Arrogant Frogs?
by Tim Atkin
What’s wrong with France? asked the distinguished journalist Christine Ockrent in a recent think piece in Prospect. Her analysis, which is worth reading in full, begins at the top. President...
Author: Tim Atkin
Making Sense of Matt Kramer
by Ron Washam
Imagine for a moment that you are me. Yes, I know, that’s ridiculous. It’s like asking you to imagine that you’re Albert Einstein or Abraham Lincoln, but let’s just say...
Is the customer always right?
by The Secret Wine Merchant
Relationships can be difficult, even at the best of times. It seems strange that we would select a partner of our own volition, and then proceed to argue and fight...
RIP, two great men of wine
by Tim Atkin
I’m not sure if Peter Lehmann and Tim Hamilton Russell ever met, but I like to think they would have got on, despite their very different personalities. One was a...
Wine Mosaic: Saving rare grapes from extinction
by Simon Woolf
When was the last time you had a glass of Uvalino, Limniona or Österreichisch Weiss? Possibly not so recently, if ever – all three grape varieties are on the...
The Swartland Revolution
by Tim Atkin
Every revolution needs a spark, a catalyst that changes things forever. It might not compare with the storming of the Bastille or the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the...
Wine: you don’t have to be rich…
by Tim Atkin
Ever felt like making your own wine? If you work in the business, whether as a retailer, sommelier, importer or impoverished hack, the chances are that you’ve entertained just such...
The World Cup of Wine
by Ron Washam
I don’t care about Canadian wine. I don’t know anybody who does. Canadians should be making wine like Jamaicans should be bobsledding. Oh, but they make great Ice Wines, eh!...
In search of wine expertise
by Tim Atkin
Last week I was an invigilator at the Master of Wine exam in London, supervising a tasting paper that I’d helped to set. Before the roomful of candidates sweated, slurped...
Wine’s whistle blowers
by Tim Atkin
Traitor or patriot? Whistleblower or scoundrel? Depending on your point of view, Edward Snowden, the man behind the recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance techniques, is either a...
How to Throw a Perfect Home Wine Tasting
by Ron Washam
More often than not, when I attend a wine tasting at a private home it’s disastrous. And not just because I was invited. A wine tasting seems like an easy...
Meet the Osborns
by Tim Atkin
There can’t be many world-famous wineries founded by teetotalers, but d’Arenberg in McLaren Vale is one of them. Despite working in the industry as company secretary at Thomas Hardy &...