Mediterranean Sundance

by Peter Pharos
Ah, the joys of localism. The provincial dialects. The regional quirks. The local produce. Like most of its Mediterranean neighbours, Greece is no stranger to those – a 200-year old...

The Wine Emperor’s New Clothes

by Peter Pharos
Once it enters your mind, the question becomes so persistent, so obstinate in its highlighting of an anomaly, that it’s impossible to remove. What if the Emperor’s weavers were telling...

Footprints In The Sand

by Peter Pharos
Given my fondness for wine writing, you won’t be surprised to hear I like other pointless discussions too. So I enjoyed the noise generated by a recent New York Times...

I’m A Hundred On That

by Peter Pharos
“Peter,” one of my fellow diners said, “you have written about wine scores a couple of times, haven’t you?”. Well, time for another one I guess. Why do we keep...

We’ve Never Had It So Good

by Peter Pharos
“I have opinions of my own, strong opinions,” that beacon of American conservative thought, George W. Bush, is alleged to have told us, “but I don’t always agree with them.”...

A Greek (Wine) Christmas

by Peter Pharos
I knew Greece had lost the struggle against its perennial bugbears of Westernisation and capitalism, when I saw on TV that the big Christmas tree in Syntagma Square went up...

Postmodern Wine

by Peter Pharos
If you are wondering why Threads has not caught up with Twitter yet, the answer is Direct Messages. A lot is made of the performative nature of social media posts,...

The Revolution Won’t Be Vinified

by Peter Pharos
There is something vaguely onanistic in two contributors to the same website taking opposing views in back-to-back columns. As a reader, you are left with the sensation that instead of...

Santorini 2023 Report

by Peter Pharos
“What a wine”, I commented on the Instagram feed of a London wine merchant who had just posted a new import from Etna. “Good enough to give anything on Santorini...

The Greek Exception

by Peter Pharos
We all get some random perks from our parents, and for me it was family friends in Mykonos. I don’t mean friends with a house in Mykonos, you understand; there...

Wine Chatbots

by Peter Pharos
Sometime in the next couple of years Robert Joseph will buy me a bottle of wine. I believe the erstwhile wine correspondent of the Daily Telegraph to be a man...

A Brief Australian Fling

by Peter Pharos
I love Australia, because it shows you what California would look like if the South had won the Civil War. You get so few good counterfactuals in history. And I love...