much of these are making dry, increasingly terroir-driven wines these days?There's much that's surprising, or perhaps unexpected about German wine right now.For long the sector under-performed - but a series of changes since the late 1980s (a process that's still ongoing, accelerated by climate change) has re-invigorated German wine, redefining its possibilities and forging a bright new future.There's even talk of the wines being, 'sexy' and of, 'pulling power'...All of which, plus the fact we're just back from Germany (and have had an intriguing listener question in), is the perfect excuse to explore German wine.We hear from Master of Wine and German specialist Alison Flemming plus Stefan Doktor, MD of the world-famous Schloss Johannisberg. Along the way we talk terroir, global warming, food matching, GG and the rise of dry Riesling, why 'succulent' is such a good tasting term, PIWIs, and why a swimming pool was important for a 1964 Auslese...Our thanks to Wines of Germany for sponsoring this episode and helping source some fantastic bottles for us to try and recommend. They are:Frey Pinot Blanc 2021, RheinhessenMaximin Grunhaus Maximin Pinot Blanc 2021, MoselKlein Riesling S Trocken 2021, PfalzRobert Weil Kiedrich Turmberg Riesling Trocken 2021, RheingauPauly Lieser Niederberg Helden Kabinett 2021, MoselShelter Winery Spätburgunder 2020, BadenWe love to hear from you so please do get in touch! Send us a voice message via Speakpipe or you can find more details to get in touch on our website (link below).All details from this episode are on our website: Show notes for Wine Blast S4 E23: Germany's Pulling Power.Thanks for tuning in. Here's to the joy of wine - cheers to you!