Henry Jeffreys

Kent

Journalist and Features Editor, Master of Malt at Freelance

Wine Columnist at The Critic Magazine (UK)

Wine writer for The Critic magazine and author of 'Vines in a Cold Climate' - Fortnum & Mason Drink Book of the Year 2024 & James Beard/ Andre Simon nominated.

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Articles

Legends in their own lunchtime

1 day 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.
Drinking Culture

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

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India's Johnnie Walker cult

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

While the Scotch whisky industry often seems a bit embarrassed by the Highland or imperial tropes used to sell its products in the past, India has no such qualms. The bestselling Indian whiskies are called things like Royal Stag, Imperial Blue and Officer's Choice. It's like the Raj never ended. Indians drink a lot of real Scotch whisky too.
On the Indian love of Scotch whisky

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

While the Scotch whisky industry often seems a bit embarrassed by the Highland or imperial tropes used to sell its products in the past, India has no such qualms. The bestselling Indian whiskies are called things like Royal Stag, Imperial Blue and Officer's Choice. It's like the Raj never ended. Indians drink a lot of real Scotch whisky too.
Keith McNally’s memoir is strangely unappetizing

1 week ago | thespectator.com | Henry Jeffreys

Harvey Weinstein has a memorable walk-on role in Keith McNally’s memoir I Regret Almost Everything. Taking a break from being New York’s most celebrated restaurateur, McNally wrote and directed a film called End of the Night that was screened at Cannes in 1990. Its auteur hoped that Weinstein, who distributed the previous year’s Palme D’Or-winning picture Sex, Lies, and Videotape, would warm to it.
The White Lotus comes to Herne Bay

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

We’ve been watching the latest series of White Lotus and speculating where might be the destination of the next one now that they’ve done Hawaii, Sicily and Thailand. My eldest daughter likes to joke that they should do Herne Bay next, or Ramsgate. I want to see entitled rich Americans unleashed on the East Kent riviera demanding facials and high water pressure.
The satisfaction of making wine the hard way

2 weeks ago | spectator.com.au | Henry Jeffreys

Angels in the Cellar: Notes From a French Vineyard Little Toller, pp.184, 20 You can learn a lot about a winemaker by tasting his wine. In The Accidental Connoisseur, Lawrence Osborne wrote of one wine that smelt of ‘simmering insanity’, reflecting the angry Italian who made it.
The satisfaction of making wine the hard way

2 weeks ago | spectator.co.uk | Henry Jeffreys

You can learn a lot about a winemaker by tasting his wine. In The Accidental Connoisseur, Lawrence Osborne wrote of one wine that smelt of ‘simmering insanity’, reflecting the angry Italian who made it. I didn’t have quite such an extreme reaction to Peter Hahn’s Clos de la Meslerie Vouvray, but I did deduce that he was idealistic, determined, romantic, perhaps a little dogmatic, and given to certain esoteric beliefs.
The last word on natural wine - part two

3 weeks ago | henryjeffreys.substack.com | Henry Jeffreys

Part one of my natural wine odyssey looked at the origins of natural wine and my own somewhat sceptical attitude to the wines themselves. Now there’s part two looking at the cultural and sociological forces behind natural wine. There’s also going to be a part three about the legacy of the natural wine movement, both good and bad. Within Alice Feiring’s 2011 book Naked Wine there is a quest to meet Jacques Neauport, one of the godfathers of the natural wine movement in Beaujolais.
The last word on natural wine - part one

4 weeks ago | henryjeffreys.substack.com | Henry Jeffreys

It’s traditional in April for crusty old wine columnists to turn their gaze to natural wine with the coming of the Real Wine Fair in London… or so I thought. It turns out that it normally takes place every two years but there won’t be one next year either. Hook be damned, I’ve been thinking about this article for a while so I’m going all out with a two-parter on the subject.