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Articles by Algy Belville

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About Algy Belville

We are delighted to add Algy Belville to our team of writers. Algy was a director of family film Bodgers and Belville , Wine Merchants of St James. He will be contributing a column on wine. Algy lives in Amberley Sussex , is captain of his Crown Bowls team and a local Councillor. More Posts

Spanish wines

Spain is the third largest producer of wine in the world –  true or false? True. After Italy and France it produces 3 million bottles annually. Italy leads the way then France.  So Spain produces more than Australia or USA. Spain also has the largest expanse of vineyards but these are [...]

January 17, 2018 // 0 Comments

A tour to Hunter Valley

Yesterday ( Tuesday) we went on an organised wine tour of the Hunter Vallley wine region. It’s the main viticulture area of Australia boasting over 130 wineries. I have to confess that I am not a enthusiast or regular drinker of Australian wine. A friend of mine who is deeply knowledgeable on [...]

January 3, 2018 // 0 Comments

The wines of Marlborough

New Zealand is something of a freebooters paradise when it comes to wine growing. This is because they do not have the controls of many wine growing countries. In France there is the AC (appellation controlee) and in Italy the DC, the same thing which basically constricts the type of wine you can [...]

December 22, 2017 // 0 Comments

Te Mata wines tour

Wine-making has moved along way forward from a French rustic with ruby cheeks sticking his pudgy fingers into a barrel. These days it’s all about computers, hydraulics and geology and a winery resembles a production factory of silver coloured tanks and pipes. There is the odd surprising [...]

December 17, 2017 // 0 Comments

Wine Tasting Evening

I am becoming something of a regular at the wine school which meets most Tuesdays and Thursdays. I was particularly looking forward to last night’s private cellar evening where we are encouraged to bring our own, preferably more esoteric, wine. I  chose for the evening the Thymiopoulos [...]

December 1, 2017 // 0 Comments

The original and true amber nectar

Some might feel I’m warming to my task as a relatively new contributor to the Rust – others than I’m rather hogging things – but sometimes these things cannot cannot be helped! For those interested in drink generally, here’s a link to an article by Brendan Hodrien that [...]

November 17, 2017 // 0 Comments

Gin Tasting

Yesterday the wine school I attend irregularly but enthusiastically had a gin tasting. The instructor initially explained how gin, based on the juniper berry, originated in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century as ginever and came to the UK with William of Orange where it became so fashionable [...]

November 15, 2017 // 0 Comments

A Sherry Tasting

Bob Tickler returned from Andalusia, the home of sherry, full of praise for this wine for  it is a wine. So much so that he has replaced a glass of Nye Timber for his midday sharpener with a glass (schooner more likely) of manzanilla or amontillado. Yesterday I invited him to a sherry tasting at [...]

November 8, 2017 // 0 Comments

Bottoms up!

There are professional wine experts, amateur wine experts … those who would like to be one or the other … and then there is a vast rump of people who drink wine with varying degrees of enthusiasm (and/or need) largely without pretensions, or making a song and dance about it, or even [...]

September 7, 2017 // 0 Comments

Rose tasting

Think Rose – or better drink Rose – and the image is of a chilled summer wine drunk as an aperitif or with food accompaniment but not one of the big boys of wine. So this is where the marketing comes in to upgrade the image. Thus the Miraval, produced by the vineyard of Brad Pitt and [...]

August 23, 2017 // 0 Comments

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