Wine tasting is full of anomalies and paradoxes. How can a liquid that has been aged in oak taste of cedarwood, for example? Yet cedarwood is a perfectly legitimate description...
Wine without alcohol is a little like Bonnie without Clyde. If you don’t believe me I suggest you buy one of those feeble low-alcohol ‘wines’ (preferably wearing a balaclava in...
Wine scribes couldn’t survive without fruit. I don’t mean this in a physical sense, although I’m as conscientious as the next person when it comes to slicing a banana on...
Every day in the world of wine is the Glorious Twelfth. The hunting season may be restricted in Britain – to the relief of thousands of birds and animals, who’d...
Scatological tasting terms are comparatively rare in wine. Fearful of offending their readers’ sensibilities, writers tend to employ euphemisms: farmyard, cheesy, goaty, vegetal, rustic or sweaty. The French use the...
