Planning guides: what is in season, which region to choose, and how to get there.
Xinomavro is northern Greece's great red grape and Naoussa its most famous home - high in tannin and acid, pale but powerful, savoury and long-lived, and often called the "Greek Barolo." What it tastes like and where to taste it.
Vinho Verde is a region in northwest Portugal, not a grape or a colour - its wine is young, light, low-alcohol and often lightly fizzy, the best from Alvarinho. What it is, how to drink it, and where to taste it.
How to plan the food-and-wine side of the Cinque Terre: the five car-free villages, the train card and boats, what to eat (pesto, anchovies, focaccia), the local wine, cooking classes, and when to go.
How a Douro Valley day trip from Porto works: two quintas with tastings, a river lunch and a boat cruise, whether to go by tour, private driver or the scenic train to Pinhão, and when to go.
Champagne and Crémant are made by the identical traditional bottle-fermented method - the difference is place, prestige and price. How they compare, where Crémant comes from, and how both differ from Prosecco.
Real pesto - pesto alla genovese - is from Liguria and is ground, never blended: Genovese basil, pine nuts, garlic, Parmigiano and Pecorino and Ligurian olive oil. What goes in it, why the mortar matters, and how to eat it.
A plain-English guide to German beer: Helles and cloudy Weissbier in Bavaria, crisp Pils in the north, Kölsch in Cologne, and the Märzen and Bocks - what to order where, and the 1516 purity law.
A plain-English guide to sherry: how the solera and flor work, and the difference between dry Fino, Manzanilla, Amontillado and Oloroso and sweet Pedro Ximénez - with how to serve each and where to taste them.
How Spain's two great Tempranillo reds differ - elegant, oak-aged Rioja versus the darker, more powerful Ribera del Duero of the high plateau - and how to read Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva.
The Cretan diet is the original Mediterranean diet - olive oil, wild greens, pulses, barley rusks and cheese. What to order (dakos, horta, snails, kalitsounia), the raki ritual, and where to eat it.