An organised wine cellar matters because it makes access a lot easier, saves time and makes for a great display. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of effort and know-how to achieve that perfect combination of preservation and aesthetics in your wine cellar. So, how do you go about the organisation?
Tips on How to Organise Your Wine Cellar
Invest in the Right Shelving System
Choosing a shelving/rack system is perhaps the most important part of the organisation process. These storage spaces will not only determine how well the wine is preserved but will also influence the overall aesthetics once you are done organising.
With plenty of options to choose from, it can be a little overwhelming to find the perfectwine cellar racks for your needs. However, a good idea is to go for bespoke options. Such tailored cellar shelving systems are perfect because their customisability ensures they meet both space and aesthetic needs.
Select Sorting Criteria
Once you have the shelves ready, the next step is to choose sorting criteria for your bottles. This, basically, involves coming up with a logical system that determines what bottle goes where on the shelves. Some popular sorting methods you can use include grape variety, country of origin, age or occasion. But you can use your own criteria, based on what you have in the collection.
When categorising the bottles, it is a good idea to tag them – use small neck tags, removable stickers or chalkboard labels to note things like wine name, year, origin and tasting notes. Again, you can include other notes depending on your sorting criteria.
Digitalise Your Inventory
Another step you should take in your wine cellar organisation is digitising your inventory. That is particularly essential when your collection has 20+ bottles.
Digitalising your inventory is simply using an inventory app, like CellarTracker, or a custom spreadsheet to keep track of your bottles. With the use of such tech, you can check things like aging progress or drink-by dates by simply searching by keyword.
Conclusion
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to organising a wine cellar. So, do not hesitate to mix and match ideas until you find a system that fits your needs to a T.
A hush of presence filled with echoes of homes remembered, stories untold, and clay still warm from the hand. IN BETWEEN | 两极之间 (July 9-15), the latest offering from Nova Ma, doesn’t try to dazzle at first glance. Instead, it waits, like the soft pause before a breath, inviting you into its shifting depths. Inside the bustling communal space of Deptford’s Ceramics Studio Co-op, Ma has carved out a world of slow-burning, beautiful enigmas that stay with you long after you’ve left.
There is something ungraspable here, fluid and moves between opposites: tension and ease, belonging and estrangement, stillness and change. Suspend! the first body of work, sets the tone with ceramic sculptures that seem to linger mid-action: a twisted arc of glazed stoneware a breath away from collapsing (or flying); another piece stretches diagonally, as if resisting an invisible pull. They hang like softened tools, glazed in tones of chalk and bone, their delicate forms vibrating with concealed energy. Ma refers to them as emotional architectures that hold the weight of waiting, anticipating connection or rupture. Their fragility is a register of care — each curve, crack, and pause holding the imprint of a slow, intentional hand.
The next body of work, Narratives of Belonging, deepens the conversation and shifts the focus from emotion to material history. Here, memory is held in the discarded: fragments of wood laminate, broken tiles, and flaking wallpaper salvaged from shops, restaurants, and council flats in the surrounding South London neighbourhoods. These fragments are embedded into slabs of glazed stoneware, forming layered compositions that feel like excavated walls or disassembled rooms. One standout work depicts a domestic scene in front of old windows, its surface layered with glazed streaks mimicking aged water marks, a kind of ghost architecture. Others resemble old monuments
and floorplans, mapping spaces no longer accessible. Through this reassemblage, Ma reflects on how materials shape our understanding of space, memory, and belonging.
The site-specificity of Ma’s work is not incidental, as they are created in conversation with the people and spaces surrounding her. In the months prior to the show, she led a series of clay workshops, inviting local residents to bring in domestic materials and personal memories. Many of these offerings made their way into the final pieces, quietly stitching a collective voice into the work. There is a generosity here that resists the polished isolation of the white cube, a willingness to let others’ hands leave their mark.
