A recent article in Punch argued that we must re-inject politics into wine: “Without politics, terroir is just soil.” The article’s pretext was that some sort of ideological power play...
It bothers me that wine drinkers frequently choose wine based on colour, or indeed dismiss those of the “wrong” colour. I have encountered this discrimination most overtly in the rosé...
If you are wondering why Threads has not caught up with Twitter yet, the answer is Direct Messages. A lot is made of the performative nature of social media posts,...
It should have been a moment of celebration, a chance to hymn the qualities of a special place. José Luiz Pérez-Linares’ documentary, Rioja: La Tierra de Mil Vinos, will be...
Near the beginning of the heroically rambling recollections of a lifetime’s passion for wine which he assembled and published as Notes on a Cellar Book, the Victorian literary critic George...
When I moved into the house I still live in, I thought I would never be able to fill it. It’s not huge but I had few possessions at the...
To be perfectly clear, I love rosé. On a hot summer’s day it’s all you want; on a cool drizzly summer’s day it reminds you that it is in fact...
You would need a heart of stone not to laugh at the travails of Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, honorary chairman of the Champagne house and grandson of its founder. The British press...
There is something vaguely onanistic in two contributors to the same website taking opposing views in back-to-back columns. As a reader, you are left with the sensation that instead of...
When I came into the wine industry 20 years ago, my impression was that, politically, it was broadly right-leaning. Certainly the upper echelons of the UK’s fine-wine fraternity were the...
For many people in the UK getting into wine in the 1990s Australia was new and vibrant. The ‘sunshine in a glass’ mantra, coupled with labels in English, often with...
There are mixed bags and wild ferments, threats and inert gases, stability and prestige Champagne. The content of the 2023 Master of Wine exam presented an extremely high hurdle for...