It’s getting harder to find good wine out there, not easier. Tasting my way through a large number of new releases for the next issue of the OnWine Report, I’m finding it more difficult than ever before to find a decent number of good new entries to list in the Out Now section. To give you an idea, I’ve spotted just one wine of silver medal (17.0) standard in the last seventy wines I’ve opened – and these are the bottles I earmarked as the most likely to impress! There are loads of reasons for this, including a string of difficult vintages and a totally unprecedented proportion of young vines in the ground as a percentage of the bearing area, but there’s no room out there in wine country for complacency. And, in case you wondered, I don’t think I’m getting crabbier as I get older. For reasons you might now understand, when I find a wine I really appreciate, I’m a happier guy than I’ve ever been before!
