A weekend or two ago I attended a gathering where a small bunch of people who like to write poetry, some of whose efforts had been gathered into a series...
I fell in love with both perfume and Sauternes at roughly the same time, when I moved to the Côte d’Azur for work in 1982. As it happens, neither had...
I chip into the hard yellow wax over the cork and it shatters; a frustrating rain over my station. Domaine Raveneau’s 2008 Chablis Premier Cru Vaillons is initially tight, mineral...
South Africa has been experiencing renewed international interest for its wines of genuine quality, thanks in part to The Swartland Revolution; a winemaking movement that took root in the hot...
Among all the bottles in what I somewhat pretentiously call my “cellar”, this one had followed me most faithfully. It must have rested briefly in the flat I shared with...
“Don’t trust them,” says Leon Panetta, a rueful former US Defense Secretary interviewed in the BBC’s three-part documentary China: A New World Order, “that’s the bottom line.” It’s advice that...
My mum is a gardener and sometimes works with a friend and fellow gardener called Don who takes care of hard landscaping, hedges and tree felling. As you’d expect given...
“The juice of the carrot, The smile of the parrot, A little drop of claret, Anything that rocks.” Like Ian Dury, I have found a little drop of claret a...
After months of lockdown and the return to a palimpsest of normality – who would have guessed six months ago that weekend supplements would run features on how to choose...
It’s been a week of toppled statues and Premiership footballers taking the knee at Villa Park. It’s been a week in which the world has faced up to what history...
For a supposedly fusty corner of modern life, the wine world has adapted to virtual life faster than Boris Johnson changing the subject when asked how many kids he has....
Everyone seems to have advice about how to get through lockdown. Even if we’re all still sitting here in December, our diaries emptier than your local Wetherspoons, I can’t imagine...