The Best Booze Books of 2020
by Henry Jeffreys
“The juice of the carrot, The smile of the parrot, A little drop of claret, Anything that rocks.” Like Ian Dury, I have found a little drop of claret a...
Author: Tim Atkin
Wine In The Time Of Bushfires
by Sam Owens
Covid-19 may have monopolised the world’s attention since March 2020, but the previous six months in Australia were dominated by the most traumatic bushfire season in memory . The so-called...
Making Fun Of Foreign Accents
by Peter Pharos
I know some of you are here for the dirty bits, so I’ll get those out of the way first, so the rest of us can concentrate on the review....
Why Brits Love Laughing At Wine Experts
by Andy Neather
It is heartening that even under lockdown, the first signs of Christmas appear just as always: the Oxford Street lights, mince pies in the shops, and earlier this month the...
The Quest For Authenticity
by Margaret Rand
An email coversation with Jill Norman, trustee of Elizabeth David’s estate, sent me back to An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. This collection of writing, first published in 1952,...
Burgundy’s Benevolent Haunting
by John Atkinson MW
Something is said to be resilient if it maintains its form and structure under pressure. In the context of Burgundy, form and structure translate as character and hierarchy. Thus, Pinot...
The Things That Remain
by Farrah Berrou
In 2006, during Lebanon’s short but destructive war with Israel, we lost our home but managed to save eight bottles of wine from the rubble including a 1988 Dom Pérignon...
Armenia: Making Wines Its Own Way
by Christy Canterbury MW
Armenians are a fiercely proud people. They claim many firsts and many more “bests”. When you visit Armenia, as I did just before harvest last year, everyone you meet reminds you...
On Wine Bitch
by Anne Burchett
A bunch of anonymous newsletters targeting the wine Twitter bubble started circulating anonymously during lockdown. The content was meant to be satirical. Some of it was amusing, some statements about...
The Year that Changed the Wine World
by Tim Atkin
“Never A Dull Moment” is the title of a wonderful book about what its author David Hepworth calls “rock’s golden year”. 1971 was indeed an annus mirabilis for music, witnessing...
On Wine Influencers
by Anne Burchett
In the beginning there was writing and television. Television was Oz Clarke and Jilly Golden on Food and Drink. Love it or loathe it, and interestingly enough Jilly was the...
The Joys of Serendipity
by Harry Eyres
Bottles of wine don’t usually carry a sell-by date, though supermarket staples may come with advice to drink in the next six to 12 months (in actual fact they’re likely...