The Passing
by Clare Tooley MW
Hard not to crave and seek, magpie-like, the shiny brightness and vigorous fruit burst of a brand-new wine. We open our bottles within hours of purchase and revel in instant...
Author: Tim Atkin
A Sensorial Symphony
by Susan Lin MW
Vibrant. Rich. Exciting. Layered. Powerful. Complex. These words describe the third movement of Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major. They also describe a vintage Champagne of excellent quality. In...
On Marginality
by Charlie Leary
In the early 1990s, I tried growing wine grapes in Louisiana, near the Mississippi border. As I recall, Ruby Cabernet, the cross developed in 1936, was among the selected varieties....
Wines That Stop You In Your Tracks
by Harry Eyres
There are pieces of music that stop me in my tracks. I mean that quite literally, as I do a lot of my listening to music while driving. I recall...
Dreadful Weather, Decent Wine
by Håvard Flatland
“Excuse me sir, would you like to try this wine? It’s from a crap vintage.” Hardly a selling point, if you as a waiter want to keep your job. Wine...
The Good Old Days
by Peter Pharos
The past is a foreign country we get to rule as we wish. It is as we say it was and as we sit back to have some wine, talk...
Faith In Fakes
by Tim Atkin
A good friend of mine turned 80 recently. To celebrate, he invited a few of us round for dinner and opened a bottle of 1942 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Grands...
Mistreating Wine
by Margaret Rand
First of all, I should apologise to Lilian Barton. All I can say is that it wasn’t altogether my fault. A friend brought a bottle of Léoville-Barton 2014 to dinner...
The Curse Of Bordeaux
by Andy Neather
We splashed in the Saint Emilion lavoir, desperate to cool off on a 39-degree day in August. Yet this wasn’t when the weirdness of this broiling year really hit me....
What Are Americans Drinking?
by Farrah Berrou
For close to a year, I’ve been working as the self-proclaimed Ancient World specialist in a wine shop. In the process of spitting samples into a sink with various salesmen,...
The Tale of Two Château Palmers
by Charlie Leary
What would Major General Charles Palmer think of Château Palmer being turned into a public cinema in 2022? This is a different Chíateau Palmer from the one most wine lovers...
The Spirit, Not The Letter
by Peter Pharos
Engaging in wine discourse means you get to meet more strawmen than a crow. Usually, those are conveniently arranged in dipoles. There are the consumer champions, speaking for The People,...