Yeats entitled one of his mid-life poems ‘The Fascination of What’s Difficult’. The poem is mainly a complaint, about the tangled business of running a theatre (the Abbey in Dublin)...
Too Difficult?
The Manipulation of Nature
Why are there so many exclamation marks in the world, and so few hyphens? What spurred this reflection was a menu: a dish featuring ‘Grilled line caught John Dory fillet’....
The Judgment of Paris Revisited
Even for opera lovers, it promises to be an odd show. Next month’s Napa Valley Festival stages the premiere of a work bringing Bacchus and Venus to 1970s Paris and...
Collecting Flavour
Every trade has its sartorial call-signs. The wine trade plays host to the fraternity-of-the-red-trouser, its membership made up of legs that appear to have filled, loafer-to-belt, with decades of luncheon...
Drink Promiscuously
It bothers me that wine drinkers frequently choose wine based on colour, or indeed dismiss those of the “wrong” colour. I have encountered this discrimination most overtly in the rosé...
A Fruity Number
I know we’ve just come through the silly season, when tales of killer chipmunks and dolphin sign language deputise for what’s normally classed as news in the British media, but...
Back to the future
Fine wines are timeless – that elusive combination of elegance, complexity and gravitas, plus ageing potential in spades. Their prices unfortunately are not. Top rank Bordeaux, Burgundy or mature Barolos...
Future Forward
What we’ll be drinking in 2029 In my grandmother’s kitchen there’s a cover of The Sunday Times Magazine stuck on one of the cupboards. It’s the final edition from 2009,...
