Contrary to popular belief, the Chinese don’t mix Bordeaux with Coke. Yet, between November 2017 and September 2018, I lost count of how many times I was told this, along...
Read More
An Uncertain Road
I stood there watching Mark Zuckerberg welcome the new year with an announcement that Meta goes MAGA, and I knew that I should feel worried, angry or afraid, but a...
Read More
Resuscitating The English Patient
Two decades ago, I gave a PowerPoint presentation on Champagne in Champagne. At the end, there was a ripple of applause that fell decibels short of ‘polite’ on the clapometer....
Read More
The Need For A Story
When did winemakers become philosophers? Is it that if you charge more than a certain amount for a bottle of wine you have to justify it by some intellectual heft,...
Read More
Aiming High
Where are the highest vineyards in Europe. Switzerland? The Alto Adige perhaps? Both have sites that are vertiginous when you compare them to most of the continent’s classic wine regions....
Read More
Singing The Same Tune
It’s just over 100 years since Rudolf Steiner delivered his eight-lecture Agriculture Course in Kobertwitz (Kobierzyce in present-day Poland). Sometimes described as the world’s first organic agriculture course, one that...
Read More
The Vauxhall Paulée
The Jesuit promise to take the child and return the man holds loosely for wine. Making the right calls during the formative stages of production should help deliver successful outcomes....
Read More
Reasons To Be Cheerful
This is never a particularly joyful month for the wine industry. Nobody is ever buying much just after Christmas. And these days, the festival of self-denying piousness that is Dry...
Read More
A Different Path
Did any grower ever say, ‘I’m looking for a really cold, wet site – Yorkshire, maybe, or Derbyshire – so I can plant Ortega and Huxelrebe and Rondo’? Equally, how...
Read More
What Have Wine Merchants Ever Done for Us?
Of course, I stole the title of this article from Monty Python. One reason I did so lies in its absurdity. After all, wine merchants in the UK have played...
Read More
Why I Like Wine People
The times we live in being what they are, I need to start with a few disclaimers. No, I don’t doubt at all that there is a dark side to...
Read More
Tasting Terroir
My scientific credentials are embarrassing. I struggled to get a C grade in Physics with Chemistry O Level in my teens. By dint of rote learning and conversations with winemakers,...
Read More