“Buy on an apple, sell on a piece of cheese,” runs an old wine trade saw. It’s good advice for consumers, too. If a wine, especially a red wine, can...
Read MoreTurning water into wine
Someone once described the BBC as the “least worst” television service in the world, an opinion which remains valid while the licence fee continues to exist. The quote reminded me...
Read MoreIn defence of Chardonnay
What’s the most insulting thing you can do to a grape? Mixing it with cola, lemonade or tonic water is a slap in the face, but the lowest of low...
Read More2009 Bordeaux en primeur: will the bubble burst?
A friend who works for a City hedge fund calls it “the taxi driver moment”. His theory is that when London cabbies start talking about a guaranteed way to make...
Read MoreSherry: the world’s greatest fortified wine
It’s the first rule of pessimism that when things are bad they invariably get worse. Just ask Sarah Ferguson or the nine Sherry bodegas who were recently fined E6.7m by...
Read MoreNovelty wines: Arrogant Frog and other labels
Back in the early 1980s, the Australian producer Wolf Blass invented a sparkling red called René Pogel. Wolfie, as he’s known to friends, is a brash, but extremely successful bloke,...
Read MoreThe other side of own-label
As oxymorons go, they may not be as absurd as “French resistance”, “amicable divorce” and “camping holiday”, but there’s still something fundamentally silly about Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Spaghetti Bolognese,...
Read MoreWine, social media and the power of the internet
Clay Shirky may sound like the sort of moniker people come up with when they combine their first pet with their mother’s maiden name to create a fictional porn star,...
Read MoreRasputin and underwater wines
What is it about the Baltic and champagne? Last week’s high profile discovery of a cache of bubbly aboard a shipwreck is not the first time fizz has been found...
Read MoreWhere now for post-World Cup South Africa?
The idea of golf being used as a symbol for the new, racially integrated South Africa might sound absurd to some. You’ve only got to walk around a top course...
Read MoreWines to drink by the Med
When the package tour operator Goldtrail Travel collapsed last week, cancelling the summer holidays of some 50,000 customers, bar owners in Greece and Turkey must have had mixed feelings. Goldtrail’s...
Read MoreIn praise of natural wine
The wine style I want to promote doesn’t come from a specific region, although most of its exponents are French and Italian. More frustratingly still, it has no legal definition...
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