Wines made from Primitivo grapes of Brindisi

I’d like to say we took advantage of the lockdown and its related commotion to do a stock-take, explore new avenues, turn over intriguing stones, widen and deepen our drinking, taking careful notes as we went. Sadly, no. I won’t say we got stuck in a rut, but we did tend to stick with comfort wines – and “comfort”, in our case, means familiar. Regular readers of this quarterly column can probably guess the labels on the resulting empties. We have a wider range of comfort foods, I’m afraid, than ...

With culinary inspiration dating back to 1935, our restaurant brand Madhu’s specialises in South Asian cuisine with an East African influence. It’s thanks to the secret recipes handed down across eight decades that we have become caterers for royalty, dignitaries and Asian weddings – and that our original Southall location has been named Best Indian Restaurant multiple times by Pat Chapman’s Cobra Good Curry Guide. Over the past few years I’ve been working on creative combinations to find the pe ...

When I started my nomadic winemaking project, in 2018 at Niepoort Vinhos in Portugal’s Douro region, I had no idea how large a part Spain would go on to play – I certainly never intended to make it the locus of my project. So how did it happen? Yes, there was an element of chance and taking opportunities where they arose. But also, among the talented winemakers to whom I pitched collaborations, I sensed an openness and a readiness to collaborate which seemed particular to Spain. Held in June las ...