Each of them had other plans for this summer. Back in February, Anastasia didn’t think she’d be saving other people’s lives on a battlefield. Anatoly didn’t imagine he’d voluntarily swap...
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A Dachshund’s Ear
My school coat was made of Harris Tweed. This is not relevant to anything, except that the other day I came across a wine with Harris Tweed tannins. They were...
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Final Score?
You’ve come a long way, baby. Watching the final of the Euro 2022 women’s football tournament, I was reminded of an advertising slogan for Virginia Slims cigarettes, of all things,...
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Santorini Assyrtiko 2022 Report
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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