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...
Read More
The Things That Remain
In 2006, during Lebanon’s short but destructive war with Israel, we lost our home but managed to save eight bottles of wine from the rubble including a 1988 Dom Pérignon...
Read More
Armenia: Making Wines Its Own Way
Armenians are a fiercely proud people. They claim many firsts and many more “bests”. When you visit Armenia, as I did just before harvest last year, everyone you meet reminds you...
Read More
On Wine Bitch
A bunch of anonymous newsletters targeting the wine Twitter bubble started circulating anonymously during lockdown. The content was meant to be satirical. Some of it was amusing, some statements about...
Read More
The Year that Changed the Wine World
“Never A Dull Moment” is the title of a wonderful book about what its author David Hepworth calls “rock’s golden year”. 1971 was indeed an annus mirabilis for music, witnessing...
Read More
On Wine Influencers
In the beginning there was writing and television. Television was Oz Clarke and Jilly Golden on Food and Drink. Love it or loathe it, and interestingly enough Jilly was the...
Read More
The Joys of Serendipity
Bottles of wine don’t usually carry a sell-by date, though supermarket staples may come with advice to drink in the next six to 12 months (in actual fact they’re likely...
Read More
The View from Abroad
One of the nice things about wine publications is that one gets to read about more than the liquid itself. Wine writing can function as food writing, travelogue, cultural study,...
Read More
The Vanishing Point
I have an age problem. First of all, 38 years of tasting young wines has conditioned me to their charms – their energy, their freshness. Second, there’s little point in...
Read More
The Good Old Days
“It is quite remarkable how Britain has gone from being a still white wine producer of declining relevancy in the world of wine to being a contender for the title...
Read More
Lebanon: memorable wines in memorable times
As a former Evening Standard hack, I’m hardened to bad news stories, but I gasped in shock when the news broke on August 4 of the huge explosion in the...
Read More
Who holds the balance of power in Champagne?
The fierce dispute about the level of yield for the 2020 harvest to be agreed in Champagne has been widely, if not always entirely accurately, reported in the press. National...
Read More