This ethos of collaboration carries through to the final section of the exhibition: Formless Anthology, a zine-based project made in partnership with poet Suiwu Su. Here, language becomes sculpture. The zine, loose, folded, overlapping, unfurls across a rough wooden table. Su’s poems, written in English, Mandarin, and moments of linguistic slippage, drift between abstraction and atmosphere; and through Ma’s practice of clay, redefined the notion of physical, linguistic and cultural boundaries. Some poems spill across the page like a wave, others fold themselves into quiet whispers. The layout is intentionally unstable — there is no one way to read it. Like the rest of Ma’s work, meaning emerges not through control but through relation — shifting, unfinished, held lightly.
What lingers most is the softness of Ma’s approach. These are not grand declarations, but small, caring gestures. Clay becomes memory, resistance, intimacy. IN BETWEEN doesn’t ask you to look; it asks you to stay. To listen. To feel the weight of a broken tile, the echo of a mother tongue, the stillness before a door is closed.
In a world rushing towards certainty and standardisation, Nova Ma wanders in the in-between — and invites us, gently, to join her there.
If last year’s essay collection Planes Flying over a Monster was Daniel Saldaña París’ way of integrating a feeling of location into his writing, his new novel The Dance and the Fire cements it. Three old friends return to Cuernavaca, Mexico, a city engulfed in the heat of nearby fires; a symptom of climate catastrophe but also of the three friends’ mental states. While Natalia remedies herself from the strains of her marriage by choreographing an elaborate dance based off the German expressionist Mary Wigman’s style, her former fling, Erre, sleeps through the event, while Conejo, reminiscing on his time with Erre, is paralyzed by the past. The Dance and the Fire is an evocative portrait of sexuality, friendship, and art, amongst a setting of nearby destruction.
OurCulture sat down with Daniel Saldaña París to talk about location, research, and the art of dancing.
Congratulations on the new novel, your third to be translated into English! How does it feel now that it’s out?
I’m very excited about it. Every time one of my books is translated into another language, I feel grateful that I get to do this for a living; that I get to connect with readers from different cultures and traditions, perhaps even challenging some of their ideas about Latin American literature.
The Dance and the Fire follows three former high school friends that now orbit each other. When did these relationships start in your mind?
I’ve always been interested in the ways friendships change over the years, and how we remain faithful to some of those relationships even when we ourselves have changed beyond recognition. When I reached my mid-thirties, I felt the need to reconnect with some of my friends from adolescence, and catching up with them became a way of analyzing my own life in retrospect, measuring the person I am against the person I thought I would be when I first met them. This exercise can be disappointing (as in the case of Erre), but also very nourishing.
In this novel and your essay collection, Planes Flying Over a Monster, the plot is tied to the location. Is a sense of place important to you when you write?
Yes, very much so. I divide my life into distinct periods according to the cities I’ve lived in: Cuernavaca, Madrid, Mexico City, Montreal, New York. Each city has opened up a way of thinking and walking—which tend to be the same—and offered a community from which I’ve learned a lot. I try to write with that sense of belonging in mind, using place to mirror my characters’ processes.
People like Natalia appreciate it and detail it with love, but Erre doesn’t want to recognize anything. “As far as I’m concerned,” he thinks, “they can build even more shopping malls, one on top of the other… until there’s nothing left of this parody of a city, nothing besides the sound of cash registers in the clouds of smoke.” Why do you think he’s so disaffected?
Erre has a bitter experience with the city because he feels he’s returning in disgrace, having failed to meet his own expectations in the capital. But there can also be sweet returns—I’ve experienced them myself when moving back to Mexico and falling in love with the place again after a period abroad. I wanted to capture both experiences in the novel, as both are worth telling.
Which camp do you think you fall into?
I feel closer to Natalia’s way of understanding the world, but I have moments of obfuscation when I’m more like Erre, and also moments when my sensibility resembles Conejo’s. That’s what I love about writing fiction: I get to explore the different facets of myself through each character.
Natalia is so methodical and research-focused — most of her section involves scrolling through Wikipedia. Did her journey coincide with your own curiosity?
