Where is the gastronomic capital of the world? Lyon perhaps? San Sebastian? A growing number of foodies and critics would nominate Lima right now. Restaurants like Central, Maido and Osaka...
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On Complexity
A wine, like a short story, should have a beginning, a middle and an end. Nobody would disagree with that. But how many do? How many start, toddle along for...
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The Passing
Hard not to crave and seek, magpie-like, the shiny brightness and vigorous fruit burst of a brand-new wine. We open our bottles within hours of purchase and revel in instant...
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A Sensorial Symphony
Vibrant. Rich. Exciting. Layered. Powerful. Complex. These words describe the third movement of Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major. They also describe a vintage Champagne of excellent quality. In...
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On Marginality
In the early 1990s, I tried growing wine grapes in Louisiana, near the Mississippi border. As I recall, Ruby Cabernet, the cross developed in 1936, was among the selected varieties....
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Wines That Stop You In Your Tracks
There are pieces of music that stop me in my tracks. I mean that quite literally, as I do a lot of my listening to music while driving. I recall...
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Dreadful Weather, Decent Wine
“Excuse me sir, would you like to try this wine? It’s from a crap vintage.” Hardly a selling point, if you as a waiter want to keep your job. Wine...
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The Good Old Days
The past is a foreign country we get to rule as we wish. It is as we say it was and as we sit back to have some wine, talk...
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Faith In Fakes
A good friend of mine turned 80 recently. To celebrate, he invited a few of us round for dinner and opened a bottle of 1942 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Grands...
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Mistreating Wine
First of all, I should apologise to Lilian Barton. All I can say is that it wasn’t altogether my fault. A friend brought a bottle of Léoville-Barton 2014 to dinner...
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The Curse Of Bordeaux
We splashed in the Saint Emilion lavoir, desperate to cool off on a 39-degree day in August. Yet this wasn’t when the weirdness of this broiling year really hit me....
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What Are Americans Drinking?
For close to a year, I’ve been working as the self-proclaimed Ancient World specialist in a wine shop. In the process of spitting samples into a sink with various salesmen,...
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