Getting Better All The Time?
by Andy Neather
Dream’s hit Things Can Only Get Better was the theme tune of Britain’s Labour Party in Tony Blair’s 1997 victory, much reprised at Labour’s election landslide earlier this month. It...
Andy Neather
Andy Neather was the London Evening Standard’s wine critic between 2005 and 2012. He now blogs at https://aviewfrommytable.substack.com. Twitter: @hernehillandy
Articles by Andy Neather
Just Another Luxury Product?
by Andy Neather
This year’s Bordeaux En Primeur campaign has attracted much controversy over release prices. But while a number of leading châteaux have made substantial cuts on what they charged for the...
Wine’s Next Price Shock
by Andy Neather
Call it the shock of the mediocre. Earlier this month in a West Country pub, I scanned the wine list out of idle interest. It offered just two wines under...
In Praise Of Wine Elitism
by Andy Neather
Every now and again as a wine person, it’s salutary to be reminded of the limits of the British public’s knowledge of wine and the dense knot of anxieties surrounding...
Who Pays The Wine Critic?
by Andy Neather
Few subjects are as thorny for wine writers as their dependence on the industry – for samples, travel and more. We hear whispers of conflicts of interest at wine publications:...
Big Money And The Soul Of Wine
by Andy Neather
You would need a heart of stone not to laugh at the travails of Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, honorary chairman of the Champagne house and grandson of its founder. The British press...
Can AI Break The Mystique Of Connoisseurship?
by Andy Neather
Another day, another outlandish claim about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will transform our lives. Last week the BBC News website claimed breathlessly that “AI… is now increasingly helping people buy...
Mental Geography
by Andy Neather
It felt mildly embarrassing. A member of the team from Black Chalk was trying to explain to me exactly where their Hampshire vineyard was as we sipped the fine, precise...
Wine After Dry January
by Andy Neather
Dry January is over, for those quixotic enough to try it – but the shiver it provokes in the French wine industry continues. Ever since the battle over the first...
Can Wine Beat The Odds In 2023?
by Andy Neather
As wine-world knockabout, it was hard to beat. On BBC Newsnight last month, Conservative right-winger Jacob Rees-Mogg, perhaps the most arrogant British politician of his generation in a tough field,...
The Curse Of Bordeaux
by Andy Neather
We splashed in the Saint Emilion lavoir, desperate to cool off on a 39-degree day in August. Yet this wasn’t when the weirdness of this broiling year really hit me....
Wine’s Next Big Thing
by Andy Neather
Not long after the Millennium, I lifted a glass of sparkling wine to toast the wedding of two good friends in London. They were both Italophiles and had somewhere managed...