Henry Jeffreys

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
00:00 / 05:36
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...

On the rehabilitation of chardonnay
Resling, the great grape of Germany, has long been a cult among wine lovers. Some sommeliers even have riesling tattoos. And while I wouldn’t go that far, if you’d asked me my favourite grape, until very recently I would have said riesling.
But the funny thing is that my buying preferences show something different. I’m mildly addicted to a website called Cellar Tracker where I have been recording almost every wine I’ve tried for more than ten years, and it ...

Anyone who has ever been to a whisky tasting or on a distillery tour will know that sinking feeling you get when someone asks you for your response to a whisky and you can’t think of anything to say. Brand ambassadors and educators might tell us that ‘there is no right or wrong answer’ but I’ve said enough ill-judged comments to know that this isn’t strictly true.
But help is at hand! Put away all those Dave Broom books and don’t bother with the WSET because I have put together a brief guide ...

From Canadian blends in incredible value single malts, here’s a guide to affordable whisky. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get a great bottle.
When I worked at a wine merchant in the late ‘90s we used to carry the Rare Malts range. In their smart blue and gold packaging and from distilleries such as Port Ellen and Brora, you’d think they would have flown off the shelves but instead they just sat there gathering dust. They were too expensive, you see, at around…take a deep breath… £...

Ever since I was allowed into pubs I’ve always wanted to be a local. The closest I’ve come was at a pub in Bethnal Green called The Hare. One day I came in with my younger brother and he ordered two pints of Greene King IPA and the barmaid, Kylie, corrected him and said ‘he drinks Landlord.’ A proud moment. After our first daughter was born, we’d take her to The Hare in her car seat, something about the warmth and hubbub seemed to soothe her. The Cockney ladies would pass her around and coo a...

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Provided it wasn’t actually poisonous, a beefed-up burgundy in the 1970s was often preferred to a weedy pure vintage pinot noir, says Rebecca Gibb

Sampling a new wave of Bristish cider
By
Henry Jeffreys
Listen to this article
The Critic
00:00 / 05:26
It’s one of the big “what ifs” of drink history. What would have happened if English cider makers who experimented with bottle fermentation in the seventeenth century had perfected the technique of making fizz and marketed it around the world? Would Shepton Mallet look a bit like Epernay, and the Champagne region be a rural backwater rather than the place with the most expensive vineyard la...