“The closer you get to the equator, the warmer it becomes,” says the Wine and Spirit Education Trust in explaining vinous geography. So true. When you live in the tropics,...
A Wine Of One’s Own
Wine’s Epiphany
When did you last cry? From pain, relief, elation? Was it a book, a movie? Were you bidding some farewell for a year, for ever? For me, it is often...
Let Me Count The Ways
Once, many moons ago, I was in a bar in Sanlúcar de Barrameda with my friends Tim and Rocío Holt. Possibly I had imbibed one too many copitas of Manzanilla,...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
Buon Viaggio
People can be so virtuous when it comes to the appropriate amount of luggage to pack for an overseas trip. I was packing for a six-week wine journey through Italy...
