Lately, my mailbox has been filling up with new books about wine and the wine business. It’s a seemingly inexhaustible subject, and the flurry of new books represents a wide...
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Music and wine: classically trained
Stroll through the vineyards at Il Paradiso di Frassina in Montalcino and the sound of Mozart soothes your ears. If you like Beethoven, Bach or Boulez, not to mention Miles...
Read More2003 Bordeaux: tales from the strip club
“You don’t go to a strip joint looking for a relationship”, says the young man defending the merits of 2003 at BI’s annual “10 Years on Bordeaux Tasting”. This is...
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Bucking the trend: Natural wines at Gut Oggau
Somewhere, out there on the internet, the discussion rages on about natural wines. To true believers, it’s the one and only righteous path, to sceptics, nothing more than a farcical...
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Getting warmer: wine and climate change
Moaning about the weather is practically a national sport in England. There’s a bit of me that thinks that we enjoy being grumpy, “coveting disappointment” as the comedian Bill Bailey...
Read MoreWhat’s that got to do with the price of eggs?
Once upon a time, in the little village of Arse-Ende-of-Knowhere, in the county of Generallydullbutlovelyinpartshire, there was an elderly farmer called McDonald whose hens laid unusually tasty eggs. These eggs...
Read MoreIn praise of real wine journalism
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore once did a very funny sketch about what they considered the worst job in the world. From memory, their choice involved working for Jayne Mansfield...
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2011 Rhône: the George Harrison vintage
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...
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