The truth about Christmas wine columns
by Henry Jeffreys
Elizabeth David’s spiced beef recipe is one of my Christmas traditions. It involves rubbing a piece of beef every day for up to four weeks with a selection of spices,...
Author: Tim Atkin
How to build a great wine cellar
by Ron Washam
You don’t need a lot of money to create a great wine cellar. Any more than you need teeth to recite Shakespeare. Or fingers to go bowling. They just help...
Keeping it in the family?
by Tim Atkin
The front room at the Domaine Launay-Horiot in Pommard looks like something out of Miss Havisham’s mansion in Dickens’ Great Expectations. It’s dusty, cobwebbed and, on first acquaintance, more than...
Where are all the wine stories?
by Felicity Carter
German rehabilitation hospitals are pretty nice. My room had a view into the Black Forest, and there was a bar on the next floor. So when I opened my work...
Antonini versus Rolland: wine’s stylistic battleground
by Tim Atkin
In the early 1990s I was commissioned to write a story about Esme Johnstone, a former director of Majestic who’d bought Château de Sours in the unglamorous Entre-Deux-Mers region of...
Which wine goes with erectile dysfunction?
by Ron Washam
There’s an annoying trend in wine writing to recommend wines to accompany experiences other than dining. Specific wines with specific music, for example. How much sense does that make? Though...
South Africa’s New Wave
by Tim Atkin
When was the last time you entered a wine tasting through a record shop? It was certainly a first for me. But walking past racks of LPs at The Vinyl...
Rejected Entries for “The Oxford Companion to Wine”
by Ron Washam
I’m feeling a bit disappointed. I just opened the Fourth Edition of “The Oxford Companion to Wine” and not a single one of my entries was published. Admittedly, Jancis Robinson...
Rioja’s vineyard revolution
by Tim Atkin
Juan Carlos López de Lacalle doesn’t look like a man who storms barricades. Skinny, bespectacled and bald, he’s more academic than action man. But appearances can be deceptive. The owner...
The Wine Time Capsule from 2015
by Ron Washam
I’m not sure what motivated my ancestor to bury a wine time capsule back in 2015, but I felt that after two hundred years it was time to dig it...
Back to the future
by Simon Woolf
Fine wines are timeless – that elusive combination of elegance, complexity and gravitas, plus ageing potential in spades. Their prices unfortunately are not. Top rank Bordeaux, Burgundy or mature Barolos...
The Stellenbosch Renaissance
by Tim Atkin
When the 400 tickets for this year’s Swartland Revolution went on sale earlier this summer, they sold out within two minutes. Since it was first held in 2010, the annual...