‘Trouble is,’ said my old friend, ‘that’s just not what I want to drink any more.’ He was referring to the cellar he’d built up over 30 years and more:...
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Wine, Liberty And The Birth Of Economics
Wine shaped the earliest debates about trade, taxation and political authority far more than we usually admit. As the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether a president can impose sweeping global...
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In Praise of NoLo
Regarding Andy Neather’s recent article on low and no alcohol wines, I would like to offer a few reflections: far from polemics, far from ideologies, far from rigid viewpoints. Simply...
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Making It Count
Early in Charles Dickens’s A Tale Of Two Cities, a wine cask rolls out of a cart in a Paris street. It promptly breaks, spilling its contents. Hilarity ensues. Men...
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The Curse Of Low And No Alcohol Wine
Exciting news! Elton John has launched his own alcohol-free wine. Granted, to many of us it seemed scarcely believable that Sir Elton hadn’t previously done so: he’d already been beaten...
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Is Objectivity Overrated?
Over the last two years, I have been interviewing wine writers. I have asked them about their views on the field and to reflect on their own writing. Initially, I...
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The Earthworms Are Safe
Much has been made, in both mention and meme, of the recently announced MICHELIN distinction for wine. Not to be confused with the MICHELIN Sommelier Award, or the recognition of...
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Colour Blind
As an 18-year-old student in the United States, I took a course in the humanities. One of the books we used was called Learning to Look by Joshua C. Taylor....
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Transformations
I arrived in Puligny, at my friend Mary’s house, the other weekend, and she handed me a flûte salée from her favourite boulangerie in Beaune. It was celestial: an apotheosis...
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Spanish Strategies
The setting was magical, steep terraces plunging to the River Miño below. But José Moure was hard-headed about the challenges: “We’re in crisis – the big buyers bought very few...
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Contemplating Complantation
Contemplating complantation may not be the sexiest of titles, but in a volatile world of climate change and uncertainty perhaps it’s time to look back in shaping the future. ‘Back...
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A Tough Gig
I expect all of us who work in wine journalism have had some variant of the following conversation: “What do you do?” “I’m a wine writer.” “Is that a job?...
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