Wine Hands
by Clare Tooley MW
“Take my hand, tenez, trust me, leap, I won’t let go.” A favourite memory in rain-soaked Chablis, flood waters rising, taking a supplier’s outstretched hand as his courtyard began to...
Author: Tim Atkin
Luxury Bandits
by John Atkinson MW
Many qualifications have rocks and reefs rousing calm surfaces. Learner drivers are undone by parallel parking. Philosophy undergraduates discover The Spice-Box of Life isn’t a primer for formal logic. The...
Looking For Something Else
by Margaret Rand
Most of the time, for most of history, people have wanted wine to taste other than how it does. That’s normal: raw beef straight off the bullock is a lot...
The Pursuit Of Subtlety
by Dwight Furrow
If consumers cannot taste “terroir” should the wine world put so much value on place of origin? Margaret Rand raised the issue, on this very site, in an article titled...
The Trouble With China
by Tim Atkin
“Don’t trust them,” says Leon Panetta, a rueful former US Defense Secretary interviewed in the BBC’s three-part documentary China: A New World Order, “that’s the bottom line.” It’s advice that...
Making Sense Of Life
by Anne Burchett
‘What pages are the sex scenes on, so that I don’t waste any time?’ Oz Clarke asked me. I’d sent him my novel, Tasting Notes, and explained, in person first,...
Decolonising A Wine List
by Donald Edwards
In June last year Rio Tinto destroyed a cave in the Jukaan gorge in Western Australia. With it went 46,000 years of Aboriginal history and one of the most sacred...
Passion Is Not A Panacea
by Robert Joseph
Sometimes I struggle to keep up. I was only just getting used to the idea of every brand needing to have a “story” and every business a “purpose”. Now, the...
Anchors
by Farrah Berrou
For the last two decades, I have been anchored in Lebanon. I have also been an anchor for people who have left: the friend you could moor your boat to,...
In Search Of Familiarity
by Margaret Rand
It was a comment by a South African producer a few weeks ago that set me thinking. He said, in effect, that South Africa isn’t making enough Chardonnay. It should,...
Don’t Over Think It, Just Drink It
by Chris Wilson
My mum is a gardener and sometimes works with a friend and fellow gardener called Don who takes care of hard landscaping, hedges and tree felling. As you’d expect given...
A Solar System Or A Galaxy?
by Tom Hewson
Noble Rot Magazine recently ran a blind ‘Champagne vs English Sparkling Wine’tasting in which Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label placed higher than a number of fêted smaller producers(the first iteration of...