This is a very brief introduction to a vast subject, prepared from a speech given to Waitrose Wine Advisers at the London Wine Trade Fair on May 22nd 2008. It is divided into two sections, crudely called Macro and Micro.

Macro

12 billion years ago – in other words 12,000 times one million years ago – the Universe came into being.

I received the two photographs posted below on February 19th from Konstantina Chryssou Hatzidakis on Santorini: the island in snow. Konstantina tells me that the children are loving it. When I remember the intense physical weight of the heat when I was there last summer, the calorie-thickened air slowing every gesture, and bearing in mind the rarity with which small islands get snowed on, especially at almost 36° latitude in the Mediterranean, the scenes seemed astonishing.

Thresher recently sent me a box of six Fair Trade wine samples to look at. Let me preface what follows by saying that I think the Fairtrade initiative is an excellent one, and I congratulate Thresher for promoting the initiative during Fair Trade fortnight, which runs from February 25th to 9th March.

But … do retailers play fair with Fair Trade? All the ‘fairness’, after all, appears to be the result of the producer’s efforts. What does the retailer do? Shouldn’t we begin to demand Fair Retail margins on Fair Trade products?

Writing about places on earth, and the foods, drinks and scents connected with them, necessitates travel.

Travelling, though, is no longer an innocent activity. Humans are adjusting the disposition of gases in the world’s atmosphere and pushing vulnerable species (and eventually, perhaps, the less vulnerable too) into premature extinction. Part of the way in which we are doing that is by reckless travel.

I read a handful of history books in 2007. They described the hundreds of thousands who died horribly as the Byzantine Empire collapsed; and the millions who died senselessly, a prey to vanity, in the Napoleonic Wars; and who spent their last hours wallowing in the mud of the First World War. I tried to imagine what history might be like if it was written by the comfortless dead, and not by the lucky living. It would, it seems to me, be an angrier history. The living tend to conclude, broadly speaking, that ‘it was worth it’. Their own lives and freedoms seem testament to that.

International visitors to this site may not be aware of this, but the last week has seen a flurry of interest in the UK concerning alcohol consumption levels among the ‘middle classes’.

I journeyed to Bulgaria between July 3rd and the 5th this year. My previous journey to Bulgaria had been … well, when exactly?

Visitors to the ‘Worldview’ section of this site will know that human population growth and the impact of humans on the environment trouble me more than the way the Bordeaux 2000s are shaping up,

My distinguished colleague John Graham, Senior Contributing Editor to Tatler magazine and a former US Editor of the Financial Times as well as a mean man with a deck of cards, has recently contacted m