The 2009 Burgundy vintage: second opinion
by Tim Atkin
“You call that work? ” asked a friend of mine when I told him about the rigours of Burgundy week in early January. “Most people would pay serious amounts of...
Author: Tim Atkin
My wine wish list for 2011
by Tim Atkin
2011 may have eased stiff-limbed out of the starting blocks, but it’s stumbled such a short way down the track that I hope you won’t mind me making a wine...
The world beyond Bordeaux
by Tim Atkin
Here we go again. The high octane excitement surrounding the 2009 Bordeaux vintage has only just abated, but four months before the next en primeur campaign kicks off, 2010 is...
The rebirth of Lebanese wine
by Tim Atkin
A five hour flight to Lebanon coupled with a lengthy, fog-bound delay at Heathrow is a good time to do some reading about this most complex of Middle Eastern countries....
Odds-on winner
by Tim Atkin
Why don’t off-licence managers look out of the window in the morning? The answer, according to a joke that’s doing the rounds in the booze trade, is that they’d have...
Time to learn Mandarin?
by Tim Atkin
David Cameron’s visit to Beijing this week at the head of the biggest-ever British trade delegation acknowledged a simple, if slightly uncomfortable fact. For the foreseeable future, the world’s economy...
Wrangles at Wine Australia
by Tim Atkin
What’s happening to the Australian wine industry at the moment reminds me of the famous line from Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest: “To lose one parent may...
Grape heists – no ladder required
by Tim Atkin
It was among the most famous heists in the art world. Early one February morning in 1994, two crooks propped a ladder against the wall of Oslo’s National Gallery. They...
Wine and alcohol: how low should you go?
by Tim Atkin
“And how many units of wine do you drink a week?” If you’ve been to see your GP for a health assessment recently, you may recognize the question as well...
Pass the artichokes: difficult food and wine matches
by Tim Atkin
Long before Ant and Dec came up with the idea of subjecting minor celebrities to the indignity of eating witchetty grubs in the Australian jungle, a friend of mine invented...
Wine, moustaches and 50 words for snow
by Tim Atkin
The Inuit languages famously have more than 50 words to describe different types of snow, enabling native speakers to distinguish between a landscape that is variously fresh, firm, packed, rippled,...
In praise of older wines
by Tim Atkin
How long does it take you to drink a bottle of wine once you’ve bought it? A day? A week? A year? I’m not sure how accurate the statistic is,...