Yes, pretty much. Except that I was doing that same research at the British Library in London, thanks to a fellowship from the Eccles Centre and the Hay Festival. But the process is the same—one of curiosity and research, but also of incantation, where things seem to come together as if by magic or uncanny coincidence. That’s how I write.
You write that “the mechanisms through which a person enters the canon in this country are so unfathomable there’s no point in trying to understand them.” Do you think this is true of your own experience?
I think that assertion corresponds to an earlier period in my career. I understand those mechanisms better nowadays, but I still don’t like them.
Natalia wants her dance not to placate, but to be so bizarre that “it will be the kind where [the audience] gets angry and asks for their money back.” Why did you want her to be a sort of provocateur?
Because dance can be such a people-pleasing art sometimes, and I like it better when it’s not. Art can do many things, and I have the feeling that when it’s dominated by the free market is when it loses its edge and becomes mere entertainment. I wanted to work with a character willing to defy that notion even more than I am.
Tell me more about Mary Wigman and what interested you in her work.
I loved her idea that everybody can—and probably should—dance. That dance isn’t something reserved for trained professionals, but rather a way of engaging with the body and space that everyone can benefit from. I danced a lot while writing this book. I would go to the garden at my mom’s house in Cuernavaca, set up a camera, and improvise in front of it—then go back inside, watch the footage, and try to describe those movements in writing. I understood that, for Wigman, dance was also a way of being in conversation with one’s own shadow.
But it’s also because I’ve always been interested in that period of art history—the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century, the manifestos, the sense of openness and possibility between the wars. I came across the story of this place in the Swiss mountains where Wigman lived for a time—Mont Verità—where artists collaborated in multidisciplinary performances, learned Esperanto, and spent summers as nudists. I loved the descriptions of that brief utopia.
Conejo reflects on their time together with Erre, who at the time was still in denial about his sexuality. What did you want to explore with this?
I wanted to explore bisexuality, and the lack of language around it—at least in the 1990s, and in a small, conservative town like Cuernavaca. I am bisexual, and it took me years to even understand that that was a thing. There was simply no language, no way of naming it for me. But desire always finds its way, and it can often be through friendship, through shared silences and tenderness.
In the end, the manic dancing hysteria that the town goes through seems to resist explanation — it’s either Natalia’s dance, the fires raging via climate change, or Conejo’s conspiracy theory about the water has finally come true. Do you think it’s a combination of all three?
I’d rather not say, because it’s ultimately up to the reader. But when researching the medieval dance epidemics, my conclusion was that nobody really has a definitive explanation. Maybe it was mold in the bread—but also the social circumstances, religious pressures, hunger… I wanted to replicate that same sense of confusion.
Was it interesting to mirror all these dance crazes in the past?
It seems to me that we are in a similar place now. There’s a widespread sense of end-of-the-world anxiety, a resurgence of religious fanaticism, a climate emergency, and mental health crises emerging from all of this. I wanted to draw that parallel in the fiction.
Finally, what’s next for you as a writer?
I’m currently working on a sort of essay or memoir about an oil spill off the Galician coast in 2003. At the time, I lived in Spain, and I went to the beach to help clean the oil with a group of volunteers. In a way, I’m returning to apocalyptic landscapes and the emotional entanglements that can emerge from them—but this time as memoir. I also have a new novel coming out in Spanish this fall, called My Father’s Names. It takes place between New York City and Mexico City and follows a man trying to uncover something about his own origins. It’s more of a political novel, in a sense. I guess it will eventually come out in English, too.
Everybody knows about the Minecraft game. Also, millions of gamers around the world love it. And that translated to the box office success of the feature film, A Mine Craft Movie. With many fans eager to see how the blocky world would look on the big screen, the film grossed over 900 million dollars. Particularly, the movie revolves around the adventure of four misfits. After being pulled into the Overworld, they go on a mission that requires teamwork to get home. While the movie features exciting adventures and fantasy elements, parents still want to make sure about the official rating of the movie.
Continue reading to find out specific details about the film’s rating and content description.
What is the Rating of the Movie?
