Considering we have the good fortune to deal with one of mankind’s greatest creations, we wine people spend a lot of time worrying. Our industry is inextricably linked to nature...
Read More
The Disenfranchised
If you search in Google for “countries without a wine culture,” it returns an entry for “What countries are dry?”: “Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Mauritania, Libya, the Maldives, Iran,...
Read More
The Stage And The Actor
I had to buy some more wine glasses the other day. I’ve always used Spiegelau ones at home – good quality, but not so expensive that breaking them induces a...
Read More
Insider Talk
“When art critics get together,” Picasso is meant to have said, “they talk about form and structure and meaning. When artists get together, they talk about where you can buy...
Read More
Rethinking Fine Wine
It was a noble, if ultimately inconclusive exercise. Maybe that’s true of anything that involves an indigestible dose of subjectivity. But you can’t fault Areni Global for attempting to define...
Read More
Wine After Dry January
Dry January is over, for those quixotic enough to try it – but the shiver it provokes in the French wine industry continues. Ever since the battle over the first...
Read More
Burrowing
A confession: I’m pretty sure I used the term ‘Kafkaesque’ before I’d read any Kafka. In itself this could count as faintly Kafkaesque in its admission that authenticity and the...
Read More
The Tale of the Angelo Petri
In 1966, the US Senator and presidential candidate John McCain’s father, Admiral John S. McCain, Jr. spoke about wine in congressional testimony: Gallo’s “Thunderbird,” to be exact. Yes, that “fortified”...
Read More
Wine Cultures
I think it was the bottle filled with urine that did it in the end. I felt bad for my friend. This was meant to be the evening of a...
Read More
Can Wine Beat The Odds In 2023?
As wine-world knockabout, it was hard to beat. On BBC Newsnight last month, Conservative right-winger Jacob Rees-Mogg, perhaps the most arrogant British politician of his generation in a tough field,...
Read More
Christmas Wine
You can tell a lot about a business by the film it chooses as representative of its customers. In the case of wine, the everlasting popularity of Sideways among professionals...
Read More
On The Trail Of Peruvian Wine
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...
Read More