Drink

Chilean wine is hard to beat

23 November 2024 9:00 am

We were assembled to taste Chilean wines assisted by magnificent Scottish food, courtesy of the Scottish embassy in London, otherwise…

How Maggie took her whisky

9 November 2024 9:00 am

The whirligig of time brings in his… astonishments. Who would have thought it? Even a couple of decades ago, the…

The finest Rhône I have ever tasted

26 October 2024 9:00 am

The medics would have one believe that alcohol is a depressant. That may be their conclusion drawn from test tubes…

Alan Clark’s wines were as remarkable as he was

12 October 2024 9:00 am

Où sont les bouteilles d’antan? For that matter, où sont les amis with whom one consumed them? These autumnally melancholic…

Nick Elliott and a life worth drinking to

28 September 2024 9:00 am

The English language has immense resources, but the odd weakness. What, for instance, is the translation for ‘Auld lang syne’?…

The wonder of wine from the Mosel

14 September 2024 9:00 am

Conservatives used to be good at inspiring a mass membership, underpinned by organisations. Before the first world war, the Primrose…

The treasures of sherry

31 August 2024 9:00 am

We were talking Spain and drinking Spanish. The UK and Spain are very different societies, but we did find points…

The healing power of wine

17 August 2024 9:00 am

What goes best with a broken rib? The answer, I think, is any drink you enjoy that will not make…

When in doubt, have a drink

3 August 2024 9:00 am

Most Tory MPs enjoy leadership elections. There may be an element of what the trick-cyclists call ‘displacement activity’. Equally, it…

How to drown your sorrows

20 July 2024 9:00 am

Age. At the Spectator party last week, the editor asked me how long I had been attending the festivity. I…

The key to dealing with this election? Wine

6 July 2024 9:00 am

An old friend phoned. Normally cheerful, he was fed up. One of his business partners was being more than usually…

A lunch good enough to lift Tory spirits

22 June 2024 9:00 am

Things could have been worse. My host was determined to lunch al fresco, and after all it was late June.…

The joy of Portuguese wines

8 June 2024 9:00 am

There was a wonderful old boy called John – Sir John – Wordie, who was a quintessential member of the…

The best bottle to come from the Gigondas

25 May 2024 9:00 am

One needs wine more than ever, yet when imbibing, it can be hard to concentrate. So much is going on.…

How to become an old soak

11 May 2024 9:00 am

Drink and longevity: there seems to have been a successful counter-attack against the puritans, prohibitionists and other health faddists. Indeed,…

The case for Churchillian drinking

27 April 2024 9:00 am

Churchill. No disrespect to Andrew Roberts’s more recent work, but I set out to look up a point about drink…

The glory of German wines

13 April 2024 9:00 am

I have had three recent conversations, all lively if unrelated – and all well lubricated. The first concerned Anglo-Saxon England…

I’m a rosé convert

17 February 2024 9:00 am

The miracle of limoncello

3 February 2024 9:00 am

My adventures in rosé

6 January 2024 9:00 am