To the London Wine Trade Fair for two days last week. Faced with the possibility of tasting almost anything and meeting almost anyone, what’s the strategy?

Aimless wandering is best avoided, since the Fair drifts by in a succession of 10-minute chats with old acquaintances: socially enjoyable, but professionally useless. A determined stride and temporary tunnel vision is the best way to move down the channels and gulleys which separate each island stand.

Spreading the word

I live in Kent and work from home. Most weeks, though, I will be in London two or three times for meetings, tastings and other professional excursions. I bike to High Brooms station, then take the train: a 55-minute rail journey.

I tuned in to the BBC World Service two or three nights ago and hooked up with the end of a conversation with Richard Rogers (whose rapid and distinctive half-mumble must be hard for those who have learned English as a second language to follow).

"Can architecture change lives?" he was asked.
"You make the burden of living easier," Rogers replied.

This is number 1 in a discontinuous series of ‘quotes of the day.’ (’The day’ being the day I come across them.)

Florence May: “How can I most quickly improve?”
Johannes Brahms: “You must walk constantly in the forest.”

A little background: Florence May (1845-1923) was a talented English pianist who had travelled to study piano technique under Clara Schumann but who ended up as a pupil of Brahms himself. She later wrote a two-volume biography of Brahms.

My Italian colleague Franco Ziliani, author of the entertainingly irascible Vino al Vino blog (at www.vinoalvino.org), recently contacted me with some questions for an article he is preparing about wi

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’.

For those who may be otherwise engaged this Sunday June 24th at 12:30 (roasting hogs, for example, or cycling the route of the Grand Depart of the Tour de France which whistles off through southern En

If anyone is around at the Taste of London festival in Regents Park on Thursday night, do drop by and say hallo: I will be tutoring 3 half-hour ‘masterclasses’ with some white and rose wines at t

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

Stardate March 27th 2007, and my blog begins with a glass of tea. It’s mid-afternoon, and I’ve just opened up a packet of Phoenix Honey Orchard oolong tea.