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...
Author: Tim Atkin
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 &...
Looking for the BrewDog of wine
by Tim Atkin
How conservative is the wine business? Less than it once was is the obvious answer, at least in the UK. When I started writing about the subject in the mid-1980s,...
Rawfair steals the show
by Simon Woolf
It’s the third Monday in May. I’m in East London, in a barn of a building, buzzing with wine producers, press and trade. There’s a palpable sense of excitement throughout...
The London Wine Fair: time to move
by Tim Atkin
When the London International Wine Fair closes its doors at ExCel next Wednesday evening it will mark the end of a short and not particularly distinguished era in the show’s...
Music and wine: classically trained
by Tim Atkin
Stroll through the vineyards at Il Paradiso di Frassina in Montalcino and the sound of Mozart soothes your ears. If you like Beethoven, Bach or Boulez, not to mention Miles...