For two weeks this October, I was tasting the 2018 vintage in the Rhône. That involved 850 wines across ten days, which is a crazy amount of wine but it’s the only way of covering the vintage in the time allowed. My notes and reports will be going onto JancisRobinson.com next week - but the headline is that the vintage is nothing to get overtly excited about.

Here’s everything I wrote in October.

• On JancisRobinson.com:

  • A Pinot Noir wine of the week from Shaw + Smith (free to read)

  • My monthly column considered China’s insatiable thirst for wine (free to read)

• My Living France column celebrated the magazine’s 30th anniversary with champagne

• My Drinks Retailing News column considered what constitutes value in wine

• A new outlet for me, Vintec Club, published an article about the lighter side of Australia

• Plus there were two posts here on the blog - both of which proved to be the most popular posts I’ve ever published.