According to IMDb, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) assigns A Minecraft Movie a PG rating. In particular, this rating stands for “Parental Guidance Suggested.” At the same time, Common Sense Media indicates that the film is suitable for viewers aged nine and above. The rating of the film implies that it reflects soft fantasy violence, thematic elements, and rare mild language.
To assist in the content evaluation, here’s a content rating from IMDb:
Alcohol, Drugs, & Smoking: None
Frightening & Intense Scenes: Mild
Profanity: Mild
Sex & Nudity: None
Violence & Gore: Mild
What Does the A Mine Craft Movie Rating Mean?
With an official PG rating from the MPA, the film would be more lenient when it comes to the age range of audiences who can watch it. Likewise, this rating suggests that the movie features action scenes and suspense. However, it still avoids graphic violence, strong language, and adult themes. That’s why most children can watch it as long as their parents or guardians are with them.
Thankfully, the movie does not involve depictions of alcohol and substance use.
Frightening & Intense Scenes
For younger viewers, the visual presence of skeletons and spiders might be too much to handle.
Profanity
While there are foul words, they’re not too offensive. Also, most profanity in the film is very light. They are merely used as expressions. So, there’s not much to worry about.
Sex & Nudity
A Minecraft Movie does not include any explicit sexual themes. However, there is casual dating and flirting between some characters.
Violence & Gore
The Minecraft world involves battles among characters. So, viewers can expect fight scenes. But they’re mostly depicted in a light and fun manner.
The Final Verdict
Considering the PG rating, it’s safe to say that A Minecraft Movie is family-friendly. Most children can handle its content, and it has substance for older viewers to enjoy. But just to make sure, parents might want to review the fantasy violence and suspenseful scenes to ensure a safe experience for kids.
With four seasons under its belt, Emily in Paris proves that it’s a go-to Netflix series for many. Likewise, it caters to fans of lighthearted drama, romance, fashion, life adventures, and mishaps. Specifically, the show is in Paris and follows the story of Emily Cooper. She’s an American marketing executive and has found a new job in France. While she adjusts to the new lifestyle, Emily navigates a distinct culture, workplace conflicts, and love affairs. But most viewers love the series for the eye-catching outfits. However, the combination of adult themes and youthful energy makes viewers wonder about the rating of Emily in Paris.
Read further to discover the official rating of the series and its content description.
What is the Rating of the Series?
As per IMDb, Emily in Paris is rated TV-MA. This official rating specifically indicates “Mature Audience Only.” Similarly, a review by Common Sense Media shows that the Netflix series is appropriate for audiences aged 15 and older. This rating is because of content involving sexual content, alcohol use, and strong language.
To get a sense of the content, look at this content rating from IMDB:
Alcohol, Drugs, & Smoking: Mild
Frightening & Intense Scenes: None
Profanity: Mild
Sex & Nudity: Moderate
Violence & Gore: None
What Does the Emily in Paris Rating Mean?
The TV-MA rating of Emily in Paris is simply a reminder that it contains mature material. And that content might be too much for younger audiences. It’s also because the series heavily focuses on adult relationships and suggestive content. So, it needs to be categorized outside typical teen programming despite lacking graphic violence.
A significant chunk of the characters smokes cigarettes. They even influence the main protagonist to do the same. Similarly, many scenes take place in bars, where individuals party and drink.
Frightening & Intense Scenes
Although it wasn’t shown graphically, one character in season 2 slices off his finger. However, the blood splatters on other characters.
Profanity
Compared to other Netflix series, this show has infrequent use of curse words and profane language.
Sex & Nudity
Whatever Emily in Paris lacks in profanity, it makes up for it with abundant sexual themes. Many scenes involve characters talking about sex and having sex. At the same time, many characters speak about the human body in a sexualized manner, and there is some light nudity.
Violence & Gore
Aside from a thumb and a car incident, the show barely has scenes displaying violence.
The Final Verdict
While Emily in Paris seems teen-friendly at first glance, it’s best for older teens and above. Yes, it’s visually appealing and entertaining. But the mature themes require a certain level of understanding. So, it’s best if parents or guardians preview it before letting the kids watch.
IDLES have released a new song, ‘Rabbit Run’, which they made for Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming crime caper Caught Stealing. It’s one of four original songs they recorded for its soundtrack, and you can hear it below.
“This has been a huge opportunity for us that seemingly came about after a chance meeting backstage at Fallon when we both happened to be guests on the same day,” the British band’s Joe Talbot commented. “But in hindsight, I realise that Darren is one of my favourite directors and his films have in some ways made me who I am as an artist. This lucid dream has been a lifetime in the making and one that I will live over and over with a huge sense of humility and joy.”
A press release describes IDLES as Darren Aronofsky’s “favourite band.” The filmmaker said, “I built Caught Stealing to be a roller coaster of fun and wanted to supercharge the film by main lining a punk sensibility. I don’t think a band has really been tasked with performing a score for a movie. Who better to collaborate with than IDLES? It has been a dream watching them bend their notes to blast a hole in our movie screen.”
Caught Stealing follows Hank Thompson, a former high school baseball star who becomes tangled in a web of organized crime when his punk rock neighbor asks him to watch his cat for a few days. Rob Simonsen, who composed the film’s score, added: “I was really excited by the idea that Darren had for our third project together, which was to write a score for IDLES, using them as our orchestra. They had created original songs for the film, and building a palette that started from their sound – the incredible textures they create through inventive use of feedback, distortion, and pedals – was a really satisfying challenge. Our work with the band was genuinely inspiring. They’re not only extraordinarily talented musicians, but individuals with clear eyes, big hearts, and bold souls.”
Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam and Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell have reunited for a new covers EP, Making Good Time, arriving on September 12. Previewing it today is a surprising yet lovely rendition of Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s ‘Luther’. Check it out below.
Beam and Bridwell laid down Making Good Time earlier this year in North Carolina with producer Brad Cook. It also features covers of songs by U2, Foreigner, Roxy Music, and boygenius.
“Working with Sam again feels like a homecoming in so many ways,” Bridwell shared. “To circle back ten years after Sing Into My Mouth and expand the project is a wonderful dream relived.” He continued:
I chose to focus on ‘Luther’ after kinda hitting a wall wondering which songs would be best to contribute. After much hand-wringing, it hit me, “Why not just do my favorite song?” I’d been playing the then newly released GNX album on repeat and that song in particular with my girls to the point of exhaustion.
About a week later, Kendrick strangled the game at the Super Bowl and ‘Luther’ would soon become a number 1 hit for so many weeks. Seems a little late now to share this as it’s been many months since recording it, but I knew that damn song was headed for big things. Praying we did some justice.
John Ross has announced a deluxe edition of his latest Wild Pink album, 2024’s Dulling the Horns. The lead single is a wonderfully stripped-back rendition of ‘Disintegrate’ featuring Fenne Lily. Listen to ‘Disintegrate – Edit’ below.
“I’m a huge fan of Fenne’s music, so I was honored she agreed to do it,” Ross said in a statement. “I’ve listened to it a bunch of times and it sounds like a new song to me.”
Fenne Lily added: “When John asked me to contribute to this release I screamed ‘hell yes’ and eagerly awaited a snow day — Dulling the Horns is my most listened to album of the last couple of years so it was an honour and a privilege to hole up in a Vermont attic and cobble together this cover of ‘Disintegrate.’ The percussion is the ASMR hands of Mr Theo Munger, everything else is one guitar tracked 8ish times, thank you for trusting me with your song, Wild Pink, wizard that you are.”
Dulling The Horns (Deluxe Edition) will be out October 3 on Fire Talk Records. It features another guest rework, John Moreland’s take on ‘The Fences of Stonehenge’, as well as a stripped-back version of ‘Bonnie One’ and a handful of live performances from Wild Pink’s recent Union Pool residency.
In April 2023, a semi-truck slammed into the broken-down tour van holding Carlyn Bezic and Jane Inc.’s five other musicians. Upon returning home from that tour, Bezic broke off her relationship of nearly a decade, and, exactly a year and a day after the crash, was diagnosed with stage one cancer on her left vocal cord. She then underwent two surgeries that left her voice intact, but the possibility of regrowth was still significant. She opens the lead single with the lines, “I wanna get closer to death/ Feel it shatter against my head.”
‘Elastic’ was “was inspired by performing in the aftermath of the car accident,” Bezic explained. “The experience unlocked something for me, and I felt I could perform with more freedom and abandon than ever before. Here I imagine the audience as a lover, and under their gaze, life is filled with pure Dionysian possibility: an unrolling and malleable series of nows.”
About the accompanying visual, she added: “They say a song is a fixed number of minutes and seconds but it never feels that way. Had to make this video to prove it.”
A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH Cover Artwork:
A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH Tracklist:
1. reborn (on the dancefloor)
2. elastic
3. freefall
4. keeping it with me
5. the braid
6. i’m alive!!!
7. continents shift
8. levelled
9. what if
10. drumheller
Access to arts and culture keeps changing, but digital platforms are setting the pace now.
Most of us scroll through virtual art shows while sipping coffee or listening to global concerts from our living rooms. People discover local painters or musicians in online spaces they never could have visited in person. Technology puts diverse cultural experiences just a click away, regardless of location or background.
Curious about how these new tools break barriers and support creative communities? Read on for a closer look at what’s happening right now.
Virtual Museums Make Masterpieces Available Anywhere
Alas! Lovers and enthusiasts of art no longer need to travel vast distances to stand in front of famous paintings. Most major museums now digitize their collections, offering high-resolution images and virtual walkthroughs online.
Zoom features let you study a brushstroke like never before. Interactive guides answer questions in real time or share historical context on the spot.
Technology now bridges the gap between artist and viewer, bringing global galleries into any home with an internet connection.
Finding Professionals Now Just Takes A Few Clicks
Artists and creatives thrive when they can connect with others who understand their craft, right? Indeed, and digital platforms open up those connections instantly. That’s whether you’re a graphic designer looking for a writer or a filmmaker searching for sound editors.
These online spaces offer more than networking, though. For many in creative fields, burnout and stress are real challenges. Some digital hubs now feature tools like a mental health provider directory, helping users find support as easily as they discover collaborators or mentors for their projects.
Artists Reach Global Audiences without Leaving Home
Livestreams. Virtual concerts. Social media reels. All these bring creative performances to viewers worldwide in real time. Musicians and performers now get to showcase their work without costly tours or travel, while fans enjoy front-row seats from anywhere.
Art sales also follow this pattern as digital platforms let buyers view and purchase directly from creators across continents. With these tools, artists reach more people than ever before, with minimal barriers in the way.
Cultural Education Moves Beyond the Classroom
A documentary film or virtual lecture can now reach a student sitting anywhere with an internet connection. Creative apps let learners experiment with digital brushes, compose music, or even build 3D models in real time.
Global classrooms bring together people from different cultures for shared projects and discussions. Modern tools help us see education’s impact on societal change and lifestyle growth up close, shaping open-minded communities who value diverse ideas as part of daily life rather than distant lessons.
Digital Marketplaces Help Emerging Talent Get Noticed
Not every talented creator can open a gallery or rent retail space. Now, selling and sharing art has become easier with digital marketplaces designed for creative work.
Some of the top platforms include:
Etsy – artists can sell their work
Saatchi Art – painters find international buyers
Bandcamp – musicians distribute music directly to fans
Creative Market – designers offer templates and assets
With these options, emerging artists get seen by more people. They build reputations from home while reaching collectors or clients worldwide.
Interactive Apps Turn Passive Viewers into Participants
The smartphone continues to change how people experience many things, art and culture included. Instead of just watching, users now get involved with interactive apps that encourage hands-on engagement.
These tools break the ice for newcomers and give regular fans a chance to connect deeper; often creating their own works along the way.
Popular examples include:
Google Arts & Culture: Users explore collections in detail
Procreate Pocket: Draw and paint anywhere
Smule: Sing with others across the globe
DailyArