Who was the best musician out of The Beatles? Let’s face it, it’s either Paul and John. What about George Harrison? After Paul and John, George comes a solid third....
Read MoreThe Frugle Awards
The finalists for the James Beard Awards were announced recently to great fanfare. The James Beard Awards are often referred to, mostly by dolts, as the Oscars© of the food...
Read MoreAn exchange of letters with Dan Jago of Tesco
On February 15th, I published a column in OLN entitled Flogging a dead horse about what I saw as the potential similarities between the horsemeat scandal, then at its height, and what...
Read MorePriorat: from tradition to hi-tech to terroir
When the International Wine Academy, the august Geneva-based institution, first visited Catalonia two decades ago, its members didn’t make it to Priorat: the roads were bad in 1994, accommodation almost...
Read MoreBrunello and Bordeaux: a tale of two appellations
Brunello and Bordeaux, Bordeaux and Brunello. Italy and France’s most famous wine regions have a lot in common, not least that they both hold high-profile tastings in the first part...
Read MoreWho needs Bordeaux vintages?
No one could have predicted the impact the Senkalu Island crisis of March 2015, ten years ago, would have on the wine world. When President Hollande’s decision to align France...
Read MoreI’m 100 points on that…
A favourite Paul Simon tune was at the top of my iPod play list last week. When Numbers Get Serious isn’t as famous as the Sounds of Silence or Fifty...
Read MoreSommeliers without borders
Larry Anosmia, Master Sommelier, had a vision. He knew there were millions of people around the globe suffering, and suffering in unimaginable agony, simply because they didn’t have access to...
Read MoreForbidden Fruit
If Jesus had chosen something other than the fruit of the vine for his followers to worship him with, today’s wine lovers might have a harder time indulging their hobby....
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Because you’re worth it
Two strangers, a man and woman meet at a cocktail party. The man turns to the woman and says, I’ve got a hypothetical question for you. The woman, whose curiosity...
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Horsemeat, bullshit and wine
How hungry would you have to be to eat a spaniel? What about a monkey, a camel or a rat? During the siege of their city in 1870, starving Parisians...
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Sir George hits 50
Is there such a thing as the New Zealand dream, a Kiwi equivalent of America’s fabled journey from poverty to prosperity? If so, Sir George Fistonich is surely its personification....
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