I’m moving, to the Isle of Dogs in London’s Docklands, after a three year stay in the Kent town of Tunbridge Wells. You get to know a place quite well in three years, and it’s always poignant when you move on, but then again I now have the chance to discover a new place. Besides, nothing is for ever, you can’t freeze time, and change is something to be embraced.  I moved to Tunbridge Wells in November 2020, in the second UK national lockdown. It was a strange time, but it meant I got a lovely flat at a reasonable rent (the new renters are paying quite a bit more than I did). Close to the ..read more

In the world of wine, it’s normal to go to a wine producer’s website and then read ‘about us’, where that producer tells us their story. And for us journalists, when we are doing a gig we are often asked for our biography. I have several biographies that I’ve penned, in the third person of course (which sounds odd when you write it about yourself, pretending almost that someone else has). It’s not an easy thing to do: to tell your story. But it’s also an interesting exercise. What is your own narrative? You have to choose one, out of many possibilities. They can all be different, yet at the sa ..read more

I have a theory. If you want to be a writer, fill your mind with words. I’m not sure of this bit, but I think it really helps to read those words. Maybe listening to them can also be helpful: perhaps it doesn’t matter how they get in. Just that they are there. Of course, you also need the silence. The space, free of words. It’s not helpful to have continual signal going in. I find going for long walks (without headphones) helps here. It’s like baking with yeast: you add the words, then you leave them to do their thing. I also think that we have to rein in our tendency to let words flood our br ..read more

It’s a strange thing, but we often have a tendency to dismiss expertise, when that expertise is outside of our own field, or our own reach. I’ve noticed this with talented trade journalists who have come into wine from the outside. They’ve often written astutely about the business of wine, but often they carry with them a cynicism about wine expertise, especially at the highest level. It’s not something they’ve experienced themselves, so when they look at wine geeks debating the nuances of Bourgogne’s 936 climats, they dismiss it as nonsense.  I’ve experienced the same feelings in other f ..read more

I can’t quite believe it, but I’m back in Canada. Penticton BC, to be precise, in the heart of the Okanagan Valley, one of the world’s most scenic wine regions, and home to a dynamic wine scene that’s moved a long way even in the seven years since I first came here. I’ve been travelling a bit of late, after a huge travel fast, albeit an externally applied one. But just short haul: Italy, Ukraine, France and Romania. I wasn’t expecting to be doing long-haul so soon. But it’s the rearranged National Wine Awards of Canada, which I judged in 2014-2019 inclusive, and then the pandemic hit. It’s a r ..read more

After a false start last summer, when we thought things were opening up (and I managed two trips, to France and Germany), I’m flying again for the first time. The destination? Pollenza in Italy, to do some lecturing at the University of Gastronomic Sciences. In order to avoid quarantining, I have to be in and out in 120 hours, so there will be no time for vineyard visits or any other wine-related activity. But it feels like a big thing to be at an airport again, doing the things that used to be so normal but which now feel novel. It’s like re-learning. I used to be on the road most of the year ..read more

When I first got into wine, back in the 1990s, I discovered a book in a friend’s toilet that was to prove inspirational. It was Robert Parker’s Wine Buyer’s Guide, the book version of his increasingly successful wine review newsletter, The Wine Advocate. The thing about this book that grabbed me was its utility. It was written for me, the consumer, and all the other people like me who wanted unbiased commentary on all the wines out there. Parker’s big strength was that he was clear who he was writing for: the consumer. It came across clearly in his reviews. He described himself as a consumer c ..read more

It’s late April in the UK, and things are beginning to open up, after a long lockdown. I had my first pint in a pub garden today, and it tasted wonderful. Soon I will have my first meal in a restaurant. I’m sure it will be a memorable experience. I lost my life, as it was, just over a year ago. As I flew back from Japan in early March, there was a sense that this Covid virus was going to be quite a problem, but I had no idea just how devastating this global pandemic was going to become, nor any sense of how it would impact all of our lives. I went from being on the road for more than 300 days ..read more

Sometimes we need to step outside of our own perspective. This is true in our lives, but also in the world of wine. Each wine region has its own story. Its own pioneers (some new world wine regions still have extant pioneers!), its own heroes, its own quirks, its own challenges. If you live and work in a specific wine region, or you are a devoted fan of the wines of one region, it can sometimes be hard to see with perspective. After all, the wine world is a big place, despite the degree of interconnectivity it has today. I love the word sonder. It’s a term that counts as a neologism. In an att ..read more

I think it was Nicolas Joly who once said, before a wine can be good it must be true. I like this sentiment. We want honesty in wine: I don’t like the idea of a wine that has deliberately been made to be likeable. I’d rather drink something where the winegrowers intent is to fashion something that is true – true to its place, made without trickery or enological make-up. Honest. But this gets my mind whirring: what does ‘true’ mean? In the somewhat over-long but absorbing film Interstellar – about saving humanity by going into space and finding a new world to colonize – there’s an interesting c ..read more