Waiter, waiter! There’s a snake in my wine

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 Brettanomyces 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.

Full article first published in The Connexion (June, 2012)

Absolute mangoes 2.0

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 Goldfinger." Malcolm Gluck was a pioneer of this sort of nonsense in The Guardian 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!"

Full article first published in The Connexion (May, 2012)

Revolutionary battleground in a vineyard

A radar blip-size Loire Valley sweet wine appellation has become the epicentre of a battle over titles and “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”. As Loire Valley neighbours reinact the French Revolution, with Girondin supporters of a plan to use grand cru 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 The New York Times, which shows there is nothing like a fight to attract attention.

Full article first published in The Connexion (April, 2012)

Timely reminder that wine should not be rushed

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. 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. Slow Wine 2012 reminds us that not all the wines of our time respect it or are worthy of it. 

Full article first published in The Connexion (March, 2012).