When I moved into the house I still live in, I thought I would never be able to fill it. It’s not huge but I had few possessions at the...
Hoarding Books And Wines
Resonant Rosé
To be perfectly clear, I love rosé. On a hot summer’s day it’s all you want; on a cool drizzly summer’s day it reminds you that it is in fact...
Big Money And The Soul Of...
You would need a heart of stone not to laugh at the travails of Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, honorary chairman of the Champagne house and grandson of its founder. The British press...
Don’t Over Think It, Just Drink...
My mum is a gardener and sometimes works with a friend and fellow gardener called Don who takes care of hard landscaping, hedges and tree felling. As you’d expect given...
Beards, wine and biodynamism
Pierre Weindel of Domaine de la Tour des Vidaux I was keeping my eyes out for deer’s bladders in the rafters or even the odd cow horn, but it was...
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...
Anosmia Dogs and other failed Master...
One of the requirements for becoming a Master of Wine is an original and rigorous research paper of between 6,000 and 10,000 words. The words must be placed in sentences,...
Can AI Break The Mystique Of...
Another day, another outlandish claim about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will transform our lives. Last week the BBC News website claimed breathlessly that “AI… is now increasingly helping people buy...
A Sensorial Symphony
Vibrant. Rich. Exciting. Layered. Powerful. Complex. These words describe the third movement of Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major. They also describe a vintage Champagne of excellent quality. In...
