Thank you, Jancis
I can’t say I’m not going to gloat. When the likes of Jancis Robinson MW say ‘I do increasingly feel like a pawn in a game designed to part you with as much money as possible’, my self-indulgent, long-winded, overwrought rants against the Bordeaux En Primeur system acquire a certain validity. Although I’d like to [...]
I just want to briefly add a couple of ideas to today’s earlier piece on the corruption of our children by depraved adults and their unashamed wine consumption. In that piece I raised the issue that the health industry (for it is indeed a massive business) is fighting against alcohol (and by extension, wine). Then [...]
Context is everything. That might surprise a few people who follow this blog given that I regularly say we should discount context when evaluating a wine. But in many other areas, context is undoubtedly key. For instance, I could tell you that schools are raising money using two great vices: gambling and alcohol. Your knee [...]
And still it won’t go away. Those with long memories will recall the Jay Miller / Sierra Carche story – a very long-winded affair in which ‘MrBigJ’ (as he calls himself) rated a wine that had little to do with what people were being sold. It was hardly MrBigJ’s fault but he didn’t come out [...]
Dany Boon: welcome to Bordeaux
Popular French comedian Dany Boon was inducted into the St-Emilion hall of fame on Saturday (I refer of course to the Jurade de St-Emilion) and, showing he fully understood the role that such an office implies, uttered a series of fantastic clichés topped off with a bit of Bordeaux flag-waving. When he returns to Paris, [...]
Is wine a rich person’s drink?
Yesterday evening I read two pieces that – while their intentions I’m sure were good – give me pause for concern when it comes to how wine and the business of wine is being represented. The first was Wine Spectator’s latest Unfiltered: a light-hearted take on recent events. A surprise new character steps onto the [...]
Everyone in the wine blogosphere is talking about additives at the moment, from Dr.Vino to Catavino to Jamie Goode and overall it seems the issues are same: no one really likes the idea of a winemaker adding something like a GM yeast strain or Mega Purple to a wine, but they feel unable to condemn [...]
The future of top Bordeaux wines
Although I take but a passing, philistine’s, interest in Game Theory, I thought that the basic premise of Professor Bruce Bueno de Mesquita‘s model on predicting world events might suffer to have the great Bordeaux wine market passed through it. De Mesquita is lauded with being able to predict, with around 90% certainty, the effects [...]
The recent news that Robert Parker has stopped reviewing California certainly came as a surprise. A shock, no; but a surprise that this move – towards what must be a kind of semi-retirement (incidentally I doubt Parker will ever fully retire) – has been declared so soon. With Parker left reviewing only Bordeaux, the Rhône, [...]
