Will Hawkes

In Paris, you’re never far from a glass of wine. Step into a classic bistro and there will be good-value reds from the valleys of Rhone and Loire. Higher-end restaurants will inevitably point you in the direction of first-growth Bordeaux. New-wave wine bars are bursting with biodynamic Beaujolais. And a glass of Alsace riesling is de rigueur at a brasserie.

The day before our vacation in France, I asked my three children what they were most looking forward to. Was it the swimming, the sunshine, the beach or — and I would have put my house on this — eating ice cream every day? “The sleeper train,” said the oldest. His brother quickly concurred. And the 3-year-old? Also the train.
In this, they’re model Europeans. According to European Union statistics, rail use grew for the sixth consecutive year in 2018, the most recent year for which figures ar...

Modern breweries are embracing the beer style that was once eclipsed by the craft movement. Will Hawkes investigates the return of bitter

The Cotswolds attract money and crowds
Few bits of the English countryside attract as much slavering attention as the Cotswolds. This stretch of central and southwestern England, covering 787 square miles between Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath, is uniquely appealing. It is the English countryside as both natives and tourists imagine it to be: green rolling hills, idyllic golden-stone villages and quaint medieval churches.
The price of such charm is popularity. A lot of people visit the Cotswold...

LAGER has taken a kicking in recent years. The king of the British bar-top has found itself under constant attack as craft beer advances on all fronts.

"Macroswill", "yellow fizz", "cooking lager": these are some of the nicer things the craft crowd have had to say about Britain's favourite pint. It seems the message is getting through.

The British Museum has ancient treasures from throughout the world

The British Museum is full of priceless plunder. Most of its exhibits were obtained when the British Empire covered almost a quarter of the world’s land, including large chunks of Africa, North America, Australasia and Asia. Pax Britannica being what it was, there’s also plenty in the museum from bits of the map never painted pink, such as the Elgin marbles, removed from the Parthenon in Athens in the early 19th century.

Moral...

Filip Miller is a pretty laid-back bloke. When, 13 years ago, he arrived in the Czech city of Pilsen and realised he didn't have enough money for a flight back to Australia, he decided to stay. Now, despite a busy life running Raven, the brewery he founded in 2015, he's always happy to take time for a chinwag, about anything from beer to cricket to the Czech tradition of eating carp at Christmas.
But when Raven launched its first lager, he was more than a little nervous. Pilsner was invented ...

The passenger in the seat next to me on the 12 p.m. flight to Rome keeps laughing, loudly. I’d be annoyed, but it’s my 7-year-old son, Fraser, and it’s my fault. I’ve given him “Asterix the Gladiator,” a comic book I loved when I was his age, to read during the flight. After the umpteenth guffaw, I ask what’s so funny: “The gladiators are refusing to fight!”
Fraser has autism spectrum disorder. His condition once would have been described as Asperger’s syndrome, and he is “high-functioning,” ...

It’s the sort of boast that starts bar fights. A vegan hot dog, launched in London on May 10, “is identical to its pork counterpart in taste, smell and texture,” its creators claim. But does it live up the billing?
Well, as I learned when I tried the hot dog at the launch, with that classic red-brown sheen, and an appealingly authentic smokiness, it certainly looks right and it smells right. And the flavor? Put it this way: If you didn’t know this was a meat-free product, you probably wouldn’...

A few years back, Karl Cooney served vegan food at a beer festival. It didn't go well.
"It was a bit of a chore," says the founder and owner of Yulli's Brews in Alexandria, NSW. "We tried to do all these very beery things – we used our red ale to make a gravy, we caramelised onions in our English IPA, we pickled cucumbers in our Pale Ale – but the fact that there was no smoked brisket meant that people weren't really interested."
Smoked brisket, hamburgers, pork knuckle: these are the foods t...

Magic Rock is the latest British craft brewery to fall to the multinationals after the Australian group Lion completed a deal to acquire 100% of the Yorkshire company for an undisclosed fee today.
Managing director Richard Burhouse, who founded Magic Rock in 2011 alongside brewer Stuart Ross, says that Lion’s desire to grow the business in a sustainable way appealed to him, and that their approach – in August last year – came at the perfect time. 'What they wanted to do was a really good fit ...

Dry January might be over, but the thirst for low-abv beer is certainly not. The go-to low-alcohol beer was once the now unpopular 'mild'; Will Hawkes explains how the new, emerging 'table beer' category might be its fashionable progeny
Plenty of Britain’s historic beer styles have been re-made and re-modelled of late. IPA is now all things to all people: hazy or bright, strong or session, always involving fistfuls of New World hops. Porter is the same as stout, except when the latter is barr...

Speaking on the day that Heineken bought Fischer-Adelshoffen in 1996, the manager of the Fischerstub restaurant lamented the impending takeover of one of Alsace’s most famous brewing names.
Our brewing tradition is going to disappear,” Bruno Fischer told France 2’s news program that evening, February 13 from behind the bar at the bierstub that stands in the shadow of the Fischer brewery. “It’s a family, a soul that will no longer be there. Once it’s gone it will be...

Frank Dobson Square is no place to linger, even on a warm October day. This brick-paved chunk of East London has seen better days, not least because its centerpiece, Dobson’s 1951 sculpture “Woman With Fish,” was vandalized beyond repair and removed in 2002. Those sitting on the benches around the square — who number three, including me, this Thursday morning — have only its former home, a forlorn metal plinth, to look at now.
I haven’t come to see the sculpture, though, or its plinth. I’m se...

With Goose Island’s new London brewpub soon to be followed by openings from Little Creatures, Panhead and, possibly, Sierra Nevada, Will Hawkes asks if ‘big craft’ is staking its claim on the capital ...