It is rather unlucky, if not downright unwise, to start producing a report on a grape variety at a point in time where its prime terroir underperformed. When I compiled...
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The Warrior Mentality
I have worked my entire life for restless warriors. First in a bohemian penthouse studio in Notting Hill, then in the stubborn landscape of Bordeaux, and now in the velvet-textured...
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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...
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Wine’s Next Big Thing
Not long after the Millennium, I lifted a glass of sparkling wine to toast the wedding of two good friends in London. They were both Italophiles and had somewhere managed...
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Back In Barnes
“That little country wine we found in the backwoods of [fill in the blank with a region of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Croatia, Bulgaria not especially renowned for quality...
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The Clay Sea
In discussions of terroir rocks have exalted status. The journey downwards through the geological record is mostly a search for hard boundaries – chalk, basalt, slate – while the overlying...
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The Good Wine Writer
Someone once told me that nothing in wine media gets page views like writing about wine writing. No one seems to be sure quite why this is the case. It...
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A Bag Of Tricks
You can always rely on Olivier Bernard for a good quote. Olivier is the chatelain of Domaine de Chevalier, on which you can always rely for a good wine, and...
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The Rain In Spain
In English, it’s just drizzle. In Spanish, it’s more graphic. The literal translation of “calabobos” is something that soaks fools. Rather than a downpour – the sort of weather that...
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Offensively Inoffensive
It was an easy target. A recent Twitter flurry over the by-the-glass wine list at Gordon Ramsay’s Michelin-starred London restaurant Pétrus focused on the punchy prices. And it’s true: charging...
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An Easy Ride?
You’re standing in the wine shop, a crisp £50 in your pocket. No agenda, just prospecting for something serious. To the right, the shelf which ought to be labelled ‘good...
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What Is Real Wine?
It is, perhaps, a blessing that nobody has claimed Real Wine as a product category, just yet at least. The intention, however, is certainly there. Natural wine might be the...
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