In the early 1990s I was commissioned to write a story about Esme Johnstone, a former director of Majestic who’d bought Château de Sours in the unglamorous Entre-Deux-Mers region of...
There’s an annoying trend in wine writing to recommend wines to accompany experiences other than dining. Specific wines with specific music, for example. How much sense does that make? Though...
Sitting in the October sunshine, chewing on the corner of my baguette, I wonder how many others have witnessed this timeless scene: pickers working their way up rows of vines,...
When was the last time you entered a wine tasting through a record shop? It was certainly a first for me. But walking past racks of LPs at The Vinyl...
I’m feeling a bit disappointed. I just opened the Fourth Edition of “The Oxford Companion to Wine” and not a single one of my entries was published. Admittedly, Jancis Robinson...
Juan Carlos López de Lacalle doesn’t look like a man who storms barricades. Skinny, bespectacled and bald, he’s more academic than action man. But appearances can be deceptive. The owner...
I’m not sure what motivated my ancestor to bury a wine time capsule back in 2015, but I felt that after two hundred years it was time to dig it...
When the 400 tickets for this year’s Swartland Revolution went on sale earlier this summer, they sold out within two minutes. Since it was first held in 2010, the annual...
Sometimes people’s names determine their whole life. A. J. Splatt and D. Weedon are both doctors of urology. There’s an Israeli tennis player called Anna Smashanova and a Dutch architect...
In this piece, US-based wine writer Ron Washam pokes fun at Riedel, the wine glass company, a brand that I respect and use personally. This is a piece of satire....
Visitors to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi were warned to stay off the streets last month. The city has seen its share of disorder over the centuries, but this had...
Hello Le Pan is the only wine magazine that answers the questions to which real wine connoisseurs need answers. Is my private jet a good place to store my First...