Call me Jancis. Everyone does, even though it’s not my name. Well, it is when I’m conducting a wine seminar, or giving a speech at some God-forsaken outpost of weird...
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The net effect
“Would you like to go up in one of our planes?” asked Eduardo Martín, director of the Argentinean Ministry of Agriculture’s anti-hail squad. It was an offer that was all...
Read MoreIn praise of wine consultants
“I can’t help admiring producers who don’t rely on someone else to tell them how to make their wine. Most of the bottles I enjoy drinking reflect their origin, as...
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Newcomers on the scene
They wouldn’t have got past the elevator pitch in Dragons’ Den. “So you want to sell premium Austrian wines from a transport container in the East End of London?” summarises...
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Natural opinions – unfiltered and slightly fecal
A couple of weeks ago, Jamie Goode published an article on his blog, WineAnorexic (“Tragically Thin Opinions About Wine”) in which he bravely expressed his “unfiltered opinions on the world...
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Sherry’s great leap forward
Is Sherry in danger of becoming cool? Outside London, where a new generation of Spanish restaurants and tapas bars is slowly transforming the image of this most traditional of fortified...
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Should cats sell wine?
The first rule of the internet is that pictures of cats will beat anything in popularity. I have a writer friend who is pretty big on Twitter. He has 20k...
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Wine’s missing link
Thank God the food, music and art world aren’t run by the people who run the wine industry. Artists, musicians and chefs are allowed, and even encouraged, to experiment, to...
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Who judges the judges? More thoughts on wine competitions
We are living in – as the Chinese might say – electorally interesting times. India has just collectively decided to hand its governance to Narendra Modi who is variously described...
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What’s the point of wine competitions?
Wine competitions are the worst way to identify the world’s best wines. Apart from all the others that have been tried. I make no excuse for mangling Churchill’s famous quote...
Read MoreChapoutier’s class of 2013
If the majority of the press surrounding the 2013 vintage in Bordeaux is to be believed, most en primeur samples should have been gathered up, put in a sack and...
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Tokaj’s silver lining
The Tokaj wine region organised its second wine auction recently. Modelled on the Hospices de Beaune, it featured unique lots of dry and sweet wines offered by the 136-litre barrel,...
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