Are wine consumers stupid?
by Tim Atkin
One of my favourite “Yobs” cartoons from Private Eye shows a couple of thugs sitting at a restaurant table. “Great,” says the male skinhead to the sommelier awaiting his verdict...
Author: Tim Atkin
The cult of the winemaker
by Tim Atkin
The death of the Nouvelle Vague film director Claude Chabrol earlier this week has prompted a spate of national mourning in France, with president Sarkozy comparing the great man to...
Syrah: New Zealand’s other great red
by Tim Atkin
Back in 2007, I was one of a number of journalists who attended New Zealand’s first ever Syrah Symposium in Hawke’s Bay. It was a bold — some might say...
Jilly G, Gary V and wine TV
by Tim Atkin
Call me a member of an endangered minority, but I still miss Food and Drink, the BBC cookery show that Delia Smith once dubbed “the most disgusting programme on television”....
Turning water into wine
by Tim Atkin
Someone once described the BBC as the “least worst” television service in the world, an opinion which remains valid while the licence fee continues to exist. The quote reminded me...
Acid trip
by Tim Atkin
“Buy on an apple, sell on a piece of cheese,” runs an old wine trade saw. It’s good advice for consumers, too. If a wine, especially a red wine, can...
In defence of Chardonnay
by Tim Atkin
What’s the most insulting thing you can do to a grape? Mixing it with cola, lemonade or tonic water is a slap in the face, but the lowest of low...
Sherry: the world’s greatest fortified wine
by Tim Atkin
It’s the first rule of pessimism that when things are bad they invariably get worse. Just ask Sarah Ferguson or the nine Sherry bodegas who were recently fined E6.7m by...
2009 Bordeaux en primeur: will the bubble burst?
by Tim Atkin
A friend who works for a City hedge fund calls it “the taxi driver moment”. His theory is that when London cabbies start talking about a guaranteed way to make...
Novelty wines: Arrogant Frog and other labels
by Tim Atkin
Back in the early 1980s, the Australian producer Wolf Blass invented a sparkling red called René Pogel. Wolfie, as he’s known to friends, is a brash, but extremely successful bloke,...
The other side of own-label
by Tim Atkin
As oxymorons go, they may not be as absurd as “French resistance”, “amicable divorce” and “camping holiday”, but there’s still something fundamentally silly about Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Spaghetti Bolognese,...
Wine, social media and the power of the internet
by Tim Atkin
Clay Shirky may sound like the sort of moniker people come up with when they combine their first pet with their mother’s maiden name to create a fictional porn star,...