Henry Jeffreys

On second thoughts, don’t drink like James Bond because he drinks a lot. A study of drinking in the Ian Fleming novels calculated that in one book You Only Live Twice he drank 132 units in one week – that’s almost ten times the amount recommended by the British Medical Association of 14 units per week. It works at about 60 glasses of wine. Bond also smoked around 70 cigarettes a day – not recommended. He also did lots of other dangerous stuff which we wouldn’t recommend either.
But he did als...

On the subtle harmony of multi-variety wines
On Drink
By
Henry Jeffreys
The usual way to learn about wine, championed by various “educators” and “communicators”, is to focus on grape varieties and how they taste. You will learn how cabernet sauvignon smells of blackcurrants, sauvignon blanc is redolent of green peppers and gooseberries, and gewürztraminer smells of lychees. Though I don’t think I have ever actually tasted a lychee.
In this grape-led way of ordering wine, varieties are at an a...

Israel’s wine heartland is now suffering from rocket attacks
On Drink
By
Henry Jeffreys
This article is taken from the March 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
The last time I went to a trade tasting of Israeli wines, I couldn’t believe the security. There were thorough bag searches, a scanner, burly guards and if your name wasn’t down, there was no way you were getting in. This was a few years ago but the w...

An English novelist travels the Muslim world in search of a drink
On Drink
By
Henry Jeffreys
30 March, 2024
This article is taken from the April 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
One of the most unusual travel books of recent years is The Wet and the Dry (published in 2013) in which Lawrence Osborne, an English novelist, travels in the Muslim world in search of a drink. Osborne is something of an expert on ...

The delight of discovering an affordable California blend
On Drink
By
Henry Jeffreys
This article is taken from the May 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
My wife and I spent our honeymoon in California wine country. In December 2009 we got married at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood then drove up the Pacific Coast Highway through Santa Barbara, Paso Robles and up to Napa and Sonoma. At one point w...

This article is taken from the June 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
The inside of Clos du Temple winery in the Languedoc looks like a set from the original Star Trek. The wine is housed in a series of 10-foot black bauxite pyramids each topped with gold, or “gold pyramidion overcoming the vats” as the publicity material describes it.
One can imagine Captain Kirk stepping out from behind one of them in pur...

Whenever David came into the office there would be a palpable air of panic among the staff at Hodder & Stoughton. David being David Cornwell better known as John le Carré. I worked at Le Carré’s long term publishers from 2001 until 2009 in which time we published five of his novels. I never worked closely with him, luckily, perhaps, but I got a fascinating ringside seat of a great writer in his later years still full of vigour and neurotically obsessed with his legacy.
It should have been a w...

Spanish wine helps one escape the misery and damp of Britain
On Drink
By
Henry Jeffreys
This article is taken from the July 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
Every Englishman has his second country — usually in southern Europe — where he dreams of escaping the misery and damp of Britain for la dolce vita or la belle vie. France and Italy tend to come out on top here though Greece and Portugal are also popul...

Could our love of sherry be revived by treating it like a spirit instead of a wine – sipping it after dinner and mixing it in cocktails? Henry Jeffreys aims to shake things up…
The sherry revival is one of the great perennial topics of drinks writing, along with the Return of Riesling or the Year of Rum. One of the first articles I wrote, back in 2010, was about how sherry was now cool for the first time since about 1920.
The hook was the arrival of London restaurants like Fino and Barrafina ...

French grape varieties may have brought success to England's wine industry but winemakers are quietly discovering how to get the best from their unfashionable German counterparts. Henry Jeffreys talks to the English producers excited by the potential of Germanic grapes
Words by Henry Jeffreys
27 February 2024
In recent years, all the big noise in English wine has been about the growth of the classic French grape varieties to make sparkling wine and still wines of increasing quality. And with ...

On the subtle harmony of multi-variety wines
By
Henry Jeffreys
Listen to this article
The Critic
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The usual way to learn about wine, championed by various “educators” and “communicators”, is to focus on grape varieties and how they taste. You will learn how cabernet sauvignon smells of blackcurrants, sauvignon blanc is redolent of green peppers and gooseberries, and gewürztraminer smells of lychees. Though I don’t think I have ever actually tasted a lychee.
In this grape-led way ...

Before I started researching my book Vines in a Cold Climate, I had a particular image of English sparkling wine as consistent but rarely that exciting. It was all a bit formulaic, like big brand champagne but leaner. I am pleased to say that I could not have been more wrong as the wines now made all over southern England are incredibly diverse, offering a wide array of styles for every palate. If you’re spending between £25 and £50 then England actually offers, on the whole, much more intere...

This week:
The Spectator’s cover story looks at how Britain is sobering up, forgoing alcohol in favour of alcohol free alternatives. In his piece, Henry Jeffreys – author of Empire of Booze – attacks the vice of sobriety and argues that the abstinence of young Britons will have a detrimental impact on the drinks industry and British culture. He joins the podcast alongside Camilla Tominey, associate editor of the Telegraph and a teetotaler. (01:27)
Also this week: could Mongolia be the next ge...

Cape of good hope
Farmer-winemaker Kiara Scott went from the Cape Flats to crafting some of the most sought-after wines in South Africa – Henry Jeffreys explores how
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Putting aside colour, it is important that people know that they can become a winemaker.
Kiara Scott
It hasn’t been an easy few years for winemakers in South Africa. The government’s heavy-handed approach to Covid lockdowns including the banning of the sale of alcohol both dom...

One of the most common questions asked of wine people is, how did you get into wine? It’s a measure of how odd it is to take an interest in wine rather than just drink it. Nobody asks footballers how they got into football or doctors how they go into medicine. Being a wine writer is a particularly strange calling.
Some in the business have that totemic bottle where it all started. For Steven Spurrier it was a 1908 Cockburn port. I wasn’t brought up in that kind of household. My parents both d...