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...
Author: Tim Atkin
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...
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...
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...