Bordeaux 2010: should you believe the hype?
by Tim Atkin
At a drinks party during the Masters of Wine Symposium in Bordeaux last June I was talking to Jean-Guillaume Prats, the general manager of Château Cos d’Estournel. What would the...
Country: France
The 2009 Burgundy vintage: second opinion
by Tim Atkin
“You call that work? ” asked a friend of mine when I told him about the rigours of Burgundy week in early January. “Most people would pay serious amounts of...
In praise of older wines
by Tim Atkin
How long does it take you to drink a bottle of wine once you’ve bought it? A day? A week? A year? I’m not sure how accurate the statistic is,...
The cult of the winemaker
by Tim Atkin
The death of the Nouvelle Vague film director Claude Chabrol earlier this week has prompted a spate of national mourning in France, with president Sarkozy comparing the great man to...
Jilly G, Gary V and wine TV
by Tim Atkin
Call me a member of an endangered minority, but I still miss Food and Drink, the BBC cookery show that Delia Smith once dubbed “the most disgusting programme on television”....
Acid trip
by Tim Atkin
“Buy on an apple, sell on a piece of cheese,” runs an old wine trade saw. It’s good advice for consumers, too. If a wine, especially a red wine, can...
In defence of Chardonnay
by Tim Atkin
What’s the most insulting thing you can do to a grape? Mixing it with cola, lemonade or tonic water is a slap in the face, but the lowest of low...
2009 Bordeaux en primeur: will the bubble burst?
by Tim Atkin
A friend who works for a City hedge fund calls it “the taxi driver moment”. His theory is that when London cabbies start talking about a guaranteed way to make...
Novelty wines: Arrogant Frog and other labels
by Tim Atkin
Back in the early 1980s, the Australian producer Wolf Blass invented a sparkling red called René Pogel. Wolfie, as he’s known to friends, is a brash, but extremely successful bloke,...
The other side of own-label
by Tim Atkin
As oxymorons go, they may not be as absurd as “French resistance”, “amicable divorce” and “camping holiday”, but there’s still something fundamentally silly about Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Spaghetti Bolognese,...
Rasputin and underwater wines
by Tim Atkin
What is it about the Baltic and champagne? Last week’s high profile discovery of a cache of bubbly aboard a shipwreck is not the first time fizz has been found...
Wines to drink by the Med
by Tim Atkin
When the package tour operator Goldtrail Travel collapsed last week, cancelling the summer holidays of some 50,000 customers, bar owners in Greece and Turkey must have had mixed feelings. Goldtrail’s...