Lisse Garnett

Feature Writer, lover of stories. 

Copy, podcasts, features, shorts and ideas - lots of those..

Ex BBC Broadcast Journalist with a Masters in Radio from Goldsmiths, WSET Diploma Wine, GNVQ4 Broadcast Journalism, WSET Level 3 Sake. BA Hons English 2:1 Leeds University

My Recent Work

The Buyer •

Tim Atkin MW's Best of Rioja - the best new Rioja wines to have on your radar

Tim Atkin MW’s The Best of Rioja tasting in London last week delivered the very finest of fine wines to enraptured city mouths without missing a beat. Terroir-focused beauties dominated the proceedings with whites making an indelible mark on Lisse Garnett and the many educated savvy consumers she met. This was a far cry from the “Rioja is in crisis” headlines that have been regularly appearing in the wine press of late – with splits within the regulatory council, high profile bankruptcies, overs

Chateau Lagrazette, a film with Alain Dominique Perrin

Lisse Garnett visits the romantic castle of Château Lagrezette, which was purchased as a ruin and renovated by Alain Dominique Perrin in the 1980s to house his extended family. He shows her around his beautiful home, filled with antiques collected from Europe, especially the north of England. This fortified house was built just after the Hundred Years' War; before that, the farm had been known for the black wines of Cahors it produced. Transported on the waters of the River Lot, these wines travelled as far as England, where they were used to bolster wines imported from Bordeaux. The war put paid to this trade, and the Castle dungeon or oubliette, unearthed by Alain during renovations, contained human remains from this dismal period. Today, the castle is surrounded by vines and offers the most inviting accommodation to the weary wine traveller.
Wine Anorak •

Why should we care about the age of the vine that made our wine? –

Man’s history with the vine predates the written word. Old vines map man’s passage to the new world and our genesis in the old. Prized for complexity, flavour and their marked tendency to express terroir they offer up a stimulating smorgasbord of taste and nostalgia; a living link with summers past.

As Lisse Garnett prepares to attend her third Old Vine Conference, she reflects on what inspired her about the last. Sarah Abbott MW led the charge, brilliantly assisted by Michèle Shah, Belinda Sto
The Buyer •

Best wines of 2023 - a selection of top wines that should be on your radar

For Lisse Garnett her Best wines of 2023 were inextricably linked to the wine regions she visited, the estates and the many inspirational people she met on her travels. From an empowering winery in South Africa, to the second Wine Writers Retreat in Bordeaux, a Quinta in the Douro and a wine odyssey along the Loire, 2023 was a year in which Garnett re-evaluated her career and found that it is always the wine that takes pride of place.

“2023, for me, was the year I took a good hard look at mysel
Club Oenologique •

The best new wine books - reviewed and rated

Wine books make the perfect gift, especially at Christmas – a great time of year to curl up in peace with a really good read. And luckily for the wine lover in your life, the second half of 2023 offered some fascinating new books about wine, released just in time for Christmas gifting. As a result, we asked some of our writers to leaf their way through the latest and greatest titles to find the best wine books for Christmas – from a history of wine fraud to a collection of pieces on one of the w
Académie du Vin Library •

Ortega is best for British wine, say a new wave of British winemakers

A growing number of UK winemakers prize English still-white wines made from Ortega – enthusiasts say they rate the texture, taste and versatility of this German-made post-war crossing.

Still wine makes up a third of all UK wine production, and demand is growing. Hybrids and crosses such as German-developed Ortega grow well in our damp, cold climate. Hybrids are environmentally friendly: they need fewer chemicals because they contain disease-resistant American vine DNA. Ortega, a crossing, can c
The Buyer •

South African white wines discovered at Bibendum's Cape & Boot tasting

Bibendum’s run of imaginatively curated trade tastings continued earlier in the month with Cape and Boot, an opportunity to sample a wide selection of its South African and Italian wines in a reasonably relaxed, albeit crowded, manner. Lisse Garnett threw herself headfirst into the scrum and sampled all she could, focusing particularly on South African white wines from the likes of Graham Beck, Creation, Ghost Corner, Stellenrust, Journey’s End, Shannon Vineyards and Springfield Estate. Here are
The Buyer •

Alois Lageder: which of these wines should be on your buying radar

Finding unique wines with a story to tell is the meat and drink of the on-trade. Few, though, are as good as Bibendum, argues Lisse Garnett, in unearthing idiosyncratic winemakers who like to push boundaries to the limit. To prove the point, the importer invited Garnett to visit one of the many jewels in its crown – the 13th Century estate of Alois Lageder, who is making biodynamic mountain wines in the fairytale world of Alto Adige, complete with Alpine cows in the vineyards and barrels of wine
The Buyer •

Wiston Estate - are these English sparkling wines worth buying?

When the stewards of Wiston Estate make a plan, it’s for the next 50 years, not five. For 300 years, they’ve been planning for the next generation, and their mindfulness has served them well. Wiston land produces enough grain each year to keep 18,000 people in Weetabix. Beer and whisky are also beneficiaries. The estate restaurant ‘Chalk’, housed in an old flint barn and led by Michelin-starred Chef Tom Kemble, feeds a further fortunate few. Wilton Park, at Wiston Park, the Goring’s ancestral ho
The Buyer •

Ferrari Trento: are these Italian sparkling wines as good as Champagne?

Cyril Brun’s high profile appointment at Ferrari Trento is a fitting one for the ex-chef des caves of Charles Heidsieck. The North Italian sparkling wine has always had a close relationship with Champagne – as an inspiration, as a competitor and as a doppelgänger. But Ferrari’s quintessentially Italian take on high-end luxury sparkling has defiantly ploughed its own furrow from the regional authenticity of the wine to the brilliant marketing strategy behind getting the bubbles into the hands of
Académie du Vin Library •

Back to the future – Old vines link to the cooler past

Esca, a wood-rotting fungus, is one such disease. Pruners advocate operating rather than plant removal and the results are good – so good that Sirch travels the world operating on afflicted vines. Sap flow is paramount, he explained: if it’s cut off the vine will be compromised. Only first- or second- year growth is pruned: room to expand with energy rather than vigour is key.

As vines age, sap flow increases: healthy plant structure is a physiological gain of time served. Older vines are less
The Buyer •

Spier – how having a social conscience is central to its business model

As one of the oldest Cape wine farms, Spier has its share of controversial history but for the past five decades it has been at the forefront of enotourism, sustainable viticulture and social innovation in South Africa. By seeing to the needs of workers and practising regenerative farming, Spier has generated positivity in the local community and even abroad, where they’ve won many accolades for this work. Lisse Garnett asked Heidi Newton-King, who heads up Sustainability and Human Resources, fo
The Buyer •

Old Vine Conference 2023 - which are the old vine wines to look out for?

The unique properties of old vine wines, how vines manage to survive for over 150 years and what they can tell us about the future of viticulture in the face of climate change, were just some of the topics discussed at the Old Vine Conference 2023 held in Campania. Hosted by Feudi di San Gregorio, leaders in the Italian movement to protect, preserve and make wines from old vines, this second Old Vine Conference brought together leaders in the realm of ancient Italian vineyards to discuss and exa
The Buyer •

Beaujolais: 15 of the top new Gamays to get on your radar

Bien Boire en Beaujolais is a wine fair like few others – a cool meeting of minds and vignerons, where the Gamay has an undertow and the brass band plays the hits of Radiohead. Most of what happens in Bien Boire en Beaujolais stays there – because participants have little or no recollection of ever having been. The Buyer’s Lisse Garnett bought a ticket and reports back (remarkably well) on 15 of the standout wines, and points out that, contrary to the wine fair, what happened in Beaujolais does
The Buyer •

All about Szamorodni: Hungary’s spectacularly exciting wine style

Legend has it that the first sweet wines of Tokaj were created in the Thirteenth Century when a war delayed the harvest which ended up full of botrytised berries. True or not, Lisse Garnett was in Hungary to separate fact from fiction but also to make a fascinating personal discovery of dry Szamorodni which is a wine style here which uses botrytised fruit with the wine then fermented under flor and aged oxidatively. The results are spectacular and like an intellectual exploration in a glass, as
The Buyer •

Quintessa - which of these Napa valley wines are worth buying

Napa has never lost its pioneering spirit nor its influence on the world wine map – despite its relatively insignificant size. And nowhere is that more true than at Rutherford-based Quintessa where a virgin estate was created by the Chilean Huneeus family, planting 135 acres out of a possible 280 without felling a single tree. Winemakers in Napa are thinking more carefully about the long-term repurcussions of decisions made today, from an increasing focus on terroir through to making the busines
The Buyer •

New Zealand wine: 6 new wines you need to have on your radar

I have to ask, has anyone ever actually met an unpleasant New Zealander? Kiwis are just so, well… nice. There is a classic Alan Partridge sketch that sees him tell the Irish what they are known for, “Leprechauns, shamrocks, Guinness, horses running through council estates, toothless simpletons..badly tarmacked drives (in this country), men in platform shoes being arrested for bombings, lots of rocks and err Beamish.” He’d probably have ridiculed the Kiwis for their weapons grade niceness; “Sam N
The Buyer •

Best wines of 2022: Lisse Garnett picks her top 10 favourite wines

2022 was an eventful year for Lisse Garnett with her Top 10 wines of the year largely picked from her travels to Argentina, Hungary, South Africa, Greece, Portugal, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Colombia and Chile. Garnett writes here about events of the year which included the Real Wine Fair and Nedbank Cape Winemakers Guild Auction, as well as the mourning of a lost friend in the influential English restaurateur Andrew Edmunds.

“Love, loss, friendship, stress and much emotive beauty in the gl
The Buyer •

How Argentina’s CAVE sommelier school is getting results

World Cup beating players are one thing, world class sommeliers quite another and Argentina is producing both. CAVE in Buenos Aires is a school for sommeliers like no other, run by two resourceful women, the school delivers an Eton level education on a Grange Hill budget. Lisse Garnett asks co-founders, Flavia Rizzuto and Maria Barrutia, to divulge the secret of their success..

“Our fluctuating economy and politics make us resourceful because the context here is always changing. You have to fin
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