In Praise Of Assyrtiko
by Peter Pharos
Growing up in Greece means you get used to following two parallel tracks, the national and the international. There is the local music scene, and the global music scene; the...
Author: Tim Atkin
Wines That Sing To Themselves
by Margaret Rand
The trouble with taking human emotions and dumping them on to unsuspecting bottles is that they bring their connotations with them. A wine can be cheerful, or dour; that’s pretty...
French Oak: An Unreliable Memoir
by Adam Wynn
I was asked recently: “Why are barrels so expensive?” Well, in a sense they are not expensive. I was paying AUS $1,000 a barrel 20 years ago. So given inflation...
Facing The Fires
by Christy Canterbury MW
During Napa’s intense “fire season” last year, I wondered what locals have been doing about this menace since 2017. Napa is a moneyed wine region. Surely it has the funds...
How Democratic Is Rioja?
by Tim Atkin
Imagine being a voter in Liverpool Walton or South Holland and the Deepings. In the first of these constituencies, the Labour Party received 86% of the ballot in the last...
Perfume And Wine
by Luca Turin
I fell in love with both perfume and Sauternes at roughly the same time, when I moved to the Côte d’Azur for work in 1982. As it happens, neither had...
The Whisper Of Umami
by Donald Edwards
I chip into the hard yellow wax over the cork and it shatters; a frustrating rain over my station. Domaine Raveneau’s 2008 Chablis Premier Cru Vaillons is initially tight, mineral...
Damned Good
by Henry Jeffreys
Before I knew anything about Roger Scruton, who died last year, I knew him from his wine column in the New Statesman, which ran from 2001 to 2009. In what...
On Wine Education
by Peter Pharos
If you think A-Levels are hard, it’s because you’ve never attempted the Panhellenic exams. A gruelling, ruthless ordeal, it holds a special place in the Greek national psyche. Perhaps its...
Voor-Paardeberg: The Birth of the Revolution
by Jono Le Feuvre
South Africa has been experiencing renewed international interest for its wines of genuine quality, thanks in part to The Swartland Revolution; a winemaking movement that took root in the hot...
Powerful Elegance
by Margaret Rand
There was a broadcast on BBC Radio 3, the other week, of an old recording of Maria Callas in Lucia di Lammermoor. I forget who the other singers were, but...
Wine’s Invisible Cities
by Tom Hewson
Nested in the discussion of “Big” versus “Small” Champagne is an interesting question I saw posed by Oregon winemaker Jason Lett of Eyrie vineyards: “Is the Traditional Method antithetical to...