Vintionary
by Clare Tooley MW
What’s the word for the stretch of wet sand on a beach, revealed as the wave ebbs, just before the sun dries it? That piece of unmarked land, that drenched...
Author: Tim Atkin
The Wisdom Of Age
by Tim Atkin
Call it serendipity, call it fate, but there are times when events and conversations seem to align. You go for months without thinking about something and then it’s everywhere, filling...
Survivor Vines
by Stacy Briscoe
Navigating St. Helena Road on my way to a vineyard tour, I suddenly feel a quivering sense of fear. It’s not because the narrow, winding route has me gazing over...
On Reviews And Scores
by Anne Burchett
In the last few days I was asked for my opinion on the walking shoes I had bought the week before, and on the book I’d just finished reading. Sainsbury’s...
Reds From The Iron Mountain
by Peter Pharos
Monferrato is a land on the margins of history. Among the ruins of industrial archaeology and a landscape that could be in the Balkans, lies a land that is of...
How to enjoy the ephemeral pleasures of wine
by Harry Eyres
Among all the bottles in what I somewhat pretentiously call my “cellar”, this one had followed me most faithfully. It must have rested briefly in the flat I shared with...
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...
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,...