Henry Jeffreys

1 month ago | henryjeffreys.substack.com | Henry Jeffreys

Parisian waiters have a global reputation for rudeness. The snooty maître d' turning his nose up at amiable Iowans is a stock character as rich as the red-trousered wine merchant or literary grande dame. And yet on numerous visits to the capital over the last 15 years my wife and I have never come across such a creature. Quite the opposite, in fact. Most of the time we've had eager young waiters with impeccable English who want to talk about London. Not even a sniff of a curled upper lip.

1 month ago | henryjeffreys.substack.com | Henry Jeffreys

It’s been an exciting week for English wine. The London Wine Fair put on a Battle of the Bubbles pitting champagne against the rest of the world and the top two places were taken by English wine. These sort of things have been going on for a long time now, since the great Judgement of Parsons Green back in 2013 but I think this new one is significant for two reasons. Firstly, the price of the wines. This wasn’t Moet vs Hambledon.

1 month ago | henryjeffreys.substack.com | Henry Jeffreys

My first real exposure to Lebanon, its wines and its winemakers was in 2010, at a smart Lebanese restaurant on London’s Jermyn Street. I’d been invited to have lunch with some Lebanese winemakers who were in town. I was trying to reinvent myself as a wine writer following a mediocre career in publishing. I didn’t know much about wine at the time, even less than I do now, but I was a fan of Chateau Musar, and I rarely give-up the chance to have a boozy lunch.

1 month ago | thecritic.co.uk | Henry Jeffreys

Abandoning classic styles shows a lack of confidence This article is taken from the May 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. All regular attendees of wine tastings will have their own shorthand, even if it’s just a system of ticks or stars. I have various abbreviations that come in useful, such as NW (natural wine), TP (touch pooey — very useful for assessing natural wines), and GWR (good with rillettes).

1 month ago | henryjeffreys.substack.com | Henry Jeffreys

The literary world lost some legendary figures in the past decade. One was Jeremy Lewis, the chronicler of the golden age of British publishing who died in April 2017. I spoke to him just before this death about how publishing has changed since his heyday. “Publishers used to be household names” he told me “Tom Maschler at Jonathan Cape and Carmen Callil founder of Virago were regulars in the gossip columns”. When Allen Lane, founder of Penguin books died in 1970 it was front page news.