Location, Location, Libation!

Published 24th October 2025

The belief that great wines embody place has always been at the heart of Noble Rot. With this issue’s gloriously daft Gary Taxali cover – a blissed-out barrel jockey teetering on the brink of a watery downfall – we pause to ask why location matters so much to what we drink. Not so long ago, you couldn’t uncork a biodynamic Bobal without hearing that magic word: terroir.

But now, as Alice Feiring asks in this issue, has wine’s favourite mantra lost some of its juice? Elsewhere, Marina O’Loughlin reflects on how setting shapes flavour, while Bouchon Racine’s Henry Harris recalls the recipes — and the tins of tripe still lingering in his kitchen — that carry him back to holidays past.

Also in Noble Rot 39’s celebration of wine and food culture… 

Angela Hartnett lunches with Danny Dyer – fresh from his BAFTA triumph – while tasting an array of bold, “deadliest” reds. Zadie Smith writes about her favourite meal, Jay McInerney confesses his problem with Sauvignon Blanc, and Keira Knightley extends last issue’s lobster fixation with Menorca’s classic caldereta de langosta. 

Artists Sarah Lucas and Maggi Hambling compare 1995 Bollinger R.D. to Special Brew, and wax lyrical about Francis Bacon, the YBAs, and more at Noble Rot Lamb’s Conduit Street — now celebrating its tenth birthday.

Dan Keeling profiles Gewürztraminer and Côte-Rôtie; Levi Dalton explores wines that blur the boundary between red and rosé; Polly Russell traces the history of Oddbins; Mark Andrew reappraises Bordeaux’s “lost decade” and Simon J. Woolf uncovers Portugal’s nearly forgotten talha tradition.

Jeremy King reflects on the agony and the ecstasy of opening restaurants on the eve of relaunching Simpson’s in the Strand; Jake Missing examines how the restaurant industry’s battle between analogue and digital is reaching boiling point; and recipes come courtesy of Simon Hopkinson, Ed Wilson, and Stephen Harris – among much more.

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