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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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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