Why the French are clueless about wine: Confessions of a British wine columnist in France Paperback (Dec, 2020)

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 to know about wine?

These entertaining, offbeat columns on wine culture (from three years as columnist at France's The Connexion 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. 

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• Paperback : 138 pages
• ISBN-13 : 979-8687568340
• Dimensions : 5 x 0.32 x 8 inches
• Publisher : Independently published (November 14, 2020)
• ASIN : B08NDVJ63W
• Language: : English

Rumpole's wine case reveals price mystery

IN RUMPOLE and The Blind Tasting, 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.

Full article first published in The Connexion (November, 2013)

Is wine journalism a load of nonsense?

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.

Full article first published in The Connexion (October, 2013)

Photograph of Kermit Lynch by Peter DaSilva

Historic vintage for French appellations?

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.

Full article first published in The Connexion (September, 2013)

French are clueless about buying wine

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 savoir-vivre? 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.

Full article first published in The Connexion (May, 2013)

Gold medals have lost their glitter

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.

Full article first published in The Connexion (April, 2013)

Choosing from the wine list can be simple...

NOWHERE is encountering wine more fraught with obscurantism, rapacity and indifference than on restaurant wine lists. Who hasn’t experienced a sinking feeling under the weight of a leather-padded carte des vins? What to do? The decision may come down to price. That’s a shame. Cheaper wines have the largest mark-ups; in other words, if you can’t afford a more expensive wine, the restaurateur will make you pay dearly for it. Encylopaedic wine lists, lists organised by price, lists with multiple vintages of the same wine, or wines with no vintages, may betray the restaurateur’s lack of discernment. Better wine lists narrow the choice for you.

Full article first published in The Connexion (October, 2011)