I’ve always liked Sauzet Burgundies well enough. And if that sounds tepid, it’s supposed to: they were clearly very good, but just never set my pulses racing. And then this...
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Hallowed Ground
It was a scary moment, at least in wine terms. There I was in the cellar at Domaine Leroy in Vosne-Romanée, tasting some of the most expensive reds on the...
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Maps Of Flavours
‘Which Greek wineries do you rate?’ my new kind-of-colleague asked when we broke for coffee. ‘Thymiopoulos,’ I said, hoping and praying that either our Italian colleague would interrupt, or that...
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In Praise Of Wine Elitism
Every now and again as a wine person, it’s salutary to be reminded of the limits of the British public’s knowledge of wine and the dense knot of anxieties surrounding...
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Different Wine Talk
I am fascinated by wine descriptions. From a series of adjectives, often without a verb to change them into a sentence, to accounts using metaphors whose poetry can take your...
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We’ve Never Had It So Good
“I have opinions of my own, strong opinions,” that beacon of American conservative thought, George W. Bush, is alleged to have told us, “but I don’t always agree with them.”...
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Ultimate Aromatherapy
One of the first challenges of knowing any subject is learning to speak its language. Key terms allow aficionados to rapidly convey the gist of a wine in short-hand, and...
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The Joys In Between
“Taste must not be confused with gastronomy. Whereas taste in the natural gift of recognizing and loving perfection, gastronomy is the set of rules which govern the cultivation and education...
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COP28 And Its Implications For The Wine Industry.
The United Arab Emirates was a contentious host for the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference, and Sultan Al Jaber oversaw two weeks of tense negotiations and fractious debates under...
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On Paragons And Icons
My late friend Michael Cox, who ran Wines of Chile’s UK office for more than a decade, had a great line about so-called “icon wines”. “Is that one word or...
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A Greek (Wine) Christmas
I knew Greece had lost the struggle against its perennial bugbears of Westernisation and capitalism, when I saw on TV that the big Christmas tree in Syntagma Square went up...
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A Good Marriage
Most wines are diminished by food. Discuss, writing on both sides of the paper at once, preferably in green ink. How could it not be so? Wines today are intended...
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