At some point on our first morning in Japan, a black minivan with two chauffeurs pulled up outside our hotel in Yokkaichi. It wasn't quite how I had imagined my first visit to a sake brewery would begin. The rather improbable transport arrangements had been made by a mysterious games entrepreneur whom Henry had befriended over sake in Tokyo the previous evening. They had apparently spent the night discussing a forthcoming sake-and-gaming collaboration, and when the entreprene

Most wine trips begin with the wine; this one began with a wedding in Brașov, Romania. Brașov was not an especially straightforward destination to reach from England. At the time, its limited direct flights were from only three airports: London Luton, Budapest and Dortmund. Sanja and I didn't particularly fancy the idea of Luton, so Budapest won - and provided a very good excuse to turn the journey into a longer trip through Hungary. I asked Ferenc Zelenec, one of our sales r

There are easier places to grow grapes than the Douro. Vineyards rise sharply from the river in narrow terraces, roads twist around the hillsides and almost every view makes you wonder how anyone manages to work the land at all. I visited Quinta de la Rosa in March 2024 while spending time with my family in Portugal. My parents have a house in Lourinhã, which makes a trip north to the Douro Valley relatively straightforward. I had already met owner Sophia Bergqvist and shown

About a year and a half ago, I was approached by the brilliant Michael Koenig, who is a doctoral student in Music and Global history here at Oxford University. He had recently been to a talk on synaesthesia and wanted to try and replicate some semblance of this blending of senses to those of us who don’t experience it. As a prize-winning Fellow of the Royal College of Organists and a recipient of the Silver Medal of the Musicians’ Company, Michael was more than capable of cov

Founded in 1810 by Nicolas Schlumberger, the eponymous Domaines Schlumberger is now run by the sixth and seventh generations of the family. With 130 hectares of land under vine, 70 of which are qualified as Grand Cru, this makes them not only the largest owner of vineyards in Alsace, but also the largest owner of Grand Cru sites in the region. Their Riesling Saering has long been a favourite of mine (especially with a fondue!) and I was very excited to be able to visit them t

There are definitely some perks to working in the wine industry and I was thrilled to have been able to combine a visit to one of our producers, Champagne Gosset in Épernay, as part of a holiday road trip to Lake Como for a wedding. Gosset prides itself on being the oldest "Wine House in Champagne" having started out in 1584 making still (and predominantly red) wines before the advent of Champagne itself. In fact, it wasn't until the 18th century that Gosset began to make spa