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With…
Images of Laudun and Chusclan
Côtes-du-Rhône Villages Laudun
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Eccentric current
English sparkling wine producers collectively present a terribly well-to-do appearance, all smart…
…Some Ventoux 2016s – and a few good value supermarket Rhônes
If you’re a regular visitor to this site, you’ll know that I write an annual report on the wines of…
Great Red Hope: New Zealand Pinot Noir
Here's an article that I wrote for Imbibe (drinks trade magazine) on New Zealand Pinot Noir...
Standing…
When…
A travel guide to the Northern Rhône
As you may have gathered by now, I have a bit of a soft spot for the Rhône. I spend more and more…
2015 Rhône: my week in the South
I’m currently in the Rhône researching my annual report for timatkin.com; this will be the fifth…
Three recent Decanter articles
I've been writing a fair few pieces for Decanter magazine recently, covering my three favourite…
Lidl Wine Cellar magazine: how many?!
Six million copies. Six meeeeeeeellion copies. That’s the print run of the Lidl Wine Cellar…
Introducing the Mr Vine Tasting Panel
Yesterday saw the launch of a new wine app: it’s called Mr Vine.
London wine bars – what you need to know
Decanter asked me to write a piece on London wine bars, it's in the current issue (November 2014),…
Decanter article: The New World of the Northern Rhône
I contributed an article to the recent Decanter Rhône Special (July 2014 issue) on Crozes-Hermitage…
Digging Graves
A quick intro to Graves... Every year, the two titans of Bordeaux – the Left Bank and Right Bank –…
Recent articles: 2012 Rhône Report, White Rhône, New World wines and food
Here are links to three recent articles I've written that appear elsewhere on the web. Firstly, for…
Minervois: press rehearsal
A brief intro to Minervois... Underneath the glowering Montagne Noire, due east of Carcassonne,…
Contemporary drinking
Here's a link to a piece I wrote for The Wine Society's newsletter on changing attitudes to…
Wine Buying Options Part 2: Supplementary channels
Yesterday we looked at the three primary channels for commercial wine buying in the UK:…
Wine Buying Options Part 1: Wholesalers, Agents, Direct to Producer
Here's a recent article I wrote for wrote for trade magazine Harpers Wine & Spirit on…
No place like Beaune
A brief introduction to the wines of Beaune... If you’re new to Burgundy, the handsome city of…
Castillon: cast iron bargains
A brief introduction to the wines of Castillon... In terms of both reputation and prices Bordeaux…
No grannies allowed: proper sherry
Here's a link to an article I wrote on the rise of proper sherry for Imbibe magazine:…
Wedding wines – bling vs. bargain
When planning the wines for your wedding, sometimes it pays to look beyond the big names if you…
Vouvray: a class act
A brief introduction to Vouvray... The celebrity grape of the Loire Valley is Sauvignon Blanc.…
London’s wine scene: a tale of two cities
Considering its total lack of vineyards, London's long-established position in the wine world might…
Perfectly formed: the art of the short restaurant wine list
Many wine lists start out like ornate market gardens, with everything neatly laid out in sections…
Confessions of an English Condrieu drinker
A short introduction to Condrieu... There are few wines as wantonly hedonistic as Condrieu. It’s…
Médoc: Reassuringly expensive
A quick intro to the wines of the Médoc... It not just the owners of Tarmac who have made a fortune…
We’re all going on a summer holiday… diary of a #frenchwinetrip
Saturday 1st June Day 8, homeward bound. After an enlightening, exhausting and thoroughly…
Chablis: Ice queen
A brief introduction to the wines of Chablis... You’d have trouble making drinkable wine further…
Gevrey-Chambertin: Deep Burgundy
A brief introduction to the wines of Gevrey-Chambertin in Burgundy… With over 600 vineyards across…
Bottles of paradise
A brief introduction to the wines of Corsica... In Corsica, the regional wine is designated ‘Vin de…
Hermitage: Hidden Dragon
A brief introduction to the wines of Hermitage... Some of the most eminent winemaking villages of…
Champagne: the smallest stars shine the brightest
A brief introduction to the wines of Champagne... Most of us have a favourite Champagne, the label…
Thinking outside the shop
Some interesting things have been happening to the wine shop over the past few years. Evolutionary…
Alsace: snow whites
Alsace has a split personality. Tucked behind the Vosges mountains in north eastern France, this…
Christmas wines – which wine for which roast
I wonder what Scrooge’s idea of the perfect Christmas lunch would be? Roast pauper with all the…
The young tearaway of the south
Named after the local Occitan dialect (langue d’oc), the Languedoc is a huge swathe of land running…
A sketch of four German wine regions
I went over to Germany a few weeks ago to get a feel for the different regions and what was…
Beaujolais – beau et joli
Take a gentle walk around the diminutive Beaujolais region in eastern France and you can’t fail to…
Champagne: where the party’s really at
Sometimes I feel very lucky to be living in the UK when it comes to getting hold of good wine.…
The Grape Day Calendar
It all started a few years ago with Cabernet Day. So far in 2012 we’ve seen Carignan Day (29th…
Start drinking Furmint
To be sung to the tune of ‘Start Wearing Purple’ by Gogol Bordello: “Start drinking Furmint…
What the wine trade could learn from natural wines
“Wine’s not my kind of thing… it’s a bit, well, posh.” “It’s too complicated, I don’t understand…
St Emilion: Liquid Luxury
St Emilion, in a nutshell: first published in Living France magazine, but this is longer. For many,…
Wine Sampling Session: Internet Face Off
If you buy the weekend newspapers you’re bound to see promotions from time to time for cases of…
Naked Wines – should you redeem that voucher?
Everyone loves a bargain. And there’s one little offer that keeps catching my eye – a voucher for…
Slovenia: Cracking wines
Driving across Slovenia doesn’t take long. About three hours from one corner to the other; it’s…
How to organise a wine tasting
When you arrange to meet your mates for an evening down the pub, no-one calls it a ‘beer tasting’,…
Sherry: Collision Course
Last week I posted a crash course on sherry. Sherry is a relic, a throwback from an earlier age of…
See you later Prometheus, here’s the trailer to Drink Me!
A couple of weeks ago we filmed a trailer for my new book, Drink Me. The idea behind it is to give…
Sherry: Crash Course
Who knew squid testicles could be so delicious? More to the point, which lunatic tried cooking with…
How to choose the wine for your wedding
When it comes to buying wine, if there’s one time you need to get maximum bang for buck it’s when…
Describing grape varieties: white grapes
Last week I tried to describe the character of the most common red grape varieties; party by…
Describing grape varieties: red grapes
Right, just a bit of fun this week. If there’s one good way of trying to guess what the wine in a…
When I hear ‘cult wine’ I reach for my revolver
I was walking around the recent Annual California Wine Tasting in London the other day and one…
The most widely planted grape in Japan: Koshu
It’s not every day I have the excuse to start a blog post with a haiku, but I do today, so here…
Dudley & de Fleury Wines: “it’s easy to fall in love with Fanny”
It has clearly been a hectic few months for the two Richards, Dudley and de Fleury. Operating for…
Austrian reds: don’t laugh
Supplier: “Hello Matt, what would you like to taste?” Me: “The St Laurent – I’m just tasting St…
The Art of Spitting
If you go to a lot of wine tastings, it’s easy to forget just how strange the whole spitting thing…
Oregon: Stunning Pinot Noir, suspect Pinot Gris
The most expensive bottle of wine I ever bought was a Pinot Noir. A Burgundy from a great vineyard,…
Mr Lawrence’s: a quietly inspiring wine merchant in southeast London
Sitting down, I ask Mr Lawrence to describe what Brockley was like when he first opened his wine…
En primeur: How to taste unfinished wines
As months go, we all know that January is a tedious windbag. But what it does have going for it is…
New Cru: the cream of the Languedoc
Powerful words, ‘Grand Cru’. Referring to a wine or a vineyard of the highest quality, this tiny…
Carignan the Barbarian
The Trailer (1982) For centuries, the gentle giant wandered carefree amongst the foothills and the…
Yes, THAT Lebanon
Some countries are on the fringes of wine production, and Lebanon is certainly one of them. Most…
Why there has never been a better time to get into wine – or Does Decanter magazine make you blush?
There was one magazine above all that I found embarrassing to buy as a student. I used to…
Wine Drinking No. 2: Biodynamic vs. Conventional, this time in Manchester
Last Friday, I made my way from a foggy London up to Manchester by train with a clinking suitcase…
Wine Drinking No. 1: Biodynamic vs. Conventional
A week ago, a bunch of us got together with the intention of opening a load of bottles. I prefer to…
Corison: elegant, drinkable, remarkable
For a producer with a well established, albeit understated, reputation, we were surprised to find…
Wine Rack: Back to the Future
Unwins; deceased. Threshers; defunct. Victoria Wine; departed. The era of the off-licence chain is…
Lea & Sandeman: Classic but up-to-date
Charles Lea and Patrick Sandeman set up their first shop 23 years ago, and now they have four, all…
Tesco Wine Fair: the good, the bad and the ugly
I’m not going to lie to you. The masochist in me just couldn’t wait to go to the Tesco Wine Fair.…
The future of wine packaging part 2: Bag-in-box, bang up-to-date
In yesterday's post, I mentioned a company called Sfuso who supply a couple of the shops in London…
The future of wine packaging part 1: None at all
I took a stroll down Amwell Street in Islington a couple of days ago and discovered a rather…
Majestic Wine Warehouses: Last man standing
There have been a lot of changes on the high street over the past few years when it comes to buying…
Why Californian wine is so expensive in the UK
It’s easy to forget how new California is to making wine. Whilst in Napa Valley last month, I had…
Waitrose: Still the best supermarket for wine
This year Waitrose have won all four major drinks awards for ‘Supermarket of the Year’…
The Wine Society: Impressive value
In a world of Enomatic machines, crowd sourcing and Twitter fire-sales, The International…
New trends in California: Moscato and Primitivo
White Zinfandel is dead. Long live Moscato! It is ubiquitous, and uniformly awful. It tends to have…