Gourmet Couple

Set to visit the Club in March, celebrated wine and food connoisseurs Jancis Robinson and Nick Lander discuss wine and dining trends with iNTOUCH.

Decanter magazine described Jancis Robinson as “the most respected wine critic and journalist in the world.” And The Economist voted her husband Nick Lander’s The Art of the Restaurateur the publication’s 2012 book of the year.

On the surface, they might be the last people you would invite over for dinner. With the well-traveled, Oxbridge-educated gourmands at the table, any meal could feel like one of the culinary TV shows on which they’ve appeared as judges.

But while their impressive credentials, media profiles and encyclopedic knowledge of wine and food might appear intimidating, the British couple would probably prefer to be seen as helping to demystify a notoriously inscrutable world.

That’s the thinking behind Robinson’s latest book, The 24-Hour Wine Expert, an easy-to-digest, introductory guide to wine. “The inspiration was our 24-year-old daughter, Rose,” Robinson, 65, tells iNTOUCH. “Her friends are big wine drinkers, but they have lots of questions and kept asking her to ask me for the answers.”

Using her authority to educate others is exactly what she will be doing this month when she and Lander host two events at the Club, including a seminar on global trends in wine and food that will feature a wine tasting and book-signing session.

“Wines are becoming lighter—less alcoholic, less oaky—and more geographically expressive, with the emphasis increasingly on vineyard rather than cellar,” Robinson says of current wine tendencies. “There is also a move from the well-known international grape varieties to indigenous and less well-known ones.”

Lander, 63, who is a restaurant critic for the Financial Times, has visited Tokyo twice before. As cities around the world are becoming increasingly crowded, he says that many restaurateurs and entrepreneurs are following the Japanese capital’s lead and opening pop-up restaurants and small, interesting cafés, bars and eateries wherever space allows.

“Food is one of the only two things that you cannot experience online. The other is health and beauty. As long as this lasts, those in the property world will have to focus on food as the magnet for all their redevelopments—something that has been happening in Japan for several years,” he says.

Lander says he is heartened to see more people showing an interest in food, reflected in the popularity of TV cooking shows.

“After years of neglect, food in the West is now considered one of the staples of modern life and, as [world] events turn even more depressing,” he says, “we all seek solace in something that we can all share in that is nourishing and delicious and that ends on a sweet note.”

Members can experience just that next month at the Club.

Global Trends in Food and Wine with Jancis Robinson and Nick Lander
Mar 6
5–7pm
Manhattan I and II
¥6,000

Wine Dinner with Jancis Robinson and Nick Lander
Mar 7
6pm
CHOP Steakhouse
¥30,000

Prices exclude 8 percent consumption tax.

Words: Nick Jones