The Stage And The Actor
by Margaret Rand
I had to buy some more wine glasses the other day. I’ve always used Spiegelau ones at home – good quality, but not so expensive that breaking them induces a...
Author: Tim Atkin
Insider Talk
by Peter Pharos
“When art critics get together,” Picasso is meant to have said, “they talk about form and structure and meaning. When artists get together, they talk about where you can buy...
Rethinking Fine Wine
by Tim Atkin
It was a noble, if ultimately inconclusive exercise. Maybe that’s true of anything that involves an indigestible dose of subjectivity. But you can’t fault Areni Global for attempting to define...
Wine After Dry January
by Andy Neather
Dry January is over, for those quixotic enough to try it – but the shiver it provokes in the French wine industry continues. Ever since the battle over the first...
Burrowing
by Tom Hewson
A confession: I’m pretty sure I used the term ‘Kafkaesque’ before I’d read any Kafka. In itself this could count as faintly Kafkaesque in its admission that authenticity and the...
Wine Cultures
by Peter Pharos
I think it was the bottle filled with urine that did it in the end. I felt bad for my friend. This was meant to be the evening of a...
Christmas Wine
by Peter Pharos
You can tell a lot about a business by the film it chooses as representative of its customers. In the case of wine, the everlasting popularity of Sideways among professionals...
On The Trail Of Peruvian Wine
by Tim Atkin
Where is the gastronomic capital of the world? Lyon perhaps? San Sebastian? A growing number of foodies and critics would nominate Lima right now. Restaurants like Central, Maido and Osaka...
On Complexity
by Margaret Rand
A wine, like a short story, should have a beginning, a middle and an end. Nobody would disagree with that. But how many do? How many start, toddle along for...
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...
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....