One day last summer a very nice man called Mark Ryan contacted me.

Ken Payton, one of the administrators of an excellent site called (you won't forget this one) Reign of Terroir, has recently asked me some some searching and wide-ranging questions.

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

I finally made it to David Motion’s The Winery at 4 Clifton Road W9 (http://www.thewineryuk.com/) recently, close to Little Venice.

Recording interviews for the Food Program of July 27th/28th has given me a chance to visit some old friends as well as new es

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.

Off to the Decanter World Wine Awards tastings every day last week, medal-hunting with the Regional France and Languedoc-Roussillon panels. I can’t reveal any of the results, obviously; indeed I don’t know them yet myself in any useful sense, since all we’ve done is award medals to unidentified wines. What I can do is pass on a little of flavour of the week, and try to explain why it’s so enjoyed by its participants.

What?

I am sad, very sad, to hear that Bill Baker has died. He was, in a way, the best of us — in that he gave himself entirely to his vocation. Gleefully. On every occasion I met him, I marvelled at this, while at the same time worrying (on behalf of all those that loved him) that his devotion was too reckless, too absolute. His zest for life was so strong that I thought it would serve as his angel, whisking him away from the brink. Until last week, it did.