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Modena Anima
The Po River basin is the food bowl of Italy, in its heart is the region of Emilia Romagna and it is here you will find ‘Il cibo di re e angeli’, (the food of […]
Natural History part 5. ‘The One Straw Revolution’ On Man and Nature
Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves. -Jean-Jacques Rousseau Masanobu Fukuoka (1913 –2008) was a Japanese farmer and philosopher, he was a trained microbiologist and agricultural scientist and after completing his education […]
Natural History Part 4. ‘Voltaire’s Bastards’ On Reason and Nature
I noted with interest that a special 20th anniversary edition of John Ralston Saul’s jeremiad, ‘Voltaire’s Bastards’ had been released, a book that provoked in me a great deal of thought when I first read […]
Natural History Part 3. The Opimian Falernian, One Wine to Rule Them All
“In vino veritas, (in wine, truth)” ― Pliny the Elder As we approached the end of the second millennium, huge growth in wine production in some countries saw a sort of industrialization of grape […]
Natural History -part 2. A Hegelian Dialectic
“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.” ― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Consumer preferences in wine are a bit like hem-lines in the fashion industry, just as sure as they will rise, […]
Wine Gangs
I have just returned from Vinexpo in Hong Kong, where I was invited by my friend and colleague Robert Joseph, (of Le Grand Noir Wines) to attend an insightful presentation he called, ‘The Future […]
The Chardonnay Set
The Chardonnay Set The Chardonnay grape variety is arguably the most famous white grape variety of them all; as Master of Wine Jancis Robinson recalls, during the last decades of the first millennium -when […]
The Best and Wurzt of Wines
Gewurztraminer, few can pronounce it (Gee-Worse-tram-inner) and even when they can, it generally fails to inspire much excitement. A rather motley looking grey, rose coloured grape in the vineyard its wines are perfumed, […]