Hey, big spender: wine on the high street
by Tim Atkin
Failing the emergence of a last minute saviour, BHS looks set to slide into administration this month, joining a list of major high street casualties that includes Comet, Woolworths and...
Author: Tim Atkin
En primeur: the other side of Bordeaux
by Nicolle Croft
The ‘primeur’ show is over for another year and the dust has settled here in Bordeaux. The journalists and buyers of the wine world with their brimming laptops and stained...
The Climate Change Paradox
by Tim Atkin
You don’t have to be meteorologist to appreciate that something very unusual is happening to the world’s weather right now. I’ve just got back from South Africa, where dams were...
The truth about the 1976 Judgment of Paris
by Ron Washam
Forty years later, it’s time to finally reveal that the Paris Tasting of 1976 was staged, much like Neal Armstrong’s phony moon landing, Elvis Presley’s death and auction wines. Furthermore,...
Bordeaux 2015: one big if
by Tim Atkin
You might not have noticed, but the annual Bordeaux en primeur campaign is almost upon us. After a quartet of poor to decent vintages, when the very raison d’être of...
A visit to the World’s Greatest Wine Library
by Ron Washam
Here it is 2095, and I’m only now visiting the World’s Greatest Wine Library. Its vastness is daunting, its resources unparalleled. On that shelf, the first wine book ever published....
Age is just a number, unless…you’re a bottle of wine
by Joelle Thomson
“Age is a just a number. It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine,” said the actress Joan Collins, who looks uncannily youthful at...
On top of the wine world
by Tim Atkin
In his wonderful book “BAD: Or, the Dumbing of America”, the late Paul Fussell developed a theory about altitude: the higher the restaurant, the worse the food. It makes a...
Ageing wine critics
by Ron Washam
It’s a question from wine novices that comes up repeatedly. Just how do we know how long to age our wine critics? Furthermore, how can we tell which wine critics...
Feck & Drink: why isn’t there more wine on TV?
by Henry Jeffreys
If you want to annoy certain people in the wine world, lean over and say to them, ‘what you really need is a Jeremy Clarkson of wine.’ Or a Jamie...
Talking Terroir
by Tim Atkin
“Soil is dirt.” I’m sure the Californian producer Bill Jekel was being deliberately provocative when he entered into a well-publicised debate about terroir with Bruno Prats of Château Cos d’Estournel...
Wine Trends for 2016
by Ron Washam
What will be the most important, most newsworthy trends in the wine business in 2016? What trends and events will trigger every idea-less wine blogger to take to his keyboard...