Week in pictures: 10 – 16 February

This week the world of drinks saw db‘s Master Winemaker 100 ceremony in Paris, DAOU sponsor a star-studded gala in Santa Barbara, and Duval-Leroy launch the Champagne it made in collaboration with some of France’s best sommeliers.

Master Winemaker 100

Chris Carpenter, winemaker at Mt. Brave and Hickinbotham Wines, took the top prize at db‘s Master Winemaker 100. Though he could not attend the awards ceremony held at Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris, Moritz Möller was on hand to collect the award on his behalf. Also in attendance, among many other winemakers, was last year’s overall winner Gérard Bertrand, who scooped the rosé prize for his Clos du Temple 2021, and Crocus Wines and Château de Haute-Serre’s Bertrand Gabriel Vigouroux, who won Best Malbec. To read the full list of winners, click here.

DAOU

Californian producer DAOU Vineyards was the official wine of the 39th Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The wines were served at the Hollywood actor-packed reception at Arlington Theatre featuring the likes of All of Us Strangers star Andrew Scott, Past Lives‘ Greta Lee, and Lily Gladstone, who is a nominee for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon.

Duval-Leroy

Champagne house Duval-Leroy launched its Cuvée des Meilleurs Ouvriers de France Sommeliers. A blend of 68% Chardonnay from the Côte des Blancs and 32% Pinot Noir from the Montagne de Reims and the Grande Vallée de la Marne, this third edition of the fine French fizz was a collaboration between Duval-Leroy cellar master Sandrine Logette-Jardin and leading sommeliers David Biraud, Denis Verneau, Florent Martin, Gaëtan Bouvier, Xavier Thuizat, Benjamin Roffet and Philippe Troussard.

Codorníu

Douglas Blyde visited Spain’s oldest winery, Codorníu (1551) in the vicinity of the Montserrat mountain in the Capital of Cava, Sant Sadurní d’Anoia. The 22-hectare site is famed for its Cavas, vast, intricate, modernist buildings by Puig i Cadafalch which have latterly been used for concerts and weddings, and running over four levels, some 30 kilometres of manually-hewn cellars navigable by train. These underground streets bear the names of prime export markets, from Londres to Tokio.

Cava was first crafted at Codorníu in 1872 to the traditional method, starring Penedès varieties, Xarel·lo, Macabeo and Parellada, supplemented by international Chardonnay (1984) and Pinot Noir (2002). Director de Cavas of sixteen years standing, Bruno Colmer Marti, oversees the production of up to 40m sparkling bottles per year at the site, of which the Ars Collecta is the pinnacle. Born of Codorníu’s own vineyards, the organically-inclined grapes for these are hand-harvested by night and softly pressed.