Food and Drink

Grape expectations

Above: Tim Atkin

Tasting more than 10,000 wines a year and travelling to some the world’s most beautiful places may sound like the perfect job. And while Tim Atkin, Observer wine critic and international wine judge, points out that many wines are dull and travel can get tiring, he is the first to concede that it’s a pretty good existence.

Apart from a weekly wine column in the Observer, Atkin writes for a number of titles including Woman and Home, The World of Fine Wine, The Economist’s Intelligent Life, Country House, and appears regularly as a presenter on BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen. He also runs wine tasting classes at Vinoteca in EC1, beginner wine evenings for Speed Dater, fine wine events for Taste In, plus lectures and public speaking. He’s worked alongside the likes of Ainsley Harriott, Ken Hom, Gary Rhodes and Anthony Worrall-Thompson.

On the wine book front, he has contributed to a fair few, as well as writing two of his own. He’s co-chairman of the International Wine Challenge where he tastes and judges some 3,000 wines in two busy weeks (resulting in the familiar IWC gold, silver and bronze awards adorning wine bottles in the UK).

"The nice thing about my work is that it’s very varied. No day is the same," says Atkin. One of the privileges is the access it gives him to other people’s lives. "One day I can be with a peasant in Burgundy with one hectare of vines, the next with a billionaire in California who wants to set up a vineyard, and another day drinking a bottle of Grüner Veltliner with Gerard Depardieu over an interview."

Are there any downsides? Solitary days of writing, wine boxes clogging up the hallway, hours tasting boring wines and being collared by wine bores. Although as Atkin says of all these, "there are worse things in life".

To keep abreast of new vintages and wines, Atkin attends numerous tastings as well opening a steady of stream of bottles in his Southfields home. Do wine writers or their livers ever weary of such sport? "I never get tired of wine, though there are days when I don’t drink," says Atkin. The puritan stance, however, is not for him: "The most recent guidelines on drink are ridiculous. I’d be long dead if they were true. Puritans should not be wine writers," he adds.

So did he always have a burning desire to work in wine? Not exactly. "It was a complete fluke," Atkin says. "I’d lived in France for two years and shown remarkably little interest in wine. I was more interested in whisky and beer." However, as he says, a journalist friend of his was having great fun, so he applied to Haymarket Publishing. "I got a call from Joanna Simon, now Sunday Times wine correspondent but then editor of trade publication Wine & Spirit, who was looking for an assistant editor. The night before the interview I read Serena Sutcliffe’s Wine Drinker’s Handbook."

Atkin worked as a reporter for the magazine, before being approached to work on The Guardian after winning a Glenfiddich Wine Writer Award in 1988 (he has won four more since). He joined the Observer in 1993, when it was bought by The Guardian. Alongside his Observer column, Atkin went on to edit Harpers, the weekly wine trade journal, and is now editor at large for OLN, another wine trade magazine. In 2001 he passed the notoriously hard Master of Wine exams at his first attempt.

For those keen to learn a little more, Atkin recommends buying an introductory guide by the likes of Oz Clarke or Jancis Robinson, and to taste as much as possible, preferably "with someone who knows more about wine than you do. Also find a wine writer you respect and if you like their taste in wines, stick with them," adding: "hopefully the Observer!"

Wine merchants are also a good source of information says Atkin, with praise for a number in the south west such as Wines of the World in Earlsfield, Wimbledon Wine Cellars, Philglas & Swiggot and Green & Blue in Clapham.

Atkin’s a long time fan of restaurants such as Chez Bruce on Bellevue Road SW17, Enoteca Turi on Putney High Street SW15 and Ramsome’s Dock in SW11, as all have great food with good wine lists. Pubs such as the Earl of Spencer on Merton Road, SW18 and the Hand in Hand in SW19 are favourites, while having three delis in walking distance in Southfields is a huge plus.

Like most wine lovers, Atkin would love one day to have a go at making wine, though he concedes there would be a clash of interests so couldn’t do it commercially. He’d also like to buck the poor sales trend for wine books, write an original wine book that "sold really well – possibly a thriller – the kind that you see people reading on the tube."