tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67006665506038652372024-03-05T10:16:39.925+00:00Jonathan HealeyAuthor, columnist, hotelierJonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-31559180434334636592020-12-07T14:53:00.006+00:002021-04-25T18:17:06.113+01:00Why the French are clueless about wine: Confessions of a British wine columnist in France Paperback (Dec, 2020)<p><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08NDVJ63W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="496" data-original-width="310" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVebkDSV1sfMBXxCP4PuV0ge3FTW8oNu4drr4ZKwl2cDO4RLHrK8L5wx7IiFhz_kaQf8Xlyj49Kjj1XsAFSHFxrKxHxUOK_8VQnVf362EnzxTUkGcpJuPaQ2xIVRwOgp_ifYxM0NSEvYE/s320/Cover+WTFACAW.jpeg" /></a></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>How is man boobs a wine fault? How can you spot a fake wine? Will China be making the world's greatest wines soon? How do you spot a good wine list? And choose well from a bad one? Are medals worth anything? What should you drink at 35,000 feet? Why is wine writing dull? Are wine gadgets just Plenty O'Toole? What's boring about Victoria Moore? And how can you learn all you need</span><span><span> to </span><span>know about wine?</span></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">These entertaining, offbeat columns on wine culture (from three years as columnist at France's <i>The Connexion </i>newspaper) tell you all you need to know about choosing, enjoying, and talking about wine - and how to avoid the wines you shouldn't be drinking. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08NDVJ63W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1" style="display: inline; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="43" data-original-width="99" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9XMNWWOrrs1QWyxeJVSdWPAgix9k_WmvET3c4YYWu8vVm0UuC_FgfHey_DaYCPefklJ6dR-Ra8_gOBchmYXzNOGGj91x5xisBPYMk4UvqWTbgS6Ej-ISZm-sjONew46s3JiJ-CS3Hrlw/s0/Amazon.jpeg" /></a></div><p></p><ul class="a-unordered-list a-nostyle a-vertical a-spacing-none detail-bullet-list" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 1px 18px; padding: 0px;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 5.5px; word-wrap: break-word;"><span class="a-list-item" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="a-text-bold" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"><br /></span></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 5.5px; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 5.5px; word-wrap: break-word;"><span class="a-list-item" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="a-text-bold" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Paperback : </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">138 pages</span></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 5.5px; word-wrap: break-word;"><span class="a-list-item" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="a-text-bold" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">ISBN-13 : </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">979-8687568340</span></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 5.5px; word-wrap: break-word;"><span class="a-list-item" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="a-text-bold" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Dimensions : </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">5 x 0.32 x 8 inches</span></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 5.5px; word-wrap: break-word;"><span class="a-list-item" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="a-text-bold" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Publisher : </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Independently published (November 14, 2020)</span></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 5.5px; word-wrap: break-word;"><span class="a-list-item" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="a-text-bold" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">ASIN : </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">B08NDVJ63W</span></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 5.5px; word-wrap: break-word;"><span class="a-list-item" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="a-text-bold" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Language: : </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">English</span></span></li></ul><div><span face="Amazon Ember, Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #111111;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span face="Amazon Ember, Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #111111;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span face="Amazon Ember, Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #111111;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></div>Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-27614599279747998712017-07-17T15:00:00.001+01:002020-05-07T18:36:34.242+01:00What's so boring about Victoria Moore?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; text-align: justify;">I WAS TICKLED PINK when an Irish wine merchant in France (a reader of my column in </span><i style="font-family: 'helvetica neue'; text-align: justify;">The Connexion</i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; text-align: justify;">) wrote: “You should replace that boring woman who writes for </span><i style="font-family: 'helvetica neue'; text-align: justify;">The Saturday Telegraph</i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; text-align: justify;">.” Then, I wondered, how could Victoria Moore (</span><i style="font-family: 'helvetica neue'; text-align: justify;">The Telegraph</i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; text-align: justify;">’s</span><i style="font-family: 'helvetica neue'; text-align: justify;"> </i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; text-align: justify;">wine editor, BBC Good Food programme contributor, ’Wine Columnist of the Year’) be boring? </span></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">She seems game for a laugh. In her<i> Summer Wine Guide</i> (<i>The Saturday Telegraph, </i></span>June 28<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">), she recommends a “frothy and fun” Sauvignon Blanc as perfect “for a hot day running under sprinklers.” What fun! Though whimsy is not really Moore’s thing. “I loved this despite myself,” she confesses.