Château de Jonquières is located just to the north of Montpellier, its slate turrets and honey stone quietly distinguished, history writ large in its cobbles and flagstones. An ancient archway...
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How much terroir expression do you really want in your wine?
I’ve got a great idea. Every time somebody asks my husband a question, I’m going to answer it for him. And it won’t be the answer he would give, because...
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The US Wine Apocalypse: It Could Still Happen
“Excellent!”, tweeted Donald J. Trump. That is all that it took for many in the US wine business to begin spewing soundbites like, “Disaster Averted” and “Panic Over”. Such nonsensical...
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Treasure Island
As the tragedy of Australia’s 2019/20 bushfires continues to unfold, the most significant impact on the wine industry has been tragedy in the Adelaide Hills. So far, Tasmania has largely...
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Exploring Chile’s outer limits
The life jacket seemed like a good idea, given the size of the launch and the strength of the wind barreling down the jetty. Nervously, I climbed on board and...
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Has the shift to consumerism broken the wine world?
“All our hands are dirty, but some are dirtier than others” – Frédéric Neyrat Climate, for so long a remote ledger of mankind’s bid to unshackle itself from the brutishness...
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The Taste of Smoke
I write in a time of ashes. Not only have certain political dreams and projects recently gone up in smoke; the destructive fires have been raging more literally, all across...
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Not Bending It Like Beckham
I have often been told I am a dream restaurant customer. I love thinking and discussing everything about them: the décor, the ambience, the service, the food and the wine...
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On wine, memory and Christmas
When I was training to be a radio journalist in the 1990s there was a machine in one of the radio studios called the ‘bulk eraser’. As the name suggests...
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Future Forward
What we’ll be drinking in 2029 In my grandmother’s kitchen there’s a cover of The Sunday Times Magazine stuck on one of the cupboards. It’s the final edition from 2009,...
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This Wine Will Save Your Soul
The problem with historical turning points is that the verdict is not out until it’s too late. It is clear now that corporal punishment is a cruel and ineffective tool...
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What makes a wine taste expensive?
It happened at a Berry Bros tasting, down in the cellars where the floors are so uneven that they give you the impression you’ve absorbed a lot more alcohol than...
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