It is heartening that even under lockdown, the first signs of Christmas appear just as always: the Oxford Street lights, mince pies in the shops, and earlier this month the...
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The Quest For Authenticity
An email coversation with Jill Norman, trustee of Elizabeth David’s estate, sent me back to An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. This collection of writing, first published in 1952,...
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Burgundy’s Benevolent Haunting
Something is said to be resilient if it maintains its form and structure under pressure. In the context of Burgundy, form and structure translate as character and hierarchy. Thus, Pinot...
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The Things That Remain
In 2006, during Lebanon’s short but destructive war with Israel, we lost our home but managed to save eight bottles of wine from the rubble including a 1988 Dom Pérignon...
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Armenia: Making Wines Its Own Way
Armenians are a fiercely proud people. They claim many firsts and many more “bests”. When you visit Armenia, as I did just before harvest last year, everyone you meet reminds you...
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On Wine Bitch
A bunch of anonymous newsletters targeting the wine Twitter bubble started circulating anonymously during lockdown. The content was meant to be satirical. Some of it was amusing, some statements about...
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The Year that Changed the Wine World
“Never A Dull Moment” is the title of a wonderful book about what its author David Hepworth calls “rock’s golden year”. 1971 was indeed an annus mirabilis for music, witnessing...
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On Wine Influencers
In the beginning there was writing and television. Television was Oz Clarke and Jilly Golden on Food and Drink. Love it or loathe it, and interestingly enough Jilly was the...
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The Joys of Serendipity
Bottles of wine don’t usually carry a sell-by date, though supermarket staples may come with advice to drink in the next six to 12 months (in actual fact they’re likely...
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The View from Abroad
One of the nice things about wine publications is that one gets to read about more than the liquid itself. Wine writing can function as food writing, travelogue, cultural study,...
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