Towards a new Chile (Part Two)

by Tim Atkin
I had an unprecedented number of exciting wines on my recent trip to Chile, several of them made from Carmenère, a grape I once described as a “second division variety”....

Towards a new Chile (Part One)

by Tim Atkin
How would you like to be remembered? I have a horrible suspicion that when my spittoon is emptied for the last time I will for ever be associated with an...

The world beyond Bordeaux

by Tim Atkin
Here we go again. The high octane excitement surrounding the 2009 Bordeaux vintage has only just abated, but four months before the next en primeur campaign kicks off, 2010 is...

Which wine region could you live without?

by Tim Atkin
Jancis Robinson MW My esteemed colleague, Jancis Robinson MW, recently published an interesting article on her website about the expanding world of wine. She referred to a number of eyebrow-raising...

The rebirth of Lebanese wine

by Tim Atkin
A five hour flight to Lebanon coupled with a lengthy, fog-bound delay at Heathrow is a good time to do some reading about this most complex of Middle Eastern countries....

Odds-on winner

by Tim Atkin
Why don’t off-licence managers look out of the window in the morning? The answer, according to a joke that’s doing the rounds in the booze trade, is that they’d have...

The Outsiders come to London

by Tim Atkin
Getting to grips with terroir “Have you ever thought about making your own wine?” If you write about fermented grape juice for a living it doesn’t take long before someone...

Time to learn Mandarin?

by Tim Atkin
David Cameron’s visit to Beijing this week at the head of the biggest-ever British trade delegation acknowledged a simple, if slightly uncomfortable fact. For the foreseeable future, the world’s economy...

Why is Asia in love with Lafite?

by Tim Atkin
A long face is almost de rigueur for anyone working in the London wine trade right now. There was a brief outbreak of optimism in the late spring and early...

Wrangles at Wine Australia

by Tim Atkin
What’s happening to the Australian wine industry at the moment reminds me of the famous line from Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest: “To lose one parent may...

Burgundy 2009: first impressions

by Tim Atkin
Dominique Lafon “Hey, guys, great choice of time to visit.” Dominique Lafon of Domaine des Comtes Lafon in Meursault was only voicing the views of many of the Burgundian growers...

Grape heists – no ladder required

by Tim Atkin
It was among the most famous heists in the art world. Early one February morning in 1994, two crooks propped a ladder against the wall of Oslo’s National Gallery. They...