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 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.

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.

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.

Back in December 2004, I attended the now-celebrated conference at the University of London called ‘Philosophy and Wine’. You can read the piece I wrote for the FT afterwards (February 2005) in the articles section of this site.

Barry Smith, the organiser, has edited and published a collection of essays, some of them originally papers given at the conference and others written specially for the book, called Questions of Taste.

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