As a dramatisation of climate change and crisis, it felt like a moment. I was in the Putney car park of the PR company R&R Teamwork, talking to Oz Clarke...
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Whither Bordeaux 2019?
Why on earth would anyone spend €370 for a bottle of Cheval Blanc when you can buy Figeac for €120? Both seem likely to score around the 98-100 point range...
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What do consumers owe wine producers?
There is an old joke, of somewhat dubious taste, that has an elegant lady of a certain age approach a handsome young man in a café. She proceeds to make...
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Changing the wine business for the better
It’s been a week of toppled statues and Premiership footballers taking the knee at Villa Park. It’s been a week in which the world has faced up to what history...
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The Good Fight is Far from Over
In May last year, Christy Canterbury MW wrote an article on this site entitled “Where next for women in wine?” I loved its upbeat tone and optimism. In an era when...
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Can surliness enhance the wine tasting experience?
The customer is always right. Not at legendary London restaurant Wong Kei. During the 1980s and 1990s this Chinatown eatery was labelled “London’s rudest restaurant” with its staff known for...
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What Heidegger teaches us about drinking and thinking
In Monty Python’s immortal “Bruces’ Philosophers Song”, the controversial German thinker Martin Heidegger – for many one of the two greatest philosophers of the 20thcentury but tainted by his association...
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#WTFWines: from reflections to resolutions
Sangiovese is coursing through my veins. Not just any Sangiovese, mind you, but Chianti Classico Riservas, Brunellos and Super Tuscans. I’ve been lucky to drink a lot of nice Italian wines...
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Splendid isolation
For a supposedly fusty corner of modern life, the wine world has adapted to virtual life faster than Boris Johnson changing the subject when asked how many kids he has....
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Ticking the right boxes
I’ve been doing some recreational online shopping in the lockdown. But only for things I know will be reliable; only things which will be as I expect. Once upon a...
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Wine in the time of Covid-19
Everyone seems to have advice about how to get through lockdown. Even if we’re all still sitting here in December, our diaries emptier than your local Wetherspoons, I can’t imagine...
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In Vino Duplicitas: The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forger Extraordinaire
At 5pm on the 25thof April 2008, Peter Hellman received a phone call from Geoffrey Troy of New York Wine Warehouse. The wine merchant had heard that “something unusual” was...
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