Wine Travel - The Wandering Palate

Australian Master of Wine, Peter Scudamore-Smith, updates us with his latest newsletter and vineyard tours in Europe.

On the Wine Route | Related to: On the wine route, Wine Tours, Wine Travel |

I am constantly asked for recommendations on wine travel destinations, more so on the specifics to which I would need to become a fulltime travel agent and guide to make any headway or commercial sense. There is no doubt that the best way to fully understand the intricacies of wine and the concept of terroir, you need to travel the wine regions and it is strategic to have close interaction with winemakers and professionals, which is generally not easy to achieve outside of the wine trade. Read More >

On the Wine Route, Travel | Related to: Piedmonte, Sicily, Tuscany, Wine Travel |

From a lost play by Eubulos, (c.405 BC - c.335 BC)
‘For sensible men I prepare only three kraters (large vase used to mix wine): one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home.

The fourth krater is not mine any more - it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness.’

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.

But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defence of the new.”

As uttered by the vitriolic restaurant critic Anton Ego, in the film “Ratatouille”, after his epiphany.