The radio this week has been full of despairing parents complaining about unavoidably ubiquitous smart phones at primary schools and...

Jujuy. It’s two hours flight northwest of the Argentina capital on the border with Bolivia, with a long backbone of the Andes and, on...

Novello Every time we drive back from Italy, we snake up the motorway through the narrow Val d’Aosta to the Mont Blanc tunnel, and admire...

‘La France va mal’. Having lived here for 30 years it’s a perennial cry. France is sick! Looking across the Channel at the ongoing...

The age-old rivalry. No, not the French and the English, but the Bordelais and the Bourguignon. Bordeaux versus Burgundy, the gently...

I last visited the royal town of Pau and the next-door wine town of Jurancon twenty-five years ago, and a lot has changed since. First of...

Occasionally a kind and vinously very well-connected friend invites me to a tasting with one of the grands. I don’t usually post...

Soil in Les Clos, Grand Cru, Chablis I have written before of the link between a village on the south coast of Dorset in England called...

I am not a great believer in these huge comparative tastings when people proudly show off the thirty (or more) bottles that they’ve just...

Who remembers Y2K? It was I guess the beginnings of the tech obsession, but back then in 1999 everyone was apparently terrified that...

Standing on top of the fifteenth century Tower of Belem looking out over the Tagus River towards the Atlantic, it is difficult to imagine...

My affection for Argentina dates back to the late 90s. The people, the culture, the grandiose scenery, the fishing (of course) in...

Paris on Sunday. It was an extraordinary match, an extraordinary atmosphere and an extraordinary achievement. The pavements were packed...

Living in France is wonderful if you want to pop down the autoroute to Burgundy or the Loire, to eat and of course to drink, but there...

This is not really focussed on wine, so please forgive me, or just skip to the end where I will get back on track I promise. But...

I don’t usually like to post about a single bottle as it invariable means some ego-boosting label that nobody else can afford, so what’s...

Patagonia Extrema. I recently wrote about the new wave of wineries springing up in the province of Chubut in Argentine Patagonia, but...

It’s been a while since I posted anything, and the endless summer has finally ended. Gone the baking dry sunshine, the ever-ripening...

The world is descending into a hideous spiral; vile invasions, endless covid, 40 degree heat in England(!), supply chain disruptions,...

As one slides, (gently and willingly I trust), into retirement, I’ve noticed that one’s wine buying priorities can change. For starters,...