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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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A Virtual Tour of Greece
Let me invite you to a concert for the world’s smallest bouzouki. Rationally, I know full well that whining about not being able to travel in these circumstances is akin...
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Lost in Translation?
Edmund Penning-Rowsell’s vast The Wines of Bordeaux (1969) is more textbook than billet-doux, though you won’t come away from it knowing how to make wine or grow grapes any better than...
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Going off the radar
I am dreading a big COVID cull when my next NYC’s Best Wine Bars and Best Restaurant Wine Lists are published. In some cases, the establishments will be gone for good....
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To drink wine is to travel
After months of lockdown and the return to a palimpsest of normality – who would have guessed six months ago that weekend supplements would run features on how to choose...
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Looking at wine like an artist
My husband, who is a painter, says that the more colours you can describe, the more you can see. You could put it the other way round and it would...
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Remembering Mr Lebanon
There aren’t many winemakers who get an obituary in the Daily Mail. But then there was no one in wine quite like Serge Hochar. Even the manner of his death,...
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