The Narrowing Of Choice
by Margaret Rand
I picked up a book the other day which almost everybody knows about but which most, I suspect, have not actually read: Dorothy Hartley’s Food in England. It was published...
Margaret Rand
Margaret Rand writes for World of Fine Wine, winesearcher.com, Gourmet Traveller Wine and is general editor of the annual Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book; she has won various Roederer and Lanson awards over the years, including one for Grapes & Wines (2001). Her latest book is 101 Wines to Try Before You Die (2018).
Articles by Margaret Rand
In Praise of Mystique
by Margaret Rand
Every generation of wine writers declares that it wants to remove the mystique from wine: to demystify it. I say, enough. Demystify by all means; but I will stand up...
Seeing Differently
by Margaret Rand
How, today, can a wine surprise us? And does that element of surprise come by accident, while both we and the wine are, as it were, looking elsewhere, or can...
The Need For A Story
by Margaret Rand
When did winemakers become philosophers? Is it that if you charge more than a certain amount for a bottle of wine you have to justify it by some intellectual heft,...
A Different Path
by Margaret Rand
Did any grower ever say, ‘I’m looking for a really cold, wet site – Yorkshire, maybe, or Derbyshire – so I can plant Ortega and Huxelrebe and Rondo’? Equally, how...
The Appeal Of Youth
by Margaret Rand
Of the many irritating things my parents used to say on repeat, the one that springs most to mind now is ‘youth is wasted on the young’. (A close second...
Tailoring Terroir
by Margaret Rand
In London, if you want your friends to hate you, give their dog a squeaky toy. In Ireland, or at least in the house on the West Coast where I’m...
By The Book?
by Margaret Rand
Can winemakers still be self-taught? Or must they, in this technocratic age, be able to sport some letters after their name? When I asked Peter Hall, the arch-maverick of Breaky...
2024 Toro Top 100
£10.00Please Note: This report is also part of The Spanish Subscription, a new bundle which includes all the new Spanish reports plus the back catalogue of all Spanish reports from...
Add to basketThe Weight Of Wine
by Margaret Rand
What constitutes high alcohol now? In table wines, I mean; fortifieds haven’t changed. But I recall the horror when reds started hitting 14%. Then 14.5%. And now? 14% seems quite...
Peaks And Troughs
by Margaret Rand
I’ve always liked Sauzet Burgundies well enough. And if that sounds tepid, it’s supposed to: they were clearly very good, but just never set my pulses racing. And then this...
A Good Marriage
by Margaret Rand
Most wines are diminished by food. Discuss, writing on both sides of the paper at once, preferably in green ink. How could it not be so? Wines today are intended...