It’s amazing how attached we become to rules that we’ve learned. Take the split infinitive. ‘To boldly go,’ is – to those who learned grammar in school – technically wrong,…
A (bad) day in the life of a wine writer
I’m currently in Canada. I’ve just spent four wonderful days in the Okanagan Valley, but when it came time to leave, things didn’t go so well. Maybe I should have…
Staying mentally flexible
I’m getting older. Back in 2013 at the age of 45 I ran a marathon with 14 weeks training. It was a tough but liberating experience. I never thought I…
Another BA lounge wine round-up
Flew back from Sicily. Three hours to kill at Gatwick before I head to Edinburgh this evening for a very exciting masterclass of New Zealand wines tomorrow, so I headed…
What I learned about wine from going to a gig
Monday was fun. I arrived at Heathrow at nine in the morning. I’d just flown in from Montreal on a short overnight flight that took some six hours. By the…
Why ‘like what you like’ is generally bad advice when it comes to wine
Here, I’m addressing some questionable comments made about wine tasting, including the oft-proffered advice, ‘like what you like.’ The first is that the trade is full of wine snobs. Usually,…
For most wines, glass bottles make no sense
In many classic wine-producing countries it used to be normal to visit a winery and buy wine directly from the tank, filling up your own container. This is a good…
Some highlights from the Waitrose press tasting
I’ve just spent two afternoons tasting through the range of Waitrose, a UK-based supermarket. The range is varied and some of the buying is quite brave and imaginative, especially when…
Robert Parker retires
It has been announced today that the world’s most famous wine critic has retired. The critic in question, Robert Parker, pretty much invented the genre, and was the first to…