Four letters. One syllable. Infinite capacity to make intelligent people run a finger under their collar.

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Wine arrived unexpectedly for me - at dinner tables, on airline menus, in duty-free shops - and refused to be ignored. So, I did what I do with things I do not entirely understand: I looked down my nose and started paying attention.

 

WSET Level 2, California Wine Certification, Certified Wine Pro, and a couple of other certifications followed.

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And, somewhere along the way, curiosity met writing.

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What interests me is not wine's greatness. It is wine's behaviour - what it does to people when it arrives somewhere new, what it reveals about aspiration and anxiety in cultures that did not grow up with it, and why a glass of the right thing at the right moment remains one of life's more reliable small pleasures.

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Wine is arriving in the cities of India, the Gulf, and South-East Asia. Nobody has quite written about that from the inside. That is where I will find my voice.

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Wine is a four-letter word. So is "bill", depending on the occasion.

 

Pull up a chair.