Champagne expert Richard Juhlin went for a wine & gastronomic trip to London. [ read the full champagne story ]
Estimated reading time: 13 minutes
Children. I can never stop being delighted and fascinated by children.
When the winegrower in Trittenheim explained to me, then an 8-year-old child, that he raised all his Riesling wines and his children exactly the same way but that the result certainly came to have some things in common but that they had even more distinctive individual fingerprints created by environment, terroir and weather, he really hit the nail on the head. I see exactly the same thing with my children. Some similarities to their mothers of course, sometimes more of me. Sometimes extremely similar to my sister or mother’s sister. Sometimes a copy of grandfather or of me in appearance, but with a completely different temperament and mannerism. Grandfather’s hair, suddenly a face that is grandmother’s comes to the fore. So fascinating. What is heredity and what is environment? How much do we shape our offspring throughout life and how much should or do we want to do it?
Personally, I believe that if you come from a happy parental home where you feel loved and appreciated, you will be driven by a desire to give your children the same and hopefully that wheel and positive spiral will continue to spin for many generations to come. Considering how many sperm and eggs never reach each other and create a new life, it is and should be a favor and a responsibility to pass on your genes and values and give your children a chance to create their own happy life, provided that the world you live in allows it and that poverty, famine or war do not put a stop to it.
My children
The fact that I have five children with three different wives from as many Nordic countries has hardly escaped anyone who follows my activities in the Champagne Club or who has read my books. Why it happened is a different, and probably much more interesting story for you, than the one I am going to tell now. The fact that there are so many children and that the age difference between them is so large, of course has both advantages and disadvantages. It may be an expression of self-talked reality positivism, but I really think that the advantages outweigh the fact that I can sometimes feel inadequate and that I often miss one of them at a time.
In the phase of life I am in right now, two of them live at home and I see them almost daily. The three who have gone out I get to catch one at a time except when we join in Real Madrid’s escapades. At the holidays I see them all at the same time and at least a few days a year the whole gang stays in a hotel. Henrik now works with me and we have daily contact, albeit mostly remotely as he spends half the year in Spain. Melker lives closest and is probably the one I have met the most of all over the years because I was his personal trainer until a couple of years ago. Right now, however, he is the one I see the least. Stella, my first offspring, is the one I call when I go on shorter work trips here in Scandinavia, like most recently in Tällberg and Visby where I lectured and she took the opportunity to make the ski slopes and tracks unsafe this wolf winter while I remained in the hotel room with a fever and a disabled, albeit famous, nose.
My profession
When I was a physical education teacher in my previous life, I think one of my greatest strengths was that I really genuinely love children and find it easy to play and spend time with them. Even more than I love children in general, I love my own children and the privilege of being a father. For me, being a parent is a fantastic combination of feeling love and being responsible and at the same time feeling unconditionally appreciated in return. It may not be everyone’s privilege to feel that way, but I think the essence comes from the fact that we have given our children life and thus the chance to develop their own lives to the best of their ability, and that we in turn, as parents, have been given the unique opportunity to follow our children’s journey through life. In other words, a giving and taking and a mutual gratitude for being there for each other. A gratitude that obliges with obligations and rights just like in life in general, but in its most intimate and integrated form.
Connection with the planet
You can of course feel a connection with the planet or with all of humanity, but the smaller the closest group is, the stronger the bonds. Some find their herd affiliation in the nation while others feel closer to their religious brothers. The Tottenham supporters Nora and I encountered the other day in London were so fanatical in their group affiliation that they could almost challenge the African clan societies in terms of closedness and chauvinistic bigotry. In our beloved Italy, La Famiglia is the norm, with grandma living upstairs in the family house as the most natural thing in the world.
We Scandinavians are more independent, for better or worse, where the bond between children and parents is expected to weaken, much like in much of the animal world where the young leave when they are ready to fly. Many of my friends end up in a life crisis when their children leave the nest, while others start living their lives as teenagers again.
In addition to the investment that the time spread represents, I can of course count with a fairly high statistical probability on becoming a grandparent before the heiress leaves the estate.
The start
Nevertheless, it was with an inevitable nostalgic background noise in my soul that I made my last tradition-laden father/child trip to London in February 2026. I both enjoyed the moment and at the same time felt a breath of wistful longing, keenly aware that this wonderful event will not happen again but will be inexorably relegated to the now-swelling pantry of memories.
It all started during the sports holidays in 2006. Melker had just been born and I felt a strong need to pay attention to and take care of my eldest daughter Stella, who was about to turn eleven at the time. It ended up being a packed long weekend in London, just the two of us. A trip that certainly laid the foundation for our still love of traveling together, hand in hand. We know each other inside out and are so similar that we react and reflect on the same things regardless of whether we are in Mexico or in the breakfast room in Dalarna.
That time twenty years ago I managed to get a discounted room at The Ritz. A grand extravaganza that differed from our everyday lives so colossally that every line uttered by people we met in the British capital is etched in Stella’s memory. I say “line” because Stella has become an actress and an audiobook narrator, jobs that are similar to mine. Therefore, it is perhaps not so strange that we react in unison to the tone of voice, voices, facial expressions and charisma of people we meet. We are both extremely interested and observant, but with that said, also very critical and in the eyes of others perhaps a little harshly judgmental. Call it an occupational disease, but I choose to see it as an asset instead.
Our common view of quality is almost frightening and we pretty much always like and dislike the same people and events for the same reason. Our values are identical and we react to the same things in the news feed. However, I believe that our view of how society and the world should solve their problems differs due to our different age- and gender-related perspectives. Experience and pragmatism versus youthful idealism and refreshing goodness perhaps?
