Having successfully defended blended whiskies, Henry turns his attention another enemy of certain drink snobs: Aussie wines... A couple of years ago before I was an enormously well-respected wine writer with my own column in a prestigious magazine, I replied to something written by Tim Atkin on which wine region or ... Read More...
Drink
Single malt fans who turn their noses up at blended whiskies are missing out, argues Henry... When one reads about whisky it is invariably single malts that get all the attention. Whisky writers go into raptures at the latest ultra-peaty monsters from Ardbeg or Laphroaig. Malts like these are drinks that ... Read More...
Luke Honey, proprietor of The Greasy Spoon Blog, takes a grand tour to Venice, and one of the world's most famous bars... I'm not sure how many "Harry's Bars" there are in the world. Quite a few, I expect. There's that famous pub in Paris, there's the late Mark Birley's smart ... Read More...
Wine is the ultimate recession-proof leisure pursuit, argues Henry Jeffreys. Not least because it contains alchohol... A wine merchant opened up near my flat in East London about three years ago just as the recession was taking off and people were losing their jobs. They didn’t offer much below £10 a ... Read More...
Photograph: Local_man I like Hertfordshire. If you don't know England, this is an understated county of meagre size, found to the north of the London suburbs. Here the urban sprawl gives way to a rolling landscape: golden wheatfields, red-brick shuttered cottage ornées, church spires and tarred clapboard barns. Very Biedermeier. It ... Read More...
Henry provides a very handy catch-all phrase for when discussing wine with people who know more about it than you do... From watching Father Ted, we all know that in a religious discussion you can’t go wrong by saying: ‘that would be an ecumenical matter.’ That way you will always sound like ... Read More...
If you're back at the office and feeling a little rough after the long Jubilee weekend, take consolation from the Dabbler archives, as editor Gaw recalls a strange night of vodka-fuelled Russian hospitality... A Russian doctor takes the connoisseur's approach to combining vodka and food: Russian men drink vodka shots. They drink vodka with gusto while making ... Read More...
At The Dabbler we are blessed with the finest commenters on the internet. Jonathan Law’s comments are so deep, rich and insightful (and frankly he’s costing us a fortune in Glengoyne whisky) that we have invited him to write his own feature. Notes in the Margin will be an irregular column ... Read More...
The Dabbler's drinks correspondent Henry Jeffreys talks to the philosopher and columnist Roger Scruton about all matters wine-related... For many years Roger Scruton wrote a column for the New Statesman. It was ostensibly about wine but in reality it smuggled subversive views about the family, religion and hunting into a left ... Read More...
In which Henry uncovers a hoard of very old wine, and does some impromptu blending... About ten years ago a friend of mine inherited a country pile from a misanthropic great uncle. The place was a bit neglected so he planned to sell off some of the accumulated loot in order ... Read More...
