Today I got to taste some Japanese wines, as part of a tasting for Yamamoto Akihiko’s www.winereport.jp publication. These wines are all from Hokkaido, a relatively new wine region in…
Score inflation is everywhere and it’s killing wine criticism
Back in 1984, I sat my ‘O’ level exams at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe. I was a quiet, geeky pupil – a classic in-betweener, friends with some…
New releases from urban winery Ldn Cru, Gavin’s last
Yesterday afternoon I met with winemaker Gavin Monery, to taste through the new wines from urban winery Ldn Cru, plus the previous vintage. It was Gavin’s last tasting, but he…
On wine prices: the’ve risen a lot, but this isn’t all bad
The wine world is a lot more interesting now than when I first started drinking wine in earnest back in the mid-1990s. At the same time, the prices for fine…
What’s the role of emotion in the perception of wine?
One of the aspects I didn’t cover much in my discussions of perception in I Taste Red, is how emotion affects the perception of the world around us. When we…
For food and drink at the airport, forget the lounge, and let’s rethink the flight experience
I had a good experience in Toronto airport this evening. Arriving quite early, I got through security, and then wandered around Terminal 3. Because I was flying WestJet (saving my…
A major award for I Taste Red
I’m so thrilled that I Taste Red, my latest book, has just won an a major award. Last night, at the Louis Roederer International Wine Writers’ Awards, it was successful…
Adding features: why the bolt-on approach to growth rarely works in wine
Recently I was driving a hire car. Back in the day, cars used to have radios, and perhaps a cassette player. Then there were a few knobs to control the…
Let’s stop hiding behind subjectivity
In the Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris, there’s a wonderful interchange between the hero from the 21st Century, Gil Pender, and Ernest Hemingway, in 1920s Paris. Pender has written…