Half my family and both my parents were teachers, just like me, so it is not surprising that the pedagogical calling is imprinted in our DNA. Getting to wander around a world metropolis with a knowledge-hungry and impression-drinking eleven-year-old is a dream for a pedagogically savvy dad. The trip was so successful that I promised Henrik that we would do the same thing when he turned 11 and so it was. A tradition was born. Of course, both Melker and Leo got to do the same trip and now it was time for the fifth and final trip with Nora almost to the day 20 years after the first trip.
The framework program itself has differed very little from time to time
We have stayed in top hotels such as The Ritz, Browns, Savoy, The Langham and now The Landmark. Everyone has been up on the London Eye and inside Harrods, Fortnum & Maison, Hamleys and Selfridges. Madame Tussauds wax museum has been a highlight for everyone and a journey through time for me as the celebrities waxed come and go. We have walked the famous streets past Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. Melker and I have run all over central London and played football in Hyde Park. Strangely enough, it was he and the other football guy Leo who missed out on going to a football match in London. Stella got to see West Ham beat Everton and Henke had to settle for watching the bottom teams Fulham and Wigan cruise.
Football & London
Our family is, as you know, football-mad, but the ballet girl Nora is her mother’s girl with a top-class physique, she has devoted herself entirely to gymnastics and has been attending the Royal Ballet School in Stockholm for a few years now. Mother Ragni must probably be described as something so unusual as an outspoken football hater and didn’t even know who Messi was when we met. The fact that Hååland is Norway’s most famous person of all time doesn’t bother her one bit, even though he played in her hometown of Molde. This has meant that Nora hasn’t seen a single football match, Melker’s training sessions excepted. That’s why it was with a mixture of horror and delight that we booked two tickets for the Tottenham-Arsenal derby. It was precisely with a mixture of horror and delight that we could see the expression on Nora’s face when we jumped out of one of the many taxis we were to travel in during this trip. Thousands of singing people and a whole regiment of mounted military police all marching towards an enormous building over there in the distance. The fact that she is my daughter was very noticeable on several occasions during the trip. Perhaps most of all because she constantly described with exquisite precision the smells and odors that met us during our walks, often before I had time to perceive them myself.
The match experience was a success. Perhaps not so much for the game itself or for Viktor Göykere’s two goals as for the smell of the grass, the visual and auditory impression of the enormous scene and the 62,000 roaring people. Incidentally, the sensitivity of the present reached another low point when it turned out that you were only allowed to cheer for the home team because it could be provocative for the home crowd to sympathize with the opponents. Nora was as shocked as I was when two people in the row in front of us were sent off for celebrating Arsenal’s lead goal. I say this as Kristian Luuk. Where are we going?
The Restaurants
All my children have been gifted with sensitive noses and taste buds, so it is not surprising that they all appreciate good restaurant visits. They all have had a clear preference for Italian child-friendly cuisine and Nora was of course also forced to visit the legendary Cipriani. We also found a new favorite Italian by chance near our hotel called Café Murano, where Nora had her best risotto yet with delicious Yorkshire rabbit while I took in an incredibly rich and hot rigatoni with an ultra-complex spice mixture that still fascinates my brain and makes my mouth water when I write about it. Both there and at Cipriani they have started with 125 ml top wines by the glass thanks to the oxidation-inhibiting invention Coravin, where a needle sucks the wine up through the cork without opening the bottle. I took advantage of this with 2019 Château Margaux, Tignanello, Magari and Guado al Tasso during the trip.
Scetch ***
I think Sketch was the perfect starred restaurant to capture Nora’s interest in fine dining. The venue, with its incredibly extravagant maximalism and colorful richness, is joyful and child-friendly. The service from the entire team was ultra-professional, but at the same time humorous and relaxed. Pierre Gagnaire‘s world of flavors is also welcomingly soft and harmonious rather than sensational. The charming Dutch, of course stately tall, waiter and I put together a mixed menu for Nora where we sneaked in both calf brain and calf breast between the more familiar ingredients without telling her what it was that she thought was so fantastically delicious. Now Nora is also a foodie and Leo, who has been making the pilgrimage to 12 different starred restaurants for three years, is furiously jealous, as only a child can be of his sibling, that Nora got to go to a three-star restaurant before he got to do so. During our previous trips to London, only Melker has also dined in the highest category at Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, also with prized ingredients that he normally would have rejected.
London’s entertainment scene
London’s entertainment scene is of course not just gastronomic and museum-based. The city’s theatre and musical scene is world-famous and classics such as The Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Mamma Mia have been reviewed, although it is unclear to me with whom I saw which. New for this year, and only Nora was allowed, was the unique avatar show ABBA the Voyage. It was extra exciting for me because I have embarked on my own large AI project where I live on as an avatar in “The Nose”. As you know, the project is what we are currently devoting the most time and resources to in our team. A little scary, but most exciting, just like it was to see ABBA reborn again after 40 years. The songs are better than ever in an era of smooth and sleepy, melody-poor machine pop. Björn and Benny look a bit nerdy, but the girls are naturally pretty and they sound so damn good together. The live band that played about half of what was banging on our eardrums, yes why does it have to be so loud?, made the experience more real and present. The enthusiastic audience was so tuned in that they almost felt bought and when the encore “Dancing Queen” turned into “The Winner takes it all” all 3000 people in the place probably had their hair on end.
When we left a spring-like London with blooming cherry trees, green parks and intensely high yellow daffodils, it was 22 degrees warmer than in the inhospitable snow chaos that met us at Arlanda. For a few days we were left dreaming away. Was it reality or was it just a dream? In any case, the five lovely trips with my children are now past time that lives on in our memories.
