Every spring, Rhône ringleader Michel Chapoutier comes to London to unveil the new vintage of his top single vineyard wines, the Sélections Parcellaires. It’s a hotly anticipated tasting for a...
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The Climate Change Paradox
You don’t have to be meteorologist to appreciate that something very unusual is happening to the world’s weather right now. I’ve just got back from South Africa, where dams were...
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The truth about the 1976 Judgment of Paris
Forty years later, it’s time to finally reveal that the Paris Tasting of 1976 was staged, much like Neal Armstrong’s phony moon landing, Elvis Presley’s death and auction wines. Furthermore,...
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South Africa triumphs at the Lismore Chardonnay tasting
Way back in 1992, so long ago that it’s even disappeared from remaindered bookshelves, I wrote a tome about Chardonnay. It was a tour d’horizon of the world’s most popular...
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In your glass in sixty minutes
Whizzing home in my driverless car, I zip past yet another boarded-up wine shop. I suspected this one wouldn’t last much past 2020. You couldn’t sample the wines or buy...
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Bordeaux 2015: one big if
You might not have noticed, but the annual Bordeaux en primeur campaign is almost upon us. After a quartet of poor to decent vintages, when the very raison d’être of...
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A visit to the World’s Greatest Wine Library
Here it is 2095, and I’m only now visiting the World’s Greatest Wine Library. Its vastness is daunting, its resources unparalleled. On that shelf, the first wine book ever published....
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Age is just a number, unless…you’re a bottle of wine
“Age is a just a number. It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine,” said the actress Joan Collins, who looks uncannily youthful at...
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The shock of the new
When tasting my way through a large number of unfamiliar wines, there are a few tell-tale signs that I’ve encountered something special. Firstly, an involuntary smile creeps over my face....
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On top of the wine world
In his wonderful book “BAD: Or, the Dumbing of America”, the late Paul Fussell developed a theory about altitude: the higher the restaurant, the worse the food. It makes a...
Read MoreAgeing wine critics
It’s a question from wine novices that comes up repeatedly. Just how do we know how long to age our wine critics? Furthermore, how can we tell which wine critics...
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Feck & Drink: why isn’t there more wine on TV?
If you want to annoy certain people in the wine world, lean over and say to them, ‘what you really need is a Jeremy Clarkson of wine.’ Or a Jamie...
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