2024: The Year In Review

BY NEAL MARTIN | DECEMBER 20, 2024 

“You need to slow down. You’re not getting any younger. Act your age.”

That sage advice was dispatched from the sensible part of my cerebral membrane as the final curtain came down on frenetic 2023. That sage advice was ignored. I packed more into a single year than many do in a decade, a bit like those old Benny Hill skits where the comedian is chased by a tittering pack of girls, as they apparently did in the mid-1970s. In the words of that great philosopher, Lionel Ritchie…can’t slow down.

A cocktail of vocation, Vinous Icon events, curiosity, wanderlust, an unquenchable joy in meeting friends old and new, an unshakable carpe diem attitude, fitness, energy and an inability to say no meant that a year slipped past in a week, like Christopher Nolan’s "Inception" but in reverse, and with more wine.

In Asakasa at the famous temple in Tokyo. I lost those bloody sunglasses in Burgundy.

Apart from numerous stints in Bordeaux and Burgundy, to the point where my instinct is to drive on the right-hand side of the road, I traveled to Amsterdam, New York, Bangkok, Washington DC, Tokyo, Stellenbosch, Hong Kong, Taipei, Hanoi and Miami. Of course, it is not just the destinations but the people you meet along the way that make a peripatetic life worth living. Countless dinners litter the year, a crisscross of verticals and horizontal tastings, blind and sighted, plus obligatory vino on the rare evenings home. That is irrelevant if you do not put as much effort into turning experiences into words. To that end, I published 106 articles on Vinous in 2024.

A cursory glance at the diary confirms that 2025 will dish out more of the same, and that is the way I want it. For this year’s review, I have used the same template that broaches wine, food, music and culture. Hope you enjoy…

My Likes in 2024…

Brother’s Isan wedding in Thailand (see below).

The Rest is Entertainment podcast with Richard Osman and Marina Hyde.

Youngest daughter’s maiden wine dinner. Wine #1?  1999 Grands-Echézeaux from DRC.

Barbour coat—still going strong. Can’t live without it.

Watching the Northern Lights. No UFO, disappointingly.

Vinous Icons. Particularly meeting subscribers. Looking forward to more in 2025.

Meeting fellow Vinous colleagues in the Big Apple and finding we speak the same language…wine.

Record fairs. My therapy. Like fishing. But you can’t listen to a trout.

Statins. They keep me alive, which is always handy.

Sticky mango rice.

iPad with Logitech keyboard. How many words are written on that gear each year?

ParkRun—Ran my 5K in Washington DC, Tokyo, Franschhoek, Amsterdam and various venues around the UK. Think you can do without exercise? You’re wrong.

The weak Japanese Yen that made visiting this wonderful country so flippin’ cheap.

My Pro-Ject VC-S3 Vinyl Cleaner that buffed up my beer-stained Techno 12-inches.

The Neopolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante.

Peace—what is left of it.

Watching my indefatigable 83-year-old aunt dance to Blue Monday at my cousin’s wedding.

Lili et Gabrielle.

Lunch with football legend Gary Lineker. Entertaining.

Legendary footballer Gary Lineker. I was visiting a friend for what we dubbed a “Wine & Vinyl” evening, hence posing with Joe Smooth’s classic “Promised Land” just to add to the surrealism.

My Dislikes in 2024…