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Moore is less forthcoming on the perfect occasion for a wine she calls “a slutty red that oozes languor”. Titter ye not. Maybe after a hot day running under sprinklers? Though parody is not really Moore’s thing either, despite having just tarted up the “cheeky little wine of amusing pretension” of satirical memory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Sitting in her candlelit cellar, there’s no mistaking Moore is a serious wine writer. And that means tasting notes. Lots of</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span>them. Wines “redolent” of chalk, hot pavement, baked fruit, hot lemons, earth, dust, old saddles, and church incense. At the end of a long tasting note in her <i>Summer Wine Guide</i>, a breathless Moore throws her hands in the air and concludes “it’s all there.” The reader is now understandably lost. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Most modern wine critics can’t really describe wine,” says Hugh Johnson, “so they use a list of ingredients, such as orange and mango that really nobody understands.” Stuart Walton, in his myth-busting wine business book <i>You Heard it Through the Grapevine</i>, goes further: "Descanting about rose-petals has undermined the entire wine-writing enterprise.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Moore should (and probably does) know that tasting notes are bullshit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Roman Weil studies what tasting notes communicate at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. In one study, 200 wine drinkers tasted three wines (two were the same) and matched them to descriptions from Robert Parker and <i>Wine Spectator</i> magazine. The ability to match tasting notes with wines is “no better than random,” Weil reports in the <i>Journal of Wine Economics.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In other words: “Deep ruby colour includes purple nuances. Closed aromatically, hints of crème de cassis and black cherries. Cuts broad swath across the palate with considerable depth and concentration. Tannic as well as broodingly backward” (a Parker description of a Rhône wine from Weil’s study) had no informational value for tasters<i>.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Adrienne Lehrer, author of <i>Wine and Conversation </i>and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, concurs: “People have a no better than random chance of identifying a wine from their own tasting notes.” Even wine experts using expert tasting notes perform only slightly better than random.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Notwithstanding, in <i>Appreciating wines made on volcanic soils</i><i> </i>(<i>The Telegraph</i>,<i> </i>10 June), Moore rushes her tasting note into the third paragraph, except the wine turns out to be “hard to describe.” Is this a wine critic at the top of her game? To clarify (or mystify), she adds “it is underlaid by an intriguing, savoury sensation, almost as if the volcano is trying to make its presence felt.” Um… maybe the volcano was rumbling and she got distracted?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Moore does better when she tastes in silence. In an introspective piece, <i>Why I prefer to taste in silence</i> (<i>The Telegraph</i>, 17 June), Moore says she gets so “frustrated at work tastings” when the person pouring “begins a barrage of distraction.” Like when you’re holding a telephone and the person on the other end is talking… so off-putting! Only the pluckiest wine writer could detect “summer pudding and cherry blossom” under such conditions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But what if the “yackety-yak” (of which Moore bemoans) is neither the pourer’s banter, nor the label's spellbinding tasting notes, but the sound of her own knickers getting into a twist? (A sound “like a band turning up to play a demo tape to an A&R man, then belting out a competing round of London’s Burning,” she says). Under the strains of such jangling dissonance, Moore complains, “I am thrown and have to check myself and start again.” How maddening!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This slight column is actually about how language influences perception. “Advertisers have known for years that if you surround a product with positive imagery and expectations then it becomes more desirable,” Moore informs nobody. “I can’t pretend to be astonished by these findings,” she admits. Me neither. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I can’t pretend to be astonished by retired wine professional Roger Mole’s comment following her column either. If he is anything to go by (and his is the only comment), <i>The Telegraph</i>’s<i> </i>readers are having none of it:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">And yet Moore finishes her column on silence with three ‘Wines of the week’, including this Italian white: “Delicate, neat and fine, with flavours of chalk, lemon juice and zest and white grapefruit (M&S, £13.50).” (For those who can’t decide what to drink for summer, her <i>Summer Wine Guide</i> has 35 shopping recommendations).</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Wine recommendations are of the ‘what to buy and where to find it’ school of wine writing. It’s the approach of someone who thinks that a passion for the automobile is satisfied by reading the Auto Trader price guide; or that Top Gear peaked in 1982 with Tiff Needle’s road tests. Worse, it directs wine lovers to supermarket aisles where they learn nothing about wine. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But what’s a soulless, or clueless, wine writer to do? Teach other people how to fake it?