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Every culture has a drink it grew up with. Mine was not wine.
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Wine arrived the way most unexpected guests do - at a dinner table, slightly overdressed, hoping everyone knows what to do with it. Nobody did, entirely. But nobody asked it to leave either. And somewhere between the awkward first encounter and the quiet familiarity of a weeknight glass, something interesting happened.
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That something is what this blog is about.
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The Second Pour watches wine land in cultures that never grew up with it - in the cities of India, the Gulf, and South-East Asia, where wine is arriving rapidly and being received with a combination of curiosity, anxiety, aspiration, and occasional hilarity.
The blog does not tell you what to drink (well, not always). It observes what happens when wine shows up in your world and makes itself at home.
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The writing is not all floral bouquets and strawberry notes. It is occasionally tannic, mostly dry, and bubbles frequently. It asks questions that conventional wine writing tends to avoid - why does ordering wine in a restaurant remain one of the last socially acceptable ways to feel completely out of depth in public? Why does an expensive label change the taste of what is in the glass? Why are pairing rules built for European food expected to take the weight of chilli and cardamom?
Series 1 — 2025 — is here. Check out some of the posts:
Series 2 launches April 2026, on this site, every Sunday.
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Each post is exactly 750 words. Drop a comment if you figure out why.
The second pour is always the better one. Less ceremony. More enjoyment.
Finally, why “Baxicius”? That’s for a blog sometime later.