Opinion

Valerie Kathawala is inspired by Natural Trailblazers, a recently-published book that profiles European winegrowers who are pioneering ways of reducing wine’s environmental impact. She argues that there are implicit lessons about how we wine journalists might rethink approaches to our own work. ‘What guides me is the idea of less,’ says Alsatian winegrower Yannick Meckert. “Less, less, less.” M...

Circle Chair Meg Maker shares a simple technique to prompt good storytelling for her column this month. Readers want stories. But how do we, as interviewers and interpreters, tease stories from people who aren’t natural storytellers? Before speaking with a producer, we arm ourselves with facts, the essentials of their biography. We pore over their website for details about family, place, wines, ...

Circle Chair Meg Maker explores the extremely diverse composition of the Circle of Wine Writers' membership base, which has reached far beyond the realms of both wine and writing, as well as geographically, from its initial UK base.  In 1960, journalist, social historian, and wine commentator Cyril Ray convened a handful of British wine writing colleagues to form a new association. At the time, t...