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In <i>How to sound like a wine expert </i>(BBC Good Food magazine)<i>, </i>Moore reveals "what you need to know to talk wine with confidence” despite Walton’s warning that "large numbers of people think winespeak is tedious flannel, and all those speakers and writers who utter it are, quite frankly, too far up their own arses.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But Moore is not afraid to go there. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">She advises “wannabe wine gurus” to talk about trendy regions, for example: “There are some great wines coming out of Etna, the Jura, Porongurup and Swartland” (wines that should be on "every hipster's sipper map"). A few scant paragraphs later, we learn (somewhat relieved) that it doesn't matter if you know nothing about these regions because: “Even the nerdiest of wine experts doesn't know it all, but you'll rarely hear them admitting to that. Instead they will bluff, nod and spout on confidently. You should do the same - no one will ever know.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Yes, they will. And they will avoid you at parties. People recognise “tedious flannel”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Her final tip is for wannabe wine experts who find themselves “in the awkward position of opening a favourite bottle for friends only to feel disappointed and faintly embarrassed when they obviously don't like it.” How mortifying! “Say ‘it isn’t showing well.’ Everyone wins,” says Moore. It doesn’t mean anything, but “wine experts never let themselves lose face over this.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Tellingly her column has 0 comments despite this invitation to readers: “Any tips or tricks for sounding like a wine aficionado?” More tellingly, the column ends: “We’d love to hear how you got on with this recipe. Did you like it? Would you recommend others give it a try?” Do the editors of BBC Good Food magazine (‘Media brand of the year’) also care so little about wine?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">MOORE HAS A SPECIAL class of friends she calls “wine friends”. They are distinct from “lay tasters” (who presumably enjoy wine but have only pretensions to “summer puddings and cherry blossom”). She invited “wine friends” to dinner to celebrate the deal to publish her new book ‘The Wine Dine Dictionary’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Curiously, on the webpage introducing her new book, Moore doesn’t discuss pairing food with wine at all. Perhaps she knows it’s bullshit too. Instead, the reader is treated to the story of the book’s publishing deal, beginning with meeting her agent “who is very brilliant and beady (just don’t try to kiss her hello while wearing lip gloss, you’ll get trapped in her magnificent hair).” I’ll remember that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Well, it’s a thrilling two weeks! “We were in the midst of a bidding war,” she says. “I cannot even begin to tell you what a fizzy stomach I had.” This goes on for five paragraphs. It’s really the kind of story to share just with “wine friends”. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Predictably, Moore’s book publishing success story ends with a wine recommendation and this tasting note: “An incredibly complex wine, that unfurls in your glass like a perfume, and smells of wood smoke and the dried herbs and scrubland on a craggy, sun-baked hillside in the south of France and warm fruits grown in the south of France (£39 from The Wine Society).” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I live in the south of France, so when Moore waxes lyrically about “a craggy, sun-baked hillside”, I know what she’s talking. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So does Princeton University economist Richard Quandt. “In some instances, there is an unhappy marriage between a subject that especially lends itself to bullshit and bullshit artists who are impelled to comment on it. I fear that wine is one of those instances where this unholy union is in effect,” he writes in his essay<i> On Wine Bullshit</i> in the <i>Journal of Wine Economics</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Yet, this isn’t just wine bullshit. Fatally, Moore is now just talking about herself. She even advises “lay tasters” to file her books under ‘Self-Improvement Manuals’. Her self-improvement guru name is ‘Planet Victoria’. This is ‘head-up-the-arse’ wine writing with a selfie-stick up there. Quite an achievement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When I contacted @PlanetVictoria on Twitter (with the Irish wine merchant’s assessment of her inability to engage readers with a passion for wine), she replied: “More politics of hate”. Confused, I scrolled through her tweets, expecting to find the concentrated essence of Moore’s approach to wine writing. Before I could scribble down her supermarket wine recommendations and tasting notes, she blocked me from her account.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The most curious response I had was from wine writer Gavin Quinney: “Unusual pitch. Call a hugely respected writer 'that boring woman' on the cover of your book and then ask her to buy and review the book.”</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">First, there are not huge numbers of people reading wine journalism (why would there be?). So by whom is she “hugely respected”? A clique of wine writers and wine industry types handing out ‘Columnist of the Year’ gongs? Second, huge respect should be reserved for huge accomplishments. Wine writing is not one of them. Boring wine writing even less so. Then again, maybe Moore's just ‘not showing well’. Everyone wins!</span></div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-30724309350716315282017-06-02T14:02:00.000+01:002020-05-07T18:40:03.379+01:00Plenty O'Toole<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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THE PHOTOGRAPH 'Plenty O'Toole' by Nigel Bradley (Decanter, Wine Spectator) was taken to accompany a column in <i>The Connexion</i> about folding helicopters, flappy-padle cork screws, and James Bond. I like the image because it's also a visual metaphor for determination in the face of pretentiousness, an important trait for a wine critic. It's no accident that Plenty is confronted by a bottle from Château d'Arse (a name that evokes the place where many wine writers have their heads).