Books etc: September 2025
Since I wrote about The Cynic’s Guide to Wine, I’ve finally made it to Diogenes the Dog – Sunny Hodge’s original bar in Elephant & Castle (he now has a second – Aspen & Meursault in Battersea).
As he walked me around the place, he explained that the eclectic wine list wasn’t just about being different, but a way to get people to engage with wine: take away the familiar names from a wine list and drinkers are forced to talk about what they want. It’s a tactic that has clearly worked – keeping the place busy since he first swung open the doors in 2018. He poured me a flight of samples from their current list – including a Taiwanese white, a Slovenian skin-contact Furmint and a Puglian orange Muscat (the latter – one of their house wines – was my favourite). He’s as enthusiastic in person as he seems on the page, and just as intelligent and eloquent. His debut book (others seem likely to follow) is an attempt to strip away the mystique of wine – using science to debunk much of the pseudoscience thrown around in wine.
