Will Sauvignon Blanc and Malbec be succeeded by grape varieties that share some of their characteristics, or something entirely different? Will the next Pinot Grigio or Shiraz be associated with a single region, or with something more global? These are the kind of questions on which the marketing department speculates before informing the viticulturists on what they should be planting or ripping up. But what…

As always at this time of the year, I tend to get philosophical, and as I listen to Lemmy (dead), Bon Scott (dead), Rory Gallagher (dead) and Ozzy (should be dead), I can’t help wondering what happened to SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK ’N’ ROLL!!!!!, in capital letters and with several explanation marks. The answer is, of course, that it died with the people who practised…

Alas, in some cases, all-too quotable. Men of a certain generation and self-confidence are still wont to try the patience of waiters by imitating the film’s eponymous, dipsomaniac main character when ordering in restaurants: “We want the finest wines known to humanity. And we want them here and we want them now!” A gambit to which no waiter, at least not in the past 30…

All are the principal cities in three of the world’s most important whisky(e)y producing destinations – Scotland, Ireland and Kentucky. But amazingly, until not long ago, they had something else in common – none of them produced whisk(e)y spirit within their city’s walls. Oh, you could put up an argument for Auchentoshan in Glasgow but, despite the spread of the city, the distillery remains a…

This was the position I found myself in one evening last month, returning from a short, but busy, press trip. The airport authority had clearly tried to include some interesting stores, but it was clear the cramped terminal building was never designed with retail in mind – the ceilings were low, the light poor in places and signage terrible. Above all, what I needed was…

If rum were a person it would be a frivolous and fun-loving seductress, whispering: “I can be anything you want me to be, darling,” in your ear. No other spirit has as many facets. Rum can be light and frothy, spicy and flirtatious, golden and stylish, or dark and mysterious. It can be a young party animal happy to be mixed with cola or blackcurrant…

There were three basic objections to the Eigashima finished in a Port Ellen cask: that the cask seems to be enjoying a higher status than the whisky; that nobody seemed to care what the whisky tasted like; and that the price tag of $650/£490 was too high. The furore once more brought into sharp focus the growing rift between those who pay grossly inflated prices…