Mental Geography
by Andy Neather
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...
Country: England
The Tale of Two Château Palmers
by Charlie Leary
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...
The Warrior Mentality
by Clare Tooley MW
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...
The Clay Sea
by John Atkinson MW
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...
Offensively Inoffensive
by Andy Neather
It was an easy target. A recent Twitter flurry over the by-the-glass wine list at Gordon Ramsay’s Michelin-starred London restaurant Pétrus focused on the punchy prices. And it’s true: charging...
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...
New Wine In Old Bottles
by Andy Neather
I should have expected it in a temple of Tuscan kitsch: Chianti in fiasco, the bulbous bottles wrapped in straw that were a symbol of Italian eateries in 1970s Britain....
The Noise And The Reality
by Andy Neather
So much coverage of Brexit has been noise about symbols. Brexiteers obsessed over a return to “blue” British passports and an end to the “humiliation” of Burgundy-coloured ones. In fact,...
Humanising The New Normal
by Andy Neather
There are places in Europe where crowds gather to watch cows being let out of their barns after a winter shut up eating hay. It’s a gladdening sight: the beasts...
The View from Abroad
by Peter Pharos
One of the nice things about wine publications is that one gets to read about more than the liquid itself. Wine writing can function as food writing, travelogue, cultural study,...
The Good Old Days
by Henry Jeffreys
“It is quite remarkable how Britain has gone from being a still white wine producer of declining relevancy in the world of wine to being a contender for the title...
Côtes de Grantham might cost the earth
by Andy Neather
As a dramatisation of climate change and crisis, it felt like a moment. I was in the Putney car park of the PR company R&R Teamwork, talking to Oz Clarke...