Joy is unconfined, one assumes, in the Languedoc village of Montpeyroux: last week it became the 369th French Appellation d’Origine Controlée. This will mean stricter controls on the red grapes...
Raising Standards
Palliative Measures
Things can only get worse was a mantra of student life in the 1980s. Thatcherism was dystopic, a priori. Graduation was just a blip. We were all back in our...
A Performance Art
Susannah Cibber was a terrific singer, by all accounts. Handel gave her the contralto solos in Messiah, and she had a great acting career as well: she became the highest...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
