My mum is a gardener and sometimes works with a friend and fellow gardener called Don who takes care of hard landscaping, hedges and tree felling. As you’d expect given...
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A Solar System Or A Galaxy?
Noble Rot Magazine recently ran a blind ‘Champagne vs English Sparkling Wine’tasting in which Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label placed higher than a number of fêted smaller producers(the first iteration of...
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Bubblegum In Your Coffee?
When you’re six years old, “less” is never “more”. It’s a glorious time of learning and discovery. But at some point, most of us become aware that it’s cooler (or at...
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Can Wine Survive On The High Street?
The numbers are terrifying. With the imminent closure of 124 Debenhams stores and the loss of 12,000 jobs, the high street has arguably suffered its highest profile casualty since Woolworths...
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The Best Booze Books of 2020
“The juice of the carrot, The smile of the parrot, A little drop of claret, Anything that rocks.” Like Ian Dury, I have found a little drop of claret a...
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Wine In The Time Of Bushfires
Covid-19 may have monopolised the world’s attention since March 2020, but the previous six months in Australia were dominated by the most traumatic bushfire season in memory . The so-called...
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Making Fun Of Foreign Accents
I know some of you are here for the dirty bits, so I’ll get those out of the way first, so the rest of us can concentrate on the review....
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Why Brits Love Laughing At Wine Experts
It is heartening that even under lockdown, the first signs of Christmas appear just as always: the Oxford Street lights, mince pies in the shops, and earlier this month the...
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The Quest For Authenticity
An email coversation with Jill Norman, trustee of Elizabeth David’s estate, sent me back to An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. This collection of writing, first published in 1952,...
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Burgundy’s Benevolent Haunting
Something is said to be resilient if it maintains its form and structure under pressure. In the context of Burgundy, form and structure translate as character and hierarchy. Thus, Pinot...
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