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,...
Author: Tim Atkin
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...
2003 Bordeaux: tales from the strip club
by Sarah Abbott MW
“You don’t go to a strip joint looking for a relationship”, says the young man defending the merits of 2003 at BI’s annual “10 Years on Bordeaux Tasting”. This is...
Bucking the trend: Natural wines at Gut Oggau
by Simon Woolf
Somewhere, out there on the internet, the discussion rages on about natural wines. To true believers, it’s the one and only righteous path, to sceptics, nothing more than a farcical...
Getting warmer: wine and climate change
by Tim Atkin
Moaning about the weather is practically a national sport in England. There’s a bit of me that thinks that we enjoy being grumpy, “coveting disappointment” as the comedian Bill Bailey...
In praise of real wine journalism
by Tim Atkin
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore once did a very funny sketch about what they considered the worst job in the world. From memory, their choice involved working for Jayne Mansfield...
The Frugle Awards
by Ron Washam
The finalists for the James Beard Awards were announced recently to great fanfare. The James Beard Awards are often referred to, mostly by dolts, as the Oscars© of the food...
An exchange of letters with Dan Jago of Tesco
by Tim Atkin
On February 15th, I published a column in OLN entitled Flogging a dead horse about what I saw as the potential similarities between the horsemeat scandal, then at its height, and what...
Priorat: from tradition to hi-tech to terroir
by Victor de la Serna
When the International Wine Academy, the august Geneva-based institution, first visited Catalonia two decades ago, its members didn’t make it to Priorat: the roads were bad in 1994, accommodation almost...
Brunello and Bordeaux: a tale of two appellations
by Tim Atkin
Brunello and Bordeaux, Bordeaux and Brunello. Italy and France’s most famous wine regions have a lot in common, not least that they both hold high-profile tastings in the first part...