Barossa notes will follow, but this is an interim note in part to thank all those who have sent samples through for me to loo

Last October I visited Taiwan for the first time – in search of great oolong tea, as well as to write a piece about the isl

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.

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.

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,