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The Great Lockdown fell on us like snow in the small hours. When we woke, the conditional right of free movement had been snuffed out. A new quietness blanketed the land. Every city, I remember thinking, must now be Venice: a place of voices and footsteps. With an added frisson of disquiet. Every voice, every… View Article
One Bottle: 2010 Pinot Gris Clos St-Urbain Rangen de Thann, Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Grasses, willows, and Indian balsam line its banks; geranium petals drop from the bridge on to its swiftly moving, stone-contoured water. The River Thur is pristine today—as it was, perhaps, in the 13th century, by which time (records tell us) the wood-cutters had… View Article
One Bottle: 2011 Château Suduiraut Sauternes A week ago, I stood in the vineyards of Suduiraut. There was a soft radiance to the late October sunlight; tempers, though, were fraught. Catastrophic mildew swiped much of the 2018 crop back in June. After that, summer had been majestic. Most of the Bordeaux crop had been picked… View Article
Once or twice a year, I lead small groups of students and wine lovers on tours in Burgundy. I do this with great pleasure: Knowledge shared is knowledge amplified, and the wine world seen through other eyes and tasted through other palates is a bigger place. Burgundy, moreover, is the Bach of wine regions—the inexhaustible… View Article
One Bottle: 2011 Château-Chalon, Domaine Tissot It’s winter. La Réserve Thomas, Lyon; mixed company, granite light. Lunchers shuffle in, un-muffle, disburse warmth; servers dart about in preparatory rituals. Our large group gathers critical mass. Eyes flick down onto phone screens; absence usurps presence, a few desultory conversations aside. Time freewheels. Then Stéphane Tissot and his… View Article
I visited Château de Tracy on a chill November day. Moisture clings to the air here; winter in the central Loire is a dismal succession of penetrating mists and fogs. The wide, indolent, isle-scattered river marks a rheumatic pause between two vineyard zones: the assertive hills of Sancerre on the left bank; the gentler rises… View Article
The weather? Here in Languedoc, it must have rained heavily at the close of November 2012, since the photographs I took in early December show my sons hurling small, windsnapped branches into the swollen River Hérault. There will have been gathering darkness at the days’ end, of course, as the northern half of this tilting… View Article
There’s a task I carry out each year for which payment is one magnum of Bollinger. I don’t, in turn, trade it on for a new car tire or a fat rabbit, so this particular excursion into the informal economy has a short train. Instead, we open and drink the Champagne gratefully. Or did. One… View Article
We made for the railway station, dipped through the tunnel under the rails, and then began climbing the path that separates Bessards from Le Méal. After a while, those heading for the Chapelle can turn left through a gate next to a tumbledown hut in the vines. From there, the track leads up to a… View Article
This is a bottle I don’t want to open. It’s not, though, a wine “for keeping,” and in any case I don’t have storage space just now—so I’m going to uncork it, on this bright spring afternoon, just a few months after it was bottled. Why reluctant? Perhaps I’ll never have the chance to taste… View Article
We live in challenging times. A quick glance at the stark electoral maps across Europe and North America makes all too apparent those things that divide us. Urban versus rural, cosmopolitan versus nativist: The Atlantic world is torn apart. At a time like this, it is tempting to dive into the comfortable world of food and… View Article
