“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”


DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little, Ludmila’s Broken English, Lights Out In Wonderland ... Winner: Booker prize; Whitbread prize; Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman prize; James Joyce Award from the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin)


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29 January 2015

VEIL GOES ON FOR VINTAGE 2015

You know that the vintage wedding's impending when the men put the bridal veils on the vineyard: this morning they wrapped up the Yangarra Ironheart Shiraz, right outside my office window. Bad luck you greedy birdies. It's on!

Ironheart gets its name from the solid slab ironstone which lies beneath a thin layer of highly ferruginous wind-blown, or aeolian sand. This tough ground regularly grows the most prized Shiraz on this big biodynamic wine farm, which is the property of the Jackson Family of Napa Valley, California.

After the heat spikes, bushfires on that horizon, and then rain, with the moulds and whatnot that brings, this neck of the woods has for weeks enjoyed perfectly mild ripening weather, with constant drying sea breezes to sort the mildews, just the right amount of sun, and evenings that had me unpack the duvet a week back. Fingers crossed. 

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