Simon J Woolf
@simonjwoolf
Writer, author & presenter. Lover of handmade beverages, food, coffee & electronic music. Books: Amber Revolution (2018, 2021), Foot Trodden (2021) (with Ryan Opaz) Subscribe to my weekly newsletter: Brit living in NL.
Love it when I discover a bottle at the back of the fridge with a glass left .. and after 10 days open, it's delicious - better than it was on the first day This is Domaine Didon's Bourgogne Blanc 2022, a natural wine from husband and wife David and Naïma Didon, who farm 2ha in Beaune.
If you ever needed proof that China is an authoritarian country.....
Wow! I feel that this, made by Sühring restaurant in Bangkok, could have given the prizewinner a run for their money: When they brought it to the table, I thought it was a fake - just an ornament to illustrate the origin of the dish. Then they sliced it and served it to us. OMG.
"The people who make our lives more difficult don't arrive on rubber dinghies, they arrive on private jets" Ross Creer MSP on BBC Debate Night. Applies everywhere, not just the UK.
A slightly snarky guide to Amsterdam's natural wine scene, with my off-piste favourites and a survival guide if you really want to do battle with the hipsters. Second half of the piece is for paying subscribers. It'll only cost you €5 to become one of them! themorningclaret.com/p/amsterdam-...
Not sure about AI? Here's how to stop search engines from showing you AI answers in preference to actual web sites. Google: use www.udm14.com (performs google search with the option &udm=14) Better yet, change your default search engine to DuckDuckGo and don't forget to tweak this setting:
Gulp Hablo is a budget priced Spanish orange wine that's been selling like hot cakes and ruffling a few feathers in the natural wine world. I took a look at what it's all about. themorningclaret.com/p/gulp-hablo...
What is it about French Wine? Why and how one European nation has dominated the wine world for centuries. Is it time for a change? themorningclaret.com/p/what-is-it...
I fundamentally don't believe they do. I've always held it's a philosophy not a style. At the same time (as I wrote in this piece), if a wine tastes squeaky clean and simple/monothematic, one might cast aspersions as to its "naturalness" and ponder how much intervention there was.
Are these the world's cheapest natural wines? I review three new releases from Romanian giant @cramelerecaseu.bsky.social (finally a winery that's actually on here!) Together with thoughts about how natural (or not) they are. themorningclaret.com/p/cramele-re...
Really impressed with Lonely Planet - wanted the latest edition of their Greek islands guide & my local bookshop didn't have it. Ordered direct from their site, arrived the next day w free shipping. Seems they have a distribution centre in NL. I've boycotted Amazon for years so this was a big win.
A lot of people have a romantic idea about family businesses in wine. Alex Zahel is not one of those people. He and his wife Hilary gave me a full and frank interview about his painful exit from his family winery, and their new negoce project. themorningclaret.com/p/austrian-f... #biodynamic
On the eve of one of Europe's biggest fairs dedicated to Central European wines, I dug into the term a little and tried to figure out what it means and how it really relates to wine. themorningclaret.com/p/the-empire...
Got it. I've come up with a formula that will auto-generate the score.
Yes I still love Bordeaux. And I explain why in this guide, where we review 37 organic, biodynamic, low-intervention reds. No there aren't any scores. Yes you have to pay. I worked like crazy to bring you this guide. themorningclaret.com/p/tmc-guide-...
Both parts of themorningclaret.com 's first ever wine guide are now online! We blind tasted through 44 orange wines from Collio (= every producer & nearly every orange currently made in the region). Read our faves, recommendations & tasting notes here: themorningclaret.com/p/tmc-guide-...
Joking apart, I was recently mentioned (with other international wine ppl) in Air Serbia's onboard magazine (oh the glamour). The article (abt a big wine fair we were all attending) was in Serbian & English. In the Serbian version they respelt our names phonetically to read well in Serbian.
Started watching Black Doves on Netflix, and my first thought (apart from that it's really very good) is how much of modern drama revolves around the (mobile) phone. Every few minutes someone has to answer their phone, and that's how the story advances. This is the modern way.
Two of the most stunning bottles I enjoyed over Christmas. The Tondonia reserve 07 opened wonderfully over the course of an hour to reveal so much beautiful fruit. Bellene 10, wow, so fresh, aromatic and pure but with proper grunt and structure underpinning the fruit. Sensational.
Even by my standards, this was an insane blind tasting selection for one evening: Château Palmer 2004, Radikon Ribolla Gialla 1998, and a 2022 orange natural wine from Korea!
Well, that's the blue bird of yore aka the Excrement gone from my life. (Archive downloaded, account "deactivated" which seems the only way to delete it) Onward!