by Sarah Abbott MW

The mindful glass?

27 Wine is as good as life to a man, if it be drunk moderately: what life is then to a man that is without wine? for it was made to...

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by Tim Atkin

Praising Chile’s diversity

The samples didn’t look very special, to be honest. Bottled in the sort of thing they ask you to fill in doctor’s surgeries, they’d arrived by plane from the south...

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by Tim Atkin

Why buy Bordeaux en primeur?

During Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972, the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was asked what impact he thought the 1789 French Revolution had had on the world. His reply...

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by Tim Atkin

What do we mean by fine wine?

“Wine doesn’t get much better than this”, a London-based wine merchant wrote on Instagram recently. Pictured above his comment was the cork from a bottle of 1959 Château Lafite-Rothschild, his...

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by Ron Washam

The Future of Wine (1988)

When I first began blogging about wine back in 1988, there wasn’t even an internet. The whole world was like North Korea, except with dogs. That didn’t stop me from...

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by Matt Walls

The perfect 8/10 vintage

Last week I opened a bottle of 2010 Bordeaux. Nothing fancy – Château La Tour de By, a reliable Cru Bourgeois from the Médoc. Nope; still not ready. It hardly...

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by Tim Atkin

Deluxe redux

Serendipity is part of the pleasure of owning a wine cellar. Unless you’re the kind of person who keeps a log of every bottle that’s down there – I’m as...

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by Sarah Abbott MW

Calm down, dear

And those who are beautiful,who can contain them?Rainer Maria Rilke Remember this! No amount of Bacchic revelling can corrupt an honest women.Euripides, The Bacchae Last week a wine trade colleague...

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