Making sense of Sangiovese
by Tim Atkin
How do you make sense of Italian wine? The country has more indigenous grapes than any other (somewhere between 800 and 1000 at a rough estimate) many of which are...
Topic: Column
Juel Mahoney’s take on 2006 Brunello di Montalcino vintage
by Tim Atkin
There’s something reminiscent of Fashion Week about the Benvenuto Brunello event in Montalcino, with visitor passes, photographers, security guards and large tents. Amongst it all, this is where I tasted...
An agnostic’s view of natural wines
by Tim Atkin
The future of wine or a heap of hooey? Just like bio-dynamics, Dr Rudolf Steiner’s so-called “spiritual science”, the subject of natural wines tends to provoke extreme opinions. Listening to...
The Zen of Koshu
by Tim Atkin
There aren’t many wine styles that are unfamiliar to most people in the booze trade, but Japanese Koshu is surely one of them. I don’t mind admitting that before the...
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...
My wine wish list for 2011
by Tim Atkin
2011 may have eased stiff-limbed out of the starting blocks, but it’s stumbled such a short way down the track that I hope you won’t mind me making a wine...
The world beyond Bordeaux
by Tim Atkin
Here we go again. The high octane excitement surrounding the 2009 Bordeaux vintage has only just abated, but four months before the next en primeur campaign kicks off, 2010 is...
The rebirth of Lebanese wine
by Tim Atkin
A five hour flight to Lebanon coupled with a lengthy, fog-bound delay at Heathrow is a good time to do some reading about this most complex of Middle Eastern countries....
Odds-on winner
by Tim Atkin
Why don’t off-licence managers look out of the window in the morning? The answer, according to a joke that’s doing the rounds in the booze trade, is that they’d have...
Time to learn Mandarin?
by Tim Atkin
David Cameron’s visit to Beijing this week at the head of the biggest-ever British trade delegation acknowledged a simple, if slightly uncomfortable fact. For the foreseeable future, the world’s economy...
Wrangles at Wine Australia
by Tim Atkin
What’s happening to the Australian wine industry at the moment reminds me of the famous line from Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest: “To lose one parent may...
Grape heists – no ladder required
by Tim Atkin
It was among the most famous heists in the art world. Early one February morning in 1994, two crooks propped a ladder against the wall of Oslo’s National Gallery. They...