People who talk about wine rarely mention their conflicts of interest, so let me put mine front and centre: my first dinner date with my now wife included a bottle...
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Until We Meet Again
When I was starting out in wine, I used to worry that I couldn’t point to a single transformative moment at the start of my career. You know, THE ONE...
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Beautiful Things
When a wine costs north of £600 a bottle, what should you expect of it? What is it reasonable to expect of any wine? Is it reasonable to think of...
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The Colours Of Infinity
“In everyday language, when we say that something seems complex what we typically mean is that we have not managed to find any simple description of it… what we are...
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Wrestling With Wine
In the early days of What Wine? magazine, the editor considered it a novel idea to invite actual consumers along to our tastings. If they were celebrities, even Z list...
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On Wine And Dating
One of my New Year’s resolutions has been to buy wine from different sources. In the same way that I love the diversity of what the wine world has to...
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The Ethics of Wine Criticism, Again
Another year, another attempt to save wine criticism from the forces of darkness. The newest gallant is Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, whose contribution will apparently be unbiased wine criticism without the...
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A Piece Of History
Old wines are like cocaine: I’ve only ever enjoyed someone else’s. I’ve never bought my own. Noblesse oblige and all that. It’s not that I’m not grateful – or appreciative....
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Pick and Mix
A couple of things have struck me recently. One was Richard Geoffroy, ex-chef de cave of Dom Pérignon, saying casually that he blends everything, even his breakfast orange juice. The...
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The Noise And The Reality
So much coverage of Brexit has been noise about symbols. Brexiteers obsessed over a return to “blue” British passports and an end to the “humiliation” of Burgundy-coloured ones. In fact,...
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