"Stick to wine, Tim - you're wasting time." If you spend as many hours as I do on social media channels, you get used to - and even rather enjoy - the odd spat, but this was different.
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Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, recently announced an increase in the annual growth forecast for the UK economy from 1.4% to 2%. But things may not be as good as they sound.
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As a middle-aged, middle-class man, my weekly highlight is Saturday morning, illuminated by a warm croissant (180ºC for eight minutes, served with passion fruit curd), a Nespresso coffee (medium froth, Ristretto pod) plus the weekend papers - and here's the most indulgent part - delivered to the door.
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What do you think of the following tasting note? "Inconspicuous boysenberries and cigar wrappers revel in unresolved rosehips, while dried wormwood and chemically tanned leather swim amongst illusive black liquorice." And this? "Like a sherry, wet wool, mead, musk and nail polish remover cocktail."
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January. The beginning of a better year. That's what we hope. However good or bad 2016 was personally, for our families, our businesses, and people in other places, we are hardwired to aim for better.
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There was a degree of sniping when environment secretary Andrea Leadsom claimed recently that England was taking its place "among the world's most renowned wine producers".
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Burgundy and Bordeaux may share a common language, but they are very different places.
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I don't want to be a siren of gloom. After all Christmas is the time for good cheer. But we are racing towards the end of a year where disruptive global events - Brexit, Trump, Aleppo - have shaken our feelings of security.
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Investigative journalism is a dangerous business. Indeed, you could argue that in its purest form it's often fatal.
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September 11th 2001. Anyone out of childhood can remember what they were doing the day the Twin Towers were felled.
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My former colleague Adam Lechmere came out with a great line the other day.
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The poster in Vivanco's Museum of Wine Culture said it all. It was first published in 2001, but it looked much older than that.
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Our regular columist Jerry Lockspeiser has published "YOUR WINE QUESTIONS ANSWERED: The 25 things wine drinkers most want to know", with 100% of the revenue recieved donated to the Millione Foundation, which he started with Mike Paul and Cliff Roberson to fund primary schools in Sierra Leone.
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To Brexit or not to Brexit? To further labour a Shakespeare reference, that is the question facing the British public as they head for the voting booths for the referendum on remaining or renouncing membership of the European Union on June 23.
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In his wonderful book BAD: Or, the Dumbing of America, the late Paul Fussell developed a theory about altitude: the higher the restaurant, the worse the food.
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When my name first started appearing at the top of this page each month, I promised myself there was one topic that I would strenuously avoid. Eighteen months in, I'm about to break that promise...
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Tim Atkin asks whether Alberto Antonini has decided to break away from more traditional styles of wine defined by the likes of Michel Rolland and to forge his own path.
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Along, it seemed, with half the UK's wine press, I was at the launch of Les 110 de Taillevent in London's Cavendish Square last week. My verdict? Go - and be sure to order the crab ravioli. What was most notable about the night, though, was not the guest list or the menu, but that here was a major restaurant being launched off the back of its wine offering.
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Companies with lots of shareholders shouldn't have annual general meetings like this. Really. It's dangerous stuff. It might change the way we think about doing business completely and forever. And we don't want that. Or do we?
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The outcome of - and the polls leading up to - this year's general election provided yet further evidence, were it required, of the vagaries of the Great British public and, indeed, of opinion polls themselves.
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