A Tough Gig
by Harry Eyres
I expect all of us who work in wine journalism have had some variant of the following conversation: “What do you do?” “I’m a wine writer.” “Is that a job?...
Harry Eyres
Harry Eyres has been writing the weekly wine column in Country Life magazine since 2015. He also writes a regular column – L’Ame du Vin – in The World of Fine Wine. Before that he was for eleven years the Slow Lane columnist in FT Weekend, a Times theatre critic and arts writer, the European Arts columnist for Newsweek, wine columnist for the Spectator and The London Daily News and wine editor of Harpers Bazaar. He has written several books, including Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet (Bloomsbury), Seeing Our Planet Whole: A Cultural and Ethical View of Earth Observation (Springer), Wine Dynasties of Europe (Lennard), The Viking Guide to Cabernet Sauvignon and Hotel Eliseo, a poetry collection.
Articles by Harry Eyres
The Lost Domain
by Harry Eyres
Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes, published the year before the author died in action in 1914, is one of the most haunting and haunted novels ever written. Meaulnes, the restless, rebellious,...
Why Wine Is Good For Us
by Harry Eyres
Sometimes it seems as if the entire wine industry is braced in a defensive crouch. We have been browbeaten with dire warnings about health risks; we are terrified of Gen...
Let Me Count The Ways
by Harry Eyres
Once, many moons ago, I was in a bar in SanlĂşcar de Barrameda with my friends Tim and RocĂo Holt. Possibly I had imbibed one too many copitas of Manzanilla,...
Is There Any Justification For Wine?
by Harry Eyres
The anti-wine forces are massing and strengthening in a way I haven’t experienced in my lifetime. Until very recently, seeing a seminar advertised on “The Future of Wine” I would...
Dorothy Parker Wines
by Harry Eyres
For the past three years I’ve been serving on the committee of my local tennis club in west London. Calling it a tennis club is accurate up to a point;...
Deconstructing Wine Descriptions
by Harry Eyres
Near the beginning of the heroically rambling recollections of a lifetime’s passion for wine which he assembled and published as Notes on a Cellar Book, the Victorian literary critic George...
The Convivial Human Flow
by Harry Eyres
I’m in awe of the dexterity and organisational skills of those who tap tasting notes directly into laptops at wine tastings. I count some of these individuals among my friends,...
Do We Need Smart Wines?
by Harry Eyres
I overheard the comment at one of my favourite spring wine tastings, and it set my teeth on edge. “Yes, it’s a really smart wine,” said a young man, who...
Wines That Stop You In Your Tracks
by Harry Eyres
There are pieces of music that stop me in my tracks. I mean that quite literally, as I do a lot of my listening to music while driving. I recall...
Back In Barnes
by Harry Eyres
“That little country wine we found in the backwoods of [fill in the blank with a region of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Croatia, Bulgaria not especially renowned for quality...
The Myth Of Aristocracy
by Harry Eyres
I have not yet been to the cinema to see the latest despatch from that castellated stately home where half the inhabitants speak in a strange strangulated drawl and wear...