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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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,...
Read More
Côtes de Grantham might cost the earth
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
#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...
Read More
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....
Read More