“I have opinions of my own, strong opinions,” that beacon of American conservative thought, George W. Bush, is alleged to have told us, “but I don’t always agree with them.”...
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Ultimate Aromatherapy
One of the first challenges of knowing any subject is learning to speak its language. Key terms allow aficionados to rapidly convey the gist of a wine in short-hand, and...
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The Joys In Between
“Taste must not be confused with gastronomy. Whereas taste in the natural gift of recognizing and loving perfection, gastronomy is the set of rules which govern the cultivation and education...
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COP28 And Its Implications For The Wine Industry.
The United Arab Emirates was a contentious host for the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference, and Sultan Al Jaber oversaw two weeks of tense negotiations and fractious debates under...
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On Paragons And Icons
My late friend Michael Cox, who ran Wines of Chile’s UK office for more than a decade, had a great line about so-called “icon wines”. “Is that one word or...
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A Greek (Wine) Christmas
I knew Greece had lost the struggle against its perennial bugbears of Westernisation and capitalism, when I saw on TV that the big Christmas tree in Syntagma Square went up...
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A Good Marriage
Most wines are diminished by food. Discuss, writing on both sides of the paper at once, preferably in green ink. How could it not be so? Wines today are intended...
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Love Wine
Have you met your vinous soulmate? No, not your drinking partner, though we all need one of those, but the wine or wines with which you have connected to such...
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Who Pays The Wine Critic?
Few subjects are as thorny for wine writers as their dependence on the industry – for samples, travel and more. We hear whispers of conflicts of interest at wine publications:...
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Same, Same But Different
There is no such thing as Jane Eyre, or the Mona Lisa, or Citizen Kane. Or a bottle of Château Lafite or Pinot Grigio. At least, there is no precise...
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Pouring Politics
A recent article in Punch argued that we must re-inject politics into wine: “Without politics, terroir is just soil.” The article’s pretext was that some sort of ideological power play...
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Drink Promiscuously
It bothers me that wine drinkers frequently choose wine based on colour, or indeed dismiss those of the “wrong” colour. I have encountered this discrimination most overtly in the rosé...
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