Transformations
by Margaret Rand
I arrived in Puligny, at my friend Mary’s house, the other weekend, and she handed me a flûte salée from her favourite boulangerie in Beaune. It was celestial: an apotheosis...
Country: USA
Wines Without Borders
by Rod Phillips
Climate change, with its pattern of extreme weather, has produced complex chains of events and decisions. One of them has led many producers in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, among Canada’s...
The Weight Of Wine
by Margaret Rand
What constitutes high alcohol now? In table wines, I mean; fortifieds haven’t changed. But I recall the horror when reds started hitting 14%. Then 14.5%. And now? 14% seems quite...
What makes a wine taste expensive?
by Margaret Rand
It happened at a Berry Bros tasting, down in the cellars where the floors are so uneven that they give you the impression you’ve absorbed a lot more alcohol than...
Wine Country Redux
by Celia Bryan-Brown
The plot of Wine Country is non-specific: look at the poster and you pretty much have it down. It’s a classic of the SNL Poehler-Fay-Rudolph-Dratch school of femcentric comedy. Not...
Sideways in Trump Country
by Peter Pharos
Nobody actually says Make America Great Again during the 103 agonising minutes of Wine Country, but one suspects it’s mostly because the writers are not self-aware enough to have a...
Trump, Macron and Making Wine Great Again
by Christy Canterbury MW
“It’s one of my only good traits. I never had a glass of alcohol. I never had alcohol, for whatever reason,” he added. “Can you imagine if I had? What...