I saw this yesterday and found it interesting: TWA has just added a new reviewer to their team, Yohan Castaing.
Yohan will be covering the Loire Valley, Languedoc, Roussillon, Provence and the South-West of France (so Madiran, Cahors, Irouléguy, etc) and will also help WK cover some Bordeaux appellations like Pessac-L and Sauternes…plus the big champagne houses.
All these regions deserve more coverage, especially the South-West, which has never been properly covered by any publication, so I will look forward to following what he does. My only concern would be that the number of regions is a little excessive for one person to cover, at least on a regular basis.
I don’t know his work very well but he sounds like an excellent choice and I wish him the best of luck in the new endeavour.
Thanks for posting this! I met Yohan in Bordeaux last year and was much impressed by his rigor and insight as a taster. So we are very happy to have brought him on board. He’s going to lighten the load on me a little bit, and push further some of the projects I’ve started already (looking at the lesser-known estates in Bordeaux that are doing interesting things, for example, and actually going to visit them rather than simply tasting with consortiums or négociants). And then he’s going to cover a number of regions that we have never really done justice to before, as you observe. In some of these regions we clearly need to look beyond the model, exported from Bordeaux EP, of annual vintage reports - it may make sense to work on a basis of small features on noteworthy producers or subregions, breaking down the work into more manageable pieces and ultimately hopefully engaging our readers more effectively, too. Yohan will be very responsive I think, so feel free to reach out to him via social media if you have any ideas you want to share.
Seems like a good addition to the team and more reviews on more wines sounds always like a good thing for the consumer (to learn and discover). I wish him good luck.
@William_Kelley Two questions:
a) Handing over one appleation (P/L) coverage seems a bit odd. Will you still taste the red wines of the top 5,10 or more Pessac properties and add them to your EP report? (transfering whites, sweet wines is not a problem)
b) If Yohan is anyway in Bordeaux and will anyway taste the top 50 Chateaux en Primeur too (not the top 100 or 200), is it planned to publish his notes too? It’s a bit more work for him (but I guess as it’s limited to a low number, it’s manageable) and will give us subscribers one more reference point on these wines but much more importantly, it would allow us to better place, judge and learn about his palate which in turn would make the reviews on unknown satelite wines better understandable and more valuable.
a) I will continue to cover the key EP wines of Pessac-Léognan, but I thought for the reasons you give it was important that there be some cross over so readers can calibrate (I think you will see that we have a similar approach, and that we articulate a coherent vision rather than two competing perspectives under the same banner, something we are both anxious to avoid).
b) Yohan may certainly taste some of those wines, and I think it’s important he does. We are likely to discuss the wines together and maybe even in some cases taste them together. But we will be publishing one review, mine, to avoid duplicating work (writing, editing and publishing takes at least as long as tasting). The idea in hiring Yohan is to cover more ground, and to cover it better. Tying him up reviewing lots of wines I’m already reviewing, beyond what’s necessary to help readers calibrate between us, seems to me unnecessary, and above all a distraction from the many projects we are looking forward to getting underway to improve our coverage of wines and regions we currently don’t give enough attention.
Hi William,
This is a good idea. The problem with “comprehensive” annual (or even bi-annual) reports is that they never actually are “comprehensive” - there’s always somebody left out, and the reports become just one long list of tasting notes, which are fine as far as they go, but personally I prefer selective in-depth reports - especially when the publication is not synched with CT (hope that’s eventually going to change!). Of course for the reports to be really practical, it would call for a complete re-haul of the TWA site, with a focus on individual domains and châteaux at the same time as the tasting notes, rather like how Chris Kissack’s site is organised, for example.
Also, I’m not sure if anyone needs 250 tasting notes of wines from the South-West! I for one would be much more interested to read in-depth reports about great new producers - like for example one I discovered last year on holiday - Domaine de la Pointe, a remarkable Chenin produced on sand at Capbreton of all places in Les Landes - never read about that anywhere and never likely to!
Anyway, sounds like things are moving at TWA which will be fun to follow!
Believe it or not, progress is actually being made on this front. All internal obstacles to this going ahead have finally been resolved, so I’m hopeful that it will be realized in the not too distant future!
Whoopee! Better late than never! Actually this will be seriously interesting - TWA has a data base of tasting notes which I’m guessing is the biggest of any publication. Like most people I’ve never really delved into it. What will be fun is getting the history of tasting notes for each wine in one’s cellar. There are I’m sure countless wines that I never knew had even been reviewed. One mistake I really hope they don’t make is to maintain the silly difference between TWA notes and “Other” notes on Bordeaux, when Neal Martin was writing for WJ, or when his 2015 report was side-lined so as not to overshadow LPB’s one. Neal’s time at TWA was fascinating precisely because of the different takes he had on wines: today, the older wines are at or approaching maturity and I’m sure I’m not alone in being curious as to seeing who was “right”!
Hello everyone,
Thank you for your encouragement and kind words. You are right, it is a challenge, and we need to find the best way to "look beyond the model », as William explained. I am delighted to be working with William and look forward to my first reports.
We will consider all your recommendations for our readers’ benefit.
Thanks again,
Yohan