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...
Topic: wine
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,...
Can AI Break The Mystique Of Connoisseurship?
by Andy Neather
Another day, another outlandish claim about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will transform our lives. Last week the BBC News website claimed breathlessly that “AI… is now increasingly helping people buy...
Why AI Matters
by Tim Atkin
My friend Matt likes to confuse algorithms. “Every now and then, I type the first thing that comes into my head into Google, Facebook or Instagram” he told me. “Emperor...
Wine Chatbots
by Peter Pharos
Sometime in the next couple of years Robert Joseph will buy me a bottle of wine. I believe the erstwhile wine correspondent of the Daily Telegraph to be a man...
A Natural Solution?
by Fintan Kerr
Considering we have the good fortune to deal with one of mankind’s greatest creations, we wine people spend a lot of time worrying. Our industry is inextricably linked to nature...
The Stage And The Actor
by Margaret Rand
I had to buy some more wine glasses the other day. I’ve always used Spiegelau ones at home – good quality, but not so expensive that breaking them induces a...
Insider Talk
by Peter Pharos
“When art critics get together,” Picasso is meant to have said, “they talk about form and structure and meaning. When artists get together, they talk about where you can buy...
Burrowing
by Tom Hewson
A confession: I’m pretty sure I used the term ‘Kafkaesque’ before I’d read any Kafka. In itself this could count as faintly Kafkaesque in its admission that authenticity and the...
Can Wine Beat The Odds In 2023?
by Andy Neather
As wine-world knockabout, it was hard to beat. On BBC Newsnight last month, Conservative right-winger Jacob Rees-Mogg, perhaps the most arrogant British politician of his generation in a tough field,...