Wine’s Next Price Shock

by Andy Neather
Call it the shock of the mediocre. Earlier this month in a West Country pub, I scanned the wine list out of idle interest. It offered just two wines under...

Wines To Drink On A Date

by Cong Cong Bo
On a cold, bright Saturday afternoon in January, a student couple entered my Cambridge wine shop-bar, Amphora. It was early and the venue was empty. After glancing at the extensive...

Ultimate Aromatherapy

by Cong Cong Bo
One of the first challenges of knowing any subject is learning to speak its language. Key terms allow aficionados to rapidly convey the gist of a wine in short-hand, and...

A Good Marriage

by Margaret Rand
Most wines are diminished by food. Discuss, writing on both sides of the paper at once, preferably in green ink. How could it not be so? Wines today are intended...

Love Wine

by Clare Tooley MW
Have you met your vinous soulmate? No, not your drinking partner, though we all need one of those, but the wine or wines with which you have connected to such...

Pouring Politics

by Charlie Leary
A recent article in Punch argued that we must re-inject politics into wine: “Without politics, terroir is just soil.” The article’s pretext was that some sort of ideological power play...

Drink Promiscuously

by Cong Cong Bo
It bothers me that wine drinkers frequently choose wine based on colour, or indeed dismiss those of the “wrong” colour. I have encountered this discrimination most overtly in the rosé...

The Revolution Won’t Be Vinified

by Peter Pharos
There is something vaguely onanistic in two contributors to the same website taking opposing views in back-to-back columns. As a reader, you are left with the sensation that instead of...

The Politics of Wine

by Guy Woodward
When I came into the wine industry 20 years ago, my impression was that, politically, it was broadly right-leaning. Certainly the upper echelons of the UK’s fine-wine fraternity were the...

Cultural Elevation

by Tom Hewson
I couldn’t find the right polish for my tan suede shoes that morning, so they’re looking a bit unloved as they sink into the expensive taupe carpet. Nobody is sitting...

The Light At Daybreak

by Clare Tooley MW
I had begun to think I would never write anything again. No harm done other than to my inner peace. My word inertia has felt a little like chronic jetlag,...