Seven Steps to Natural Disambiguity
Unwined. At the extreme of denatured wine is a mass of grape juice with chemical intercessions at every stage of the manufacturing (sic) process from the intensively-farmed vineyards to the…
Not the end of the natural wine affair
What is wine to you? Is it the Masnavi of Hafiz or the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam or a Bacchanalian frenzy or an altogether more intellectual affair? Does it bring…
Thereâs Life in The Twitching Corpse of The Australian Wine Industry
At yet another of those conferences where the audience is harangued for not being globally ambitious the newly appointed head of Fozzies laid out his blueprint for world domination. âI…
Wilde Ferment
It is well known that Oscar Wilde was an epicurean of the highest order. Did he not aver that chefs were only lying in the gutter looking up at the…
From Science Today: âHigh-Flying Sauvignonâ
It had to happen and so it did. In the wake of the hugely successful Cloudy Bay locator, Les Caves de Pyrène, an insignificant company based in Guildford, has teamed…
Tasting Inside Out
Thoughts on note taking and wine writing Tasting notes may be the reconstruction of objective analysis (given the limitations of objectivity), or they may be intended to capture the spirit…
The Argumentalists
âI dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.â --Oscar Wilde There are various classes of people who emerge from the wormy woodwork when the subject…
Wine Labelling â The Argument in a Nutshell (Part 2)
Labels may provide useful information or gobbledegook. As those ruminatively munching their impeccably-labelled Shergar-burgers will be aware, they may be an accurate guide to what you are consuming - or…
Wine Labelling â The Argument in a Nutshell. (Part 1)
The hoary chestnut roasting on todayâs open fire is the thorny thicket of labelling. Part of me fantasises about serving the Ăźberinterventionist winemaker with the lengthiest of self-inflicted writs âthat…