Noble Rot – Issue 39

Noble Rot Issue 39 is available now at LOREM (not Ipsum). 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.

The Noble Rot magazine is published quarterly and the home of exciting wine and food writing. Since its launch in February 2013 Noble Rot has seen chefs Fergus Henderson, Valentine Warner and José Pizarro rubbing shoulders with artists like LCD Soundsystem, Lily Allen and David Shrigley, blurring the boundaries between gastronomy and the creative arts. Contributors include cult Scottish author John Niven, eRobert Parker’s Neal Martin, The River Café’s Emily O’Hare, Jamie Goode, Richard Hemming and Skint Records’ Damian Harris. Noble Rot was founded by two friends, Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew, who met through a shared love of wine, design and independent magazines whilst working next door to each other on Kensington High Street. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign which raised £11,600 of funding in Autumn 2013, Noble Rot is continuing to expand at a considerable rate. The magazine is based in London, and published quarterly.

Features: Noble Rot – Issue 39

• 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.