</div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-68669258649330408972013-12-01T20:02:00.000+00:002014-06-28T16:49:07.450+01:00It's the thought that counts when you are drunk at Christmas<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikUsHIDWtAts44lCG6SceIeJJhni7_JxxygF8lR9nU2aQV90q-22VEKJapStWhHuWC27BL0mq2eiJkWoZM7FWclUqZVmI2m27FQ9Ykw9R3e1ZDPgFu-75k4JJ2X3-STfLZlS6TJA9BfgI/s1600/beergoggles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikUsHIDWtAts44lCG6SceIeJJhni7_JxxygF8lR9nU2aQV90q-22VEKJapStWhHuWC27BL0mq2eiJkWoZM7FWclUqZVmI2m27FQ9Ykw9R3e1ZDPgFu-75k4JJ2X3-STfLZlS6TJA9BfgI/s400/beergoggles.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">HOW MUCH do you need to drink to feel the life and soul of the party? Ig Noble Prize-winning psychology researchers from Grenoble University recruited subjects to compare levels of intoxication with reports of how seductive, intelligent, original and funny subjects felt. Intoxication is not a simple consequence of consuming alcohol, they say; it results (more importantly) from the psychological effect of believing alcohol has been drunk. Subjects who believed they had drunk alcohol - even those that had </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; text-decoration: underline;">not</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;"> - gave themselves the most positive evaluations. A sobering thought: designated drivers could be getting 'drunk' on alcohol-free booze.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Full article first published in </span><a href="http://www.connexionfrance.com/" style="letter-spacing: 0px;" target="_blank">The Connexion</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> (December, 2013)</span></span></div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-28000167336254014872013-10-28T11:43:00.000+00:002014-06-28T17:01:10.753+01:00Rumpole's wine case reveals price mystery<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">IN <i>RUMPOLE and The Blind Tasting</i>, Horace Rumpole attends a blind tasting at a fine wine shop as a guest of his colleague Claude Erskine-Brown. Rumpole becomes curious about the cost of wine when several dozen cases of the shop's expensive St. Emilion from top estate Chateau Cheval Blanc turn up in his client's garage. As his wine knowledge goes only as far as Pommeroy's wine bar's Chateau Fleet Street, he asks an expert for help. He learns that wine is not very expensive to make and that price and quality, like law and justice, are not always as closely related as they should be. The relation in some cases is stretched beyond belief.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Full article first published in <a href="http://www.connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (November, 2013)</span></div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-9950644848770487872013-09-29T14:36:00.002+01:002014-07-18T17:36:31.144+01:00Is wine journalism a load of nonsense?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">A SPAT on Twitter between wine journalists and wine merchants exposed the journalists to accusation of lazily filling their columns with lame reviews of favourite wines from The Wine Society. "To do otherwise would be perverse," one writer tweeted in defense of the 'what to drink and where to find it' dumbed-down approach to wine journalism. But if sensible wine writing resembles an internal memo for members of The Wine Society, what would "perverse" wine writing look like instead? Hugh Johnson wrote about wine with sensuous prose; Kermit Lynch wrote about the pleasures of wine and never engaged in contrived tasting notes.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Full article first published in <a href="http://connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (October, 2013)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Photograph of Kermit Lynch by Peter DaSilva</span></div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-86916749128685222102013-09-01T13:14:00.000+01:002014-07-18T17:39:35.732+01:00Historic vintage for French appellations?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmhIBkSGg4K-YHg5TffmXR2V49HiyblvE0WErprtwD6Hvfjvicjp35Zy9eY2Xeps30c5JrW3O002s2JWEQnZgh6V2-oto5wXkMaLK-yS0y345rEHnftsCE84jO9jVKLNmDIdpdCg-GmbE/s1600/inao.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmhIBkSGg4K-YHg5TffmXR2V49HiyblvE0WErprtwD6Hvfjvicjp35Zy9eY2Xeps30c5JrW3O002s2JWEQnZgh6V2-oto5wXkMaLK-yS0y345rEHnftsCE84jO9jVKLNmDIdpdCg-GmbE/s400/inao.jpg" height="206" width="400" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">AS FRANCE casts off its 78-year old appellation system in favour of an EU-approved scheme, should wines lovers mourn its passing? No, they should not. With AOCs proliferating and industrial production widespread, France's leading consumer magazine says 40% of French appellation wines are unworthy of their discredited labels and 65% communicate nothing about terroir. Inspection will go beyond sniffing the odd vat sample under new EU rules. The new labels are changing buying habits. But never buy a wine that showcases its appellation - the producer is selling it based on the appellation's perceived quality, not his/her skill.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Full article first published in <a href="http://connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (September, 2013)</span></div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-64852426018727949792013-07-30T17:50:00.001+01:002014-06-28T17:00:43.468+01:00This summer's crazy rosé craze<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjB82MjwbbgFNzweKK-BBnC5LHqyXbSiUXcHFbVyY5y8zF7yJMl-iLviitw-vkVmxxghG4zXR8XJJhmW8N5JFLt-FMnBHxP7M18paVNJDPrg0QGtuA16Zcqkdsse-DJcW5SQrQ37qHj-o/s1600/very-pamp-le-rose-pamplemousse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjB82MjwbbgFNzweKK-BBnC5LHqyXbSiUXcHFbVyY5y8zF7yJMl-iLviitw-vkVmxxghG4zXR8XJJhmW8N5JFLt-FMnBHxP7M18paVNJDPrg0QGtuA16Zcqkdsse-DJcW5SQrQ37qHj-o/s400/very-pamp-le-rose-pamplemousse.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">WE WERE out of rosé. I squeezed red and white wine into a pichet from two bag-in-boxes until a rosé colour was achieved. The shame made me want to string the bags around my neck as a penance like the ancient mariner's albatross. My crime is matched by the grapefruit-flavoured disrespect heaped on rosé by Loire producers of <i>Rosé-Pamp</i>. In a risible attempt to give their flavoured wine a veneer of sophistication, marketers trace its origin to a <i>Kir Vendômois</i> (unknown to Google). The supermarket space dedicated to <i>Rosé-Pamp</i> has almost eclipsed the good news coming out of the Loire Valley: sales of Cabernet d’Anjou are up 10%. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Full article first published in <a href="http://www.connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (August, 2013)</span></div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-35804952784665886362013-06-30T17:10:00.000+01:002014-06-28T17:06:48.107+01:00Johnny's 'tipple' leaves sour taste<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnP6RLxrkxpu8FHwSlR1REBAZZ6wq3CriXlr7TfE_vxY_VIf4QbfWYdoUcl3x2tCoUHb9oJRu5MSdu8I-nAV5EQJ0a-UZYXYVbfpqwA_TJhx9qwIBEQMceThP84P9NFbNNa4vSuUU-lLs/s570/johnnyvini.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnP6RLxrkxpu8FHwSlR1REBAZZ6wq3CriXlr7TfE_vxY_VIf4QbfWYdoUcl3x2tCoUHb9oJRu5MSdu8I-nAV5EQJ0a-UZYXYVbfpqwA_TJhx9qwIBEQMceThP84P9NFbNNa4vSuUU-lLs/s400/johnnyvini.jpg" height="258" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">FRANCE'S hard-living geezer of American rock 'n' roll Johnny Hallyday has “discovered” wine. Actually, the man who has made a career out of singing other people’s songs is lending his name to another person’s wine (blended from various sources). "We regret its lack of character," sniffs <i>Le Parisien</i>. Bad reviews won't count because if you’re prepared to tattoo his image on your body, you’ll pay €8.60 to have him over for dinner. With American-style fast-food outlets outnumbering real restaurants in France, and top French chefs now awarding labels to restaurants that actually use ingredients, is it time for a label recognising authentic wine? </span></div>
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Full article first published in <a href="http://www.connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (July, 2013)</div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-45766073319194241992013-05-30T12:12:00.002+01:002014-06-28T18:13:28.449+01:00The grapes of climate’s wrath<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4_Ahw8v37xVP3sIUCbJlnaw5Cyn4iRWZuSj6kkkVEqS7ZweoVR8c6TTGOqabuuT_gSWZxOydcxiZq2TpNAQGBj72JQHXe8h-usNP0oMK-H3LGkeJsrXpHsN-lMv1CWG3mzCQnc6VKi4U/s1600/panda.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4_Ahw8v37xVP3sIUCbJlnaw5Cyn4iRWZuSj6kkkVEqS7ZweoVR8c6TTGOqabuuT_gSWZxOydcxiZq2TpNAQGBj72JQHXe8h-usNP0oMK-H3LGkeJsrXpHsN-lMv1CWG3mzCQnc6VKi4U/s400/panda.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">TWO years ago the Spanish winemaker Miguel Torres told me he had abandoned plans to make wine in China as the country had no <i>terroir </i>suitable for viticulture. His analysis appeared to be supported by the fact that Chinese billionaires were then buying up Bordeaux estates. But climate researchers say </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; letter-spacing: 0px;">rising temperatures will transform the viticultural landscape as we know it by 2050 and that </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">Torres may have spoken too soon. Potential future wine regions include mountainous central China where giant pandas live. Torres’ vineyards in Catalonia will soon be inhospitable to viticulture.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; letter-spacing: 0px;"> Winemaking is, however, accustomed to climate change.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;">Full article first published in <a href="http://www.connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (June, 2013)</span></div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-55975773160766021042013-04-30T10:29:00.003+01:002014-06-28T18:13:49.928+01:00French are clueless about buying wine<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">THE average French shopper takes one minute and 26 seconds to choose a bottle of wine from a supermarket shelf. Is this ability to take swift decisions about wine an example of French </span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">savoir-vivre</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">? No, it isn’t. The average French supermarket shopper knows nothing about wine and feels lost in the wine aisle. Why do shoppers learn nothing about wine when supermarkets stock about 1,200 different bottles to choose from? Shoppers keep buying such forgettable wines because nothing is learned from drinking them. Choosing wine by the marketing mix (price, packaging, promotion) is no substitute for using wine knowledge to inform choices.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;">Full article first published in <a href="http://www.connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (May, 2013)</span></div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-8438987018561814582013-04-01T15:51:00.001+01:002014-06-28T18:11:55.668+01:00Gold medals have lost their glitter<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">HOW can a gold medal-winning wine from one competition end up without any award in another competition? Astonishingly, the likelihood of receiving a gold medal in a wine competition can be statistically explained by chance alone. A wine’s performance in one competition is also not correlated with its performance in another, say researchers. Wine judges' inconsistency and lack of peer concordance devalue medals. However, competitions are a 'win/no lose' proposition for winemakers because nobody comments on wines that do not win. Consumers appropriately remain unimpressed by the medals tombola.