At 11 yesterday morning I was in the bowels of Buckingham Palace tasting as part of work helping to select wines for the Queen’s guests. While waiting for my fellow tasters to finish I checked my emails. There was one from ever-vigilant São Paulo purple pager Rodrigo Mainardi telling me that Alois Kracher had died. Remembering his gifted viticulturist father of the same name I emailed back, surely this was the father not the Alois? By the time Rodrigo had confirmed that indeed Luis had left us at the cruelly young age of 48 my Blackberry was vibrating with expressions...