Are some Olympic sports more serious than others? To listen to purists, harrumphing about the inclusion of skateboarding, surfing and BMX freestyle in the Tokyo games, you’d conclude that there’s...
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The Song Of The Bard
One of the amusements of social media is that you get to see celebrities from unrelated fields fighting. A prominent sub-genre is athletes telling non-athletes off. If the latter is...
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The Molton Centre Of The Earth
A weekend or two ago I attended a gathering where a small bunch of people who like to write poetry, some of whose efforts had been gathered into a series...
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Changing Places
Last night I dreamt I went to Moulon again. Recent times have created asynchronous existence, intermittent periods of grace along a continuum of uncertainty. In wine terms, the experience has...
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The Mysteries of the Mousse
Why is it that some sparkling wines glide like fluffy meringues whilst others seem to fizz and froth like an angry jacuzzi? The route to the finest bubbles is one...
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In Praise Of Assyrtiko
Growing up in Greece means you get used to following two parallel tracks, the national and the international. There is the local music scene, and the global music scene; the...
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Wines That Sing To Themselves
The trouble with taking human emotions and dumping them on to unsuspecting bottles is that they bring their connotations with them. A wine can be cheerful, or dour; that’s pretty...
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French Oak: An Unreliable Memoir
I was asked recently: “Why are barrels so expensive?” Well, in a sense they are not expensive. I was paying AUS $1,000 a barrel 20 years ago. So given inflation...
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Facing The Fires
During Napa’s intense “fire season” last year, I wondered what locals have been doing about this menace since 2017. Napa is a moneyed wine region. Surely it has the funds...
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How Democratic Is Rioja?
Imagine being a voter in Liverpool Walton or South Holland and the Deepings. In the first of these constituencies, the Labour Party received 86% of the ballot in the last...
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Perfume And Wine
I fell in love with both perfume and Sauternes at roughly the same time, when I moved to the Côte d’Azur for work in 1982. As it happens, neither had...
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The Whisper Of Umami
I chip into the hard yellow wax over the cork and it shatters; a frustrating rain over my station. Domaine Raveneau’s 2008 Chablis Premier Cru Vaillons is initially tight, mineral...
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