Drinking around the world: Take a trip to Lanzarote, wine paradise May 6, 2021 The latest wine region to erupt onto the wine tourism atlas is Lanzarote, with the Canarian island hoping to be among the first destinations to revive European wine tourism. With travel restrictions lifting, a former investment banker and surfing instructor from Guernsey and a former GB Olympic swimming trials finalist from Sunderland want to make [...]
Drinking around the world: Tasmania is a winemaker to watch May 5, 2021 You have probably never considered stocking up on wine from either Swansea or St Helens. Both are on Tasmania’s Great Eastern Wine Trail, one of four in Australia’s island state. Tassie, the “Apple Isle”, is also home to the Tamar Valley wine road, the East Coast route and the Cradle Coast region, which boasts Ghost [...]
Leadenhall Market to become neon-soaked cinephiles’ dream May 4, 2021 Leadenhall Market will this month swap its Victorian grandeur for in-your-face neon lights, transforming into a living art exhibition courtesy of God’s Own Junkyard. The neon artists at the famous Walthamstow-based studio will create Electric City, an “immersive technicolour production”, featuring highlights from its 40-year history making neons for cinema, including Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide [...]
Drinking around the world: The Corsican wine loved by Napoleon May 4, 2021 Napoleon, the son of an Ajaccio winemaker on the Granite island of Corsica, died two hundred years ago this week. Films portray Corsica as a place of scrubland, beaches, vendettas and banditry, while cookery shows spotlight the island’s world-beating urchins, “figatelli” smoked chestnut sausage, cured hams and ripened brocciu cheese. But they ignore the excellent [...]
Red faces full of port wine: how to drink England’s favourite wine May 4, 2021 What’s the first thing you think of when you read the word “port”? I suspect for many of you it will evoke a very distinct stereotype, and not all of that will be positive. Some of you, I’ll wager, thought “gout”. Most of the images that came to mind will have been of well-off, well-upholstered [...]
The wine untouched by the scourge of daylight April 30, 2021 Slovenian Untouched By Light sparkling wine does exactly what it says on the bottle. Its Chardonnay grapes are picked on moonless nights on the Bouvier family (as in Jackie Kennedy) Radgona vineyard in south-east Slovenia and matured in pitch-black, 170-year-old cellars. They are bottled in 99.8% black glass and shipped and sold in vacuum-sealed light-free bags. [...]
Where to eat… In Canary Wharf April 30, 2021 Once, the daily commute to Canary Wharf seemed to encapsulate the very idea of the daily grind, a long and uncomfortable journey to a land of grey buildings filled with grey suits. But Canary Wharf has transformed in recent years and lockdown has only made our hearts grow fonder. Now we can’t wait to get [...]
How to celebrate International Viognier Day in style April 30, 2021 It’s the 30 April, which may as well be my birthday, as it’s the international celebration of one of my favourite types of wine – Viognier. And it is a Friday, so let us all raise a glass to this aromatic, romantic grape. It’s like it knew it was the start of the weekend. Viognier [...]
Drinking around the world: Care for a glass of Dutch red? April 28, 2021 When one thinks of wine growing terroir, thoughts turn to the rolling valleys of the Languedoc or the rugged terrain of the Duero River Valley. The flat-as-a-pancake Dutch countryside doesn’t generally spring to mind. But with more than 200 active, commercial vineyards, Holland is slowly gaining international attention as a wine-making region as it recovers [...]
Bouji restaurant group Hakkasan sold to hospitality giant Tao April 28, 2021 The famously bouji restaurant group Hakkasan has been bought by international hospitality giant Tao Group for an undisclosed sum. First opened in Fitzrovia in 2001 by Wagamama founder Alan Yao, Hakkasan soon became synonymous with London’s high end, high price dining scene, frequented by celebrities and oligarchs, with an encampment of paparazzi often waiting outside. [...]