the wine thinker

Dear Champagne Wine Region, I understand that your lawyers are currently very busy attempting to stop a sparkling wine critic for using the name Champagne Jayne. Your main complaint, from what I can understand, is that she actually writes about fizzy wines that don’t come from your region – such, I presume, as Domaine Chandon […]

Patricia Arquette is making headlines over wage inequality; best-selling books analyse the growing gap between rich and poor… Online wine forum members rail against the unaffordability of top Bordeaux and Burgundy, and the madness of Napa. It all puts me in mind of my nine year-old’s favourite board game. The brilliance of Monopoly lies in the varying values and earning […]

Anyone who has followed my writing over the years will be familiar with my repeated mantra that people who have been bitten by the wine bug dramatically overestimate others’ interest in wine. I go on repeating the mantra because I truly believe that this widespread delusion is a huge handicap for the wine industry: if you mistakenly […]

I’d love to hear [people’s] thoughts on… Books For Wine Communicators (That Are Not About Wine)… The challenge was presented to Facebook group by Cathy Huyghe who had listed eight such books in one of her regular contributions to Forbes. The ‘Not About Wine’ caught my attention because I’m often frustrated at the narrowness of mind shown by wine professionals. Wine, they contend, […]

I thought that you’d want what I want. Sorry my dear… Send in the Clowns. Stephen Sondheim Over the years, I’ve been at a number of wine competition awards presentations and similar wine events in London at which the after-dinner speech was presented to a multinational audience by a famous sports personality. On every occasion, I found […]

telegraph.co.uk All winemaking is alchemy, but few winemakers in the world have exercised the alchemists’ art more effectively than the producers of Prosecco. While makers of sparkling wine in places from California to Cornwall focus on using the costly and time-consuming methods associated with Champagne, the wizards of the Veneto have seduced the world with fizz produced […]

When a restaurant goes bust, or a movie or play fails to recoup its costs, most of us shrug, possibly pause to give a moment’s thought for all the human effort that has come to nought – and move on. News that a winery has filed for bankruptcy, or as in this case, that up to […]

Greg Lambrecht What does Greg Lambrecht have in common with Herbert Allen, Dennis L Burns and Elon Musk? He’s used his experience in one industry to start a revolution in another.  Musk, for those who haven’t come across him made a fortune by co-founding PayPal before risking a lot of it on Tesla, the first serious electric automobile manufacturer. Traditional car companies had […]

I need a new battery for my MacBook Air laptop. Please would you send me a pound* to help to pay for it. I understand that the previous basis of our relationship was that I supply you with these words for free, but this is a one-off payment. Really. Honestly. And those of you who […]