TMG Blog

A lazy Susan holding five empty sauce dishes and mismatched chopsticks, one champagne flute sweating onto dark rosewood — Champagne fades by the fifth dish
Champagne

Champagne with Chinese food works until the fifth dish

The bottle is excellent with the first two dishes. By the fifth it has turned...
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A folded paper chart with faded grid lines curls beside a glass of deep red wine and a magnifying glass — A vintage chart hides the range
Bordeaux

What a vintage chart hides behind a single score

Ninety-six sits beside one year on the chart, eighty-seven beside the year next to it,...
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Two matching Bordeaux bottles with different coloured capsules stand close on dark wood beside a rolled vineyard map — Second wines are not always cheap
Bordeaux

Second wines: when the same cellar is a bargain and when it is not

The pitch writes itself. Here is Carruades de Lafite, made by the same team, in...
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Two unlabelled Bordeaux bottles rest together, one dusty with an aged cork half drawn, the other freshly capsuled — Now wine and cellar wine differ
Bordeaux

Bordeaux to drink now and Bordeaux to keep are different buys

Buying Bordeaux to drink and buying Bordeaux to keep are two different activities. They use...
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A glass decanter catches a thin pour of dark red wine from a tilted bottle, sediment settling at its shoulder — Decanting can make wine worse
Bordeaux

What decanting actually does, and when it makes wine worse

A waiter takes your bottle away, pours it into a glass vessel with some ceremony,...
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A modest unlabelled Bordeaux bottle stands beside a stack of coins and a plain wooden crate on a rustic table — Value sits in Cru Bourgeois
Bordeaux

Cru Bourgeois is where the value sits in Bordeaux

Cru Bourgeois sits on a label like a consolation prize, and that is roughly how...
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Four terracotta dishes in a row hold different soils, pale gravel, dark clay and mixed pebbles — Gravel splits the four communes
Bordeaux

How gravel and clay separate the four Medoc communes

Margaux, Pauillac, Saint-Julien, Saint-Estephe. Four names on four labels at roughly the same money, and...
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Two glass cylinders hold pale gravel stones and dense reddish clay side by side on a low table — Gravel and clay pick the grape
Bordeaux

Left Bank and Right Bank Bordeaux: the soil decides the grape

Left Bank is Cabernet Sauvignon, Right Bank is Merlot. Every wine list repeats it, every...
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Five Bordeaux bottles lined up by height on a stone ledge, foil capsules blank, a brass scale and loose coins beside them — 1855 ranked price, not quality
Bordeaux

The 1855 Bordeaux classification is a price list, not a ranking

One shelf, two Bordeaux at roughly the same money. The label on the left carries...
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A ceramic sake cup on a cedar masu box with milled rice grains — Junmai is not the lesser sake
How It Works

🍶 The "Polishing" Myth: Why Junmai Isn't Second Best to Junmai Daiginjo

Seimai-buai is a number about rice, not about quality. Daiginjo buys finesse by polishing away...
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Red wine in a decanter with grape skins and seeds on dark stone — That drying feeling has a name
How It Works

Understanding Tannins in Wine: Discover the Perfect Wine for Your Palate

Polyphenols from grape skins, seeds and stems. They give astringency, bitterness and body, act as...
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A whisky glass with a large clear ice sphere and a water dropper — You do not have to drink it neat
Serving

You Do Not Have to Drink Good Whisky Neat

Neat, a few drops of water, on the rocks, as a highball, or in an...
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Recent Post

Macallan TIME : SPACE Sherry Cask and Mastery
Glass Notes
Glass Notes: Macallan's yellow case is out. Why is the red one selling for half? 黃盒上市，紅盒點解跌咗一半？
Neat rows of dark oak whisky casks stacked beneath a wooden warehouse roof, a single dram glass resting on a barrel head — One distillery, its own casks
Producer Guide
Yamazaki and why Japanese distilleries do not swap casks
Fossil flecked grey limestone fragments with tiny oyster shell imprints scattered on dark soil beside a pale tinted glass of white wine — Kimmeridgian rock shapes Chablis
Burgundy
William Fevre, Chablis and what Kimmeridgian rock does