The Jancis Robinson Story | Mission Blind Tasting | Wine writing competition

How not to be a snob

• 6 min read
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It includes blind tasting.

I rarely feel more typically English than on my annual buying trip to Burgundy. It isn’t just that my warmest coat – essential for surviving in near-freezing cellars – happens to scream ‘urbanite from abroad’, and nor is it the number of other British merchants one bumps into there in the second half of November, a constant reminder of our shared alien origin. No, the thing that makes me feel most English is my feeble grasp of French.

I am fortunate to travel with a colleague who, thanks to a ten-year stint as head sommelier in...

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