Stories

With its idyllic surroundings and historical setting, arriving at Château Méaume you are instantly captivated by its beauty and charm. All around there are stories to be told, in the vines, the buildings and in the old vintage bottles in the cellar. These are some of those tales that helped shape this vineyard.

“To renovate or not to renovate” that….depends on your budget.

While winter is when the vines become dormant, the same cannot be said about other activities around the vineyard. For some months ago I got really excited about radiators. Not the radiator in a well-maintained classic car, but the radiators that festoon the many walls, halls and rooms of the chateau. For these antiquated yet […]

“Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder” and so are wine labels.

As wine consumption grew in popularity and volume in the 19th and 20th centuries, the introduction of new technologies such as mass printing allowed winery’s to differentiate their wines by using individually designed labels on their bottles. This ability to visualize its origins, communicate and quantify its contents meant that the grandeur and elegance associated […]

“Me love you longtime” – Vintages and the challenge of keeping wine.

I can still remember putting together my first wine rack (in Beijing) and then strategically placing the bottles I owned at the time in order of origin, vintage and my perceived levels of quality. As my wine collection grew, so correspondingly did the size of my wine racks until eventually I had a rather ungainly […]

Understanding the language of wine

“Language is wine upon the lips” (Virginia Wolff) – understanding the language of wine. Owning a vineyard comes with many new responsibilities and a staggering amount of new things to learn but interestingly it does not come with a user manual. And the day you assume ownership there seems to be an unwritten rule that […]

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. The wines vines.

So, not a conventional start to a wine blog about vines. Like most of my other posts, this subject matter has endless possibilities to explore so to keep me focused on specific (and hopefully interesting) facts related to vines, I decided to use the opening wedding mantra as a verbal road map, of sorts. […]

“To the Bat-Chai” (Biodiversity in the vineyard).

Before I start, a quick definition of Biodiversity – the biological variety and variability of life on Earth or in a specific ecosystem (such as a vineyard). Now, this is not a tee up for a sustainability disquisition. However will quickly state that we do have a sustainably ethos, which is not driven by shareholders, […]

In search of (Blue Clay) Gold

Like most flora that grows on our blue planet, vines need the fundamentals of geography, geology and climate to work in equilibrium to prosper. Or in layman’s terms; location, soil, water and sunshine working together. And it is the delicate balance of these fundamentals that are so important to creating good wine AND the wines […]

Singing from the same song sheet – Wine & Rugby

The New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks, have 15 principles by which they live and play the wonderful game of rugby. These principles have been shared and well documented in many books and have also been copied by the business world, seeking to reproduce the success achieved by this great team. Now I am […]

The Entrepreneurs

Alan Johnson-Hill, was once quoted as saying “What was the first thing Noah did when he came out of the Ark? He made a vineyard”. Alan bought Château Méaume in 1978 on the evidence of photographs and the enthusiasm of his wife Sue, who went to see it. When Alan, Sue and their three daughters […]