A Game of Rhônes – Act Five: The Poor in Spirit
Health is the greatest of gifts, contentedness the best riches; trust is the best of relationships, Nirvana the highest happiness.
—The Dhammapada, verse 204 (trans....
A Game of Rhônes – Act Four: Letters to the Dead
…though at first it is very bitter to the taste, it afterwards becomes sweet as it ripens.
—Cicero on the grape, On Old Age (trans....
A Game of Rhônes – Act Three: The Pope's New Castle
Tranquility, wherein peoples prosper and the welfare of nations is preserved, must certainly be desirable to every state.
—Cassiodorus, quoted at the opening of Marsilius...
A Game of Rhônes – Act Two: The Razor's Edge
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
Plurality must never be posited without necessity.
—William of Ockham
The Venerable Beginner
On the evening of 8 October, seventeen of us sat...
A Game of Rhônes – Act One: Babylon on the Rhône
From the Palais des Papes of the Avignon Popes,
to the Hermit on the Hill at Tain-l'Hermitage;
from the roasted slopes of the Brune et Blonde
to...
Cristina Mercuri MW: No Shortcuts
In London on 27 October, a Tuscan-born former lawyer was formally welcomed as Italy’s first woman Master of Wine. Her research paper deserves as much attention as the title.
The Vintners’...
The Lafons in the Mâconnais
The name Lafon comes with its own arithmetic. A bottle of Domaine des Comtes Lafon Meursault Perrières is allocated by the case, priced for collectors and rarely opened young. The...
Drinking the Stars
There is now an official ‘Day’ for just about anything conceivable. Champagne, the drink applied liberally to everything else worth celebrating, surely deserves a day of its own.
Californian wine blogger Chris Oggenfuss...
