The bucolic opening sequence to The Hunger Games makes the dystopic Panem State seem homely; a place where you can stitch a quilt, or share a venison kill with your...
Writing a weekly column about wine for a national newspaper isn’t easy. I’ve been there done that – for 21 years. Keeping each article fresh is challenging. Some journalists don’t...
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...
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...
At first sight, it looked like a PR disaster. Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, was filmed falling off a paddleboard into Lake Windermere five times. He’s a...
There is no such thing as Jane Eyre, or the Mona Lisa, or Citizen Kane. Or a bottle of Château Lafite or Pinot Grigio. At least, there is no precise...
A recent article in Punch argued that we must re-inject politics into wine: “Without politics, terroir is just soil.” The article’s pretext was that some sort of ideological power play...
It bothers me that wine drinkers frequently choose wine based on colour, or indeed dismiss those of the “wrong” colour. I have encountered this discrimination most overtly in the rosé...
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...
What would Major General Charles Palmer think of Château Palmer being turned into a public cinema in 2022? This is a different Chíateau Palmer from the one most wine lovers...
I have worked my entire life for restless warriors. First in a bohemian penthouse studio in Notting Hill, then in the stubborn landscape of Bordeaux, and now in the velvet-textured...
In discussions of terroir rocks have exalted status. The journey downwards through the geological record is mostly a search for hard boundaries – chalk, basalt, slate – while the overlying...