Noble Rot – Issue 40

Noble Rot Issue 40 is available now at LOREM (not Ipsum). Awkward barrel samples. Weary vignerons. Fully booked hotels. Missed tables. The wine traveller’s path is rarely lined with sunshine and perfectly chilled glasses.

Which is why Issue 40 of Noble Rot is about good timing — and giving yourself a fighting chance. In The Wine Traveller’s Guide to Getting It Right, our man in New York, Levi Dalton, explains when not to visit wine regions, revealing how arriving at the wrong moment can distort your experience of young wines and quietly sabotage tastings before you realise what’s happening. He decodes the rhythms of the cellar, argues for visiting Burgundy in November rather than June (“a rookie mistake”), and shares insider intelligence — from Santorini’s grape harvest colliding disastrously with peak tourist season, to the joys of Piemonte’s porcini season. Along the way, top winemakers, restaurateurs and critics reveal their favourite local places to eat and drink.

Elsewhere, Simon J Woolf offers survival strategies for the awful wines served on long-haul flights, white Alice Feiring reveals the lengths she’d go to secure a decent glass in a restaurant cursed with a truly terrible wine list.

Talking of good timing, it’s given us Nebuchadnezzars of pleasure to see Pulp return with a new number-one album and one of last year’s genuinely great singles, Spike Island. Which makes it a particular delight to welcome Jarvis Cocker as this issue’s very special interviewee. That he arrived at Noble Rot Mayfair amid rumours of having no intention of drinking was an intriguing beginning — one that, happily, did not last long. This is another vintage Rotter Towers extended-lunch interview.

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 40

• Jesse Armstrong, creator of Succession, writes about the cheese sandwich he considers his Greatest Meal.
• Marina O’Loughlin meets the chefs behind Fallow, who have built one of the UK’s most successful hospitality operations — and 1.4 million Instagram followers — from scratch.
• Dan Keeling attends a tasting of Burgundy’s Clos de Tart spanning 136 years, and reviews what may be the greatest-value red appellation in the world: Langhe Nebbiolo.
• Diana Henry dishes the dirt on choosing the right restaurant for famous guests, drawing on her former life as a TV researcher.
• Brian McGinn, co-creator of Chef’s Table, explains why it’s extremely unlikely he’ll ever commission a wine version.