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18px;">Full article first published in <a href="http://www.connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (April, 2013)</span></div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-27712050745212331322013-02-24T07:16:00.000+00:002014-06-28T17:14:54.421+01:00Sniffing out the buffs from bluffers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">IS the wine expert's “cigars, truffles and boysenberries” just a dazzling party trick? Do such words convey anything useful about a wine's flavour? The ability to match tasting notes with wines appears to be random, even among experienced drinkers, even when consutling their own notes! What is going on when someone descants about "rose petals on the nose" or even "violent tits"? Wine words say more about the price of a wine than its flavour. "Cigar" sounds expensive; "fruity" sounds cheap. Beyond showing appreciation, wInespeak is also a sign of logorrhoea, say experts. Ultimately, Bordeaux tastes more like Bordeaux than "truffles".</span></div>
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Full article first published in <a href="http://www.connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (March, 2013)</div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-9433732922043702052013-01-27T08:06:00.003+00:002014-06-28T17:10:41.552+01:00It's always the season for spicy vin chaud<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">AMONG the misguided traditions that can limit your enjoyment of wine, few are more absurd than the tradition of drinking mulled wine at Christmas markets only. Mulled wine is easy to make and personalise with your own secret ingredient to complement the usual cinnamon, star anise, nutmeg, vanilla and cloves. The Nordic version <i>glögg</i> contains vodka or aquavit. In Germany, <i>glühwien</i> (literally “glow wine”, from the hot irons used for mulling) is sometimes laced with rum. Keith Floyd was a fan. He laced his version with illegal poitin, aka “Irish moonshine”. Vin chaud is a mid-winter treat not to be reserved for Christmas markets only. </span></div>
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Full article first published in <a href="http://www.connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (February, 2013)</div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-86607151389799424542013-01-02T13:32:00.001+00:002014-06-28T17:16:57.150+01:00Make red wine part of a Happy New Year<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnUDnvbm4CD1aJt_hw9BWIwAjm8b2os3fDeeOnx1qk-FUtt1T1AXxyJRjOjCblib7jgxtUYzkozZY7oEd545xQWvdnjw-dW40LQ8-IKr8aN51ExmFPcD8yBzzHZ27OSK5NTW2Xh4ks_ro/s1600/Stamatis+Moraitis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnUDnvbm4CD1aJt_hw9BWIwAjm8b2os3fDeeOnx1qk-FUtt1T1AXxyJRjOjCblib7jgxtUYzkozZY7oEd545xQWvdnjw-dW40LQ8-IKr8aN51ExmFPcD8yBzzHZ27OSK5NTW2Xh4ks_ro/s400/Stamatis+Moraitis.jpg" height="268" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">OF ALL the well-intentioned New Year’s resolutions, pledging to reduce your red wine consumption may be one of the most misguided. Red wine naturally contains probiotics, micro-organisms that increase beneficial gut bacteria. Red wine also contains Resveratrol, a powerful antioxidant in red grape skins. Probiotics and resveratrol may be the keys to degestive health, weight control, improved mobility and endurance, reduced muscle and bone degeneration, mental health and longevity. Despite resveratrol's capacity to ward off dementia, though, elderly inhabitants on the red wine-loving Greek island of Ikaria appear to forget to die.</span></div>
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Full article first published in <a href="http://connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (January, 2013)</div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-79137899634206504282012-12-01T17:52:00.000+00:002014-06-28T18:16:04.595+01:00At long last, a wine gadget that takes your breath away<div style="font-family: Helvetica; text-align: justify;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNVeXuWnAX-FRC3LD79DLDqnSRbiL2d_n_SVeoxZXlhwNrtSsPKL-6dGLIBIkkYz9j4NKPjell0nGmnjkapo4xFCptpLhZySV7aqjxQA7XgTXIcCqlZS-XRxiNQZFrW1gS8A2M7eEYh6o/s1600/breath+kit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNVeXuWnAX-FRC3LD79DLDqnSRbiL2d_n_SVeoxZXlhwNrtSsPKL-6dGLIBIkkYz9j4NKPjell0nGmnjkapo4xFCptpLhZySV7aqjxQA7XgTXIcCqlZS-XRxiNQZFrW1gS8A2M7eEYh6o/s1600/breath+kit.jpg" height="270" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">MY LOCAL wine shop has doubled the space allotted to wine accessories in the run up to Christmas. Are they any good? The inadequately short spout on my Screwpul aerator achieves nothing for all the gurgling; a decanter is better for divesting wine of sulphite aromas (or a food blender). A gadget to soften tannins would need to deliver extreme temperatures and pure oxygen. My Vacuvin Champagne Saver broke after a few bottles - it's now as little use as a spoon in an open bottle’s neck. Offer breath-test kits for Christmas - a gendarme once showed me she didn't know how to use one at the roadside, and sent me dizzily on my way.</span></div>
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Full article first published in <a href="http://connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (December, 2012)</div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-45864077016852022302012-11-14T14:53:00.000+00:002014-06-28T17:20:19.749+01:00Go for something new, not Nouveau<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR78YxjZ1bEQhlaWbUysGMFfLRuZrHp96BVhDDg_QKA75iMwEJH4wqaNRPBXQlod54mM5fzNhShQOUSmBLaQHGTFACkg9z-QpByVeSO-ss3sxfJrPIHgSkSdFshqWynNLoIPOIoA2zAmA/s1600/Beaujolais-France.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR78YxjZ1bEQhlaWbUysGMFfLRuZrHp96BVhDDg_QKA75iMwEJH4wqaNRPBXQlod54mM5fzNhShQOUSmBLaQHGTFACkg9z-QpByVeSO-ss3sxfJrPIHgSkSdFshqWynNLoIPOIoA2zAmA/s400/Beaujolais-France.jpg" height="200" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">WHEN the Nouveau is released on the third Thursday of November, wine lovers everywhere unite in a thirst for Beaujolais - for one night we are all from Beaujolais. But where is Beaujolais from? Wine experts are muddled and even Beaujolais Crus are hard to identify as being from Beaujolais when you inspect their labels. Why do experts say it is part of Burgundy? It isn't. It has its own signature grape (Gamay), viticultural traditions and distinctive terroirs (<i>Haut</i> and <i>Bas</i>). The best Beaujolais Crus </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; letter-spacing: 0px;">come from vineyards in the best Beaujolais-Villages <i>terroirs </i>and<i> </i></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">are compared to fine Burgundy reds - a mistake only a muddled wine expert would make.</span></div>
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Full article first published in <a href="http://connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (November, 2012).</div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-83874126059102219562012-10-06T15:39:00.004+01:002014-06-28T18:12:40.326+01:00Wines that fly do not always take off<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt2sBuTNJsHIpv5aOvr9celNs15zbur5ehtpVEDnAaVztlxi8TG1SJGFKZGmhOhI7x3VDrIydMOI9O7Z0zdx3orO7GI9XCrYDvJS4_3yW7jEm-_aIn6AXBL0euHcoF9XdF_0PWgh1DNsw/s1600/Qantas-Has-Best-Wine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt2sBuTNJsHIpv5aOvr9celNs15zbur5ehtpVEDnAaVztlxi8TG1SJGFKZGmhOhI7x3VDrIydMOI9O7Z0zdx3orO7GI9XCrYDvJS4_3yW7jEm-_aIn6AXBL0euHcoF9XdF_0PWgh1DNsw/s400/Qantas-Has-Best-Wine.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">WHY does flying in a cabin at 30,000 feet affect aroma and flavour perception? </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; letter-spacing: 0px;">Fatigued palates, inappropriate food and wine service temperatures and a cabin’s lack of fresh oxygen all inhibit taste. But </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">the most curious factor is the cabin's white noise. Paul Sapin makes airline wines on an industrial scale in France. They are not intended to express terroir - like airline meals, they need to do battle in the sky. Taittinger’s Comtes de Champagne won best First Class Sparkling Wine for Air France in <i>Business Traveller</i>'s Cellars in the Sky competition (held recently in a London hotel). Does this delicate Champagne taste of anything at 30,000 feet?</span></div>
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Full article first published in <a href="http://connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (October, 2012)</div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-77844072027007892102012-09-06T17:43:00.003+01:002014-06-28T17:24:33.287+01:00'Tis the season of mystification not mellow fruitfulness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVLk0FkXLBnZuef32S47erB9HZuaoTVxxVOZtoV4xvpe19tfbm4Ypc8_x9xSVGQiM97iMpbSqC1Xnel-CziwcwjRm3YEsGIw8xoV2cmjVdgp7Wud4yGQGAunLwsppJuwWRh0imM2Egjds/s1600/bear-and-hydrometers-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVLk0FkXLBnZuef32S47erB9HZuaoTVxxVOZtoV4xvpe19tfbm4Ypc8_x9xSVGQiM97iMpbSqC1Xnel-CziwcwjRm3YEsGIw8xoV2cmjVdgp7Wud4yGQGAunLwsppJuwWRh0imM2Egjds/s320/bear-and-hydrometers-2.jpg" height="320" width="312" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">HYDROMETERS and spectrometers are on hand this month when winemakers trade farm overalls for white coats and morph from bacchanalian artisans into pointy-headed geeks. Cellars are transformed in a flurry, too. As suddenly and completely as Prohibition speakeasies flip-flopped from boozy saloons into respectable cabaret diners just before a police raid, tasting tables with half-finished bottles are replaced by a jumble of oenological paraphernalia and clean jars yeast, sugar and acid. Give winemakers a wide berth in September - they prefer to discuss specific gravity or the Higgs boson rather than mellow fruitfulness.</span></div>
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Full article first published in <a href="http://connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (September, 2012).</div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-39352594656231180262012-07-30T15:37:00.002+01:002014-06-28T17:26:13.949+01:00Enjoy some fruity passions found in the hedgerow<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">TED the blacksmith, Sister Lucy, Jones the church organist, Mrs Wigley, Fowles the chemist and old Mrs Pickering are my merry companions this summer, though I am not holidaying in Camberwick Green. I'm reading Margaret Vaughan - the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of wine-making. Where others see a hedge of wild flowers, she and her village oenophile friends see gallons of Hedgerow Punch. Despite her sensible shoes, she praises the “leg-buckling” quality of Mrs Wigley’s oak leaf wine. I re-read her Dandelion wine entry before grasping why it had her “negotiating her knicker elastic”. Learn the secrets of simple, Post Order winning, hedgerow wines.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Full article first published in <a href="http://connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (August, 2012)</span></div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-62641857895269645142012-07-01T16:43:00.000+01:002014-06-28T18:16:52.418+01:00Tasting tour can be dull marketing or a magical delight<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">WHEN I gate-crashed another party’s tour in the tasting room, during a visit of the Mondavi winery in Napa Valley, California, their guide, Pamela, primly told me to rejoin my group whose tour was just starting. She had sized me up as a drinker, ejecting me for a sobering 90-minute tour with the tasting room as the longed-for, penultimate step. Gatecrashing a tour in the tasting room undermines a winery's strategy to turn uneducated visitors into educated ones. Knowledge acquired on a tour becomes relevant to visitors, becomes part of their identity (no matter how temporarily); and identification leads to consumption, for those prepared to wait.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Full article first published in <a href="http://connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (July, 2012)</span></div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-82711511040100207852012-06-08T17:14:00.002+01:002014-06-28T17:29:44.857+01:00Waiter, waiter! There’s a snake in my wine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">OF ALL THE wine faults, a snake in your wine must rank among the most unpalatable. It may be one of the commonest in wines made from mechanically-harvested grapes. If you get mousiness on the palate, however, you will be relieved to learn this is a sign of <i>Brettanomyces</i> yeast (a winemaker’s most common and vexatious friend/enemy) not mice. It can be treated with large doses of SO₂ - winemaking's equivalent of the military's "bomb a village to save it". But with wine increasingly packaged in Bisphenol-rich plastic bottles and plastic-lined containers, and man boobs on the rise, a snake may be your wine’s least venomous fault.</span></div>
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Full article first published in <a href="http://connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (June, 2012)<br />
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<br />Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-2262882080325485992012-05-02T17:56:00.000+01:002014-07-18T17:27:39.480+01:00Absolute mangoes 2.0<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">EVER since Jilly Goolden exclaimed “Absolute mangoes!” on the BBC’s Food and Drink programme, earning unintended titters, wine has had a communication problem. Web-friendly wine merchants say we should eschew overripe or unhinged tasting notes in favour of comparisons from unconventional sources, like music or film, as in: "I'm getting heaps of Shirley Bassey. Absolute </span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">Goldfinger</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">." Malcolm Gluck was a pioneer</span><b style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">of this sort of nonsense in </span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">The Guardian </i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px;">where a wine might be "a gruff old bruiser". The next time a wine-loving computer geek compares a Pinot Noir to Brad Pitt on the gangster film Snatch, just reply "Absolute mangoes!"</span></div>
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Full article first published in <a href="http://www.connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (May, 2012)</div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-62936218745805879822012-04-04T18:02:00.004+01:002014-06-28T18:18:24.429+01:00Revolutionary battleground in a vineyard<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM2u_e0Ojvy5zlwiHDvJnBALFWQniMXZew0eC3RhcpgWMYynRhU5ve6_dKmdfFb16af4uRkCIZfp32rcgeLwIdbXR4HXdTAL0C0Wu5t2JX7-htH4S9MZkDnwkdz-3KHfTqiSl8z_gv7CY/s1600/Liberty+Egality+Fraternity.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM2u_e0Ojvy5zlwiHDvJnBALFWQniMXZew0eC3RhcpgWMYynRhU5ve6_dKmdfFb16af4uRkCIZfp32rcgeLwIdbXR4HXdTAL0C0Wu5t2JX7-htH4S9MZkDnwkdz-3KHfTqiSl8z_gv7CY/s320/Liberty+Egality+Fraternity.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5727596899577120818" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 271px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">A radar blip-size Loire Valley sweet wine appellation has become the epicentre of a battle over titles and “<i>Liberté</i>, <i>Egalité</i>, <i>Fraternité</i>”. As Loire Valley neighbours reinact the French Revolution, with Girondin supporters of a plan to use <i>grand cru</i> titles pitched against Jacobian egalitarians, I wonder: what is the point of sweet wines, ennobled or not? They make pointless aperitifs - one glass suffices to curb the most insatiable appetite - and the idea they go with desserts must appeal only to drinkers with a firewall against diabetes. Meanwhile, the Loire Valley dispute is covered in <i>The New York Times</i>, which shows there is nothing like a fight to attract attention.</span></div>
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Full article first published in <a href="http://www.connexionfrance.com/" target="_blank">The Connexion</a> (April, 2012)</div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6700666550603865237.post-16037167691474031582012-03-04T17:31:00.011+00:002014-06-28T17:34:59.003+01:00Timely reminder that wine should not be rushed<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif9n1nC7s-Q-mKzNcNcU43dQuQEQiC7mBHcWqcHKFww_0owyThm2H8W0MJK2T3UcbO6oidwQZW9FNLsCAYxz1rpBDs1k40-Qn__xm6K9j-4zknO0We4HYgFDCTuCi1yRNGZMtein7peDk/s1600/slow-wine.500x320.jpg" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; line-height: normal;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif9n1nC7s-Q-mKzNcNcU43dQuQEQiC7mBHcWqcHKFww_0owyThm2H8W0MJK2T3UcbO6oidwQZW9FNLsCAYxz1rpBDs1k40-Qn__xm6K9j-4zknO0We4HYgFDCTuCi1yRNGZMtein7peDk/s320/slow-wine.500x320.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5716096130410857330" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 205px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">SLOW FOOD has publised its second wine guide in English - 18 years after its first English-language wine guide. Why has Slow Food taken so long to turn its attention back to wine? Part of the reason is that wine is already perceived as a slow product<i>.</i> But is it fair to say that wine isn’t a “fast” product? Unscrupulous winemakers do accelerate winemaking and aging using common techniques. Sadly, “live fast, die young” old-before-their-time wines won’t leave good-looking corpses. There is little evidence that wine is consumed leisurely nowadays, either. <i>Slow Wine 2012</i> reminds us that not all the wines of our time respect it or are worthy of it. </span></div>
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Full article first published in <a href="http://connexionfrance.com/">The Connexion</a> (March, 2012).</div>
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Jonathan HEALEYhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310494366446535964noreply@blogger.com