I find this time of year the toughest by far… Burgundy En-Primeur. It is a living hell, where I am waking up in cold sweats and arguing with my colleagues. No this is not a complaint about how busy I am but the problem all Burgundy ‘nuts’ have…what on earth do I buy this vintage?!

As I have been based in Italy for the past few months I could well be initiating a new tradition of having Christmas, ‘Natale’, here in Serralunga d’Alba, Piedmont, and I’m banking on the following being served for lunch:   Lentils with cotechino (a pork salami) as an antipasti/starter; the dish is thought to bring […]

Champagne is a delightful enigma; seen by some as a stand-alone category which bears scant resemblance to the rest of the wine trade, and by others as a bell-weather, providing early warning when choppy seas lie ahead but when the waters are calm, luxuriating in the hazy trappings of  indulgence and success. Whichever interpretation is […]

How does one gauge the success of an evening’s dinner, at Berrys’ in this case? By the level of decibels or (business) cards swapped at its close?  The number of empty glasses or perhaps more crudely, by the amount of orders taken? At Andre Ostertag‘s mercurial tasting recently, for example, I measured it by the time […]