I’ve been doing a little work on pastis recently (see Financial Times piece on 9.8.08) and that has taken me back up the absinthe trail.

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to walk to the northern tip of Gozo: one of those summer walks on small Mediterranean islands where, after a while, your feet barely seem to be touching the gr

I believe ... wine drinkers, even the most cultured, are unfairly blinkered about beer. (Not all, but most.) Whereas cultured beer drinkers invariably appreciate wine. Unfair!

I was in Normandy between March 3rd and March 6th 2008. In bitter cold. (March has been a stone month in this corner of Europe; steady snow fell throughout Eastern and Northern Britain on March 23rd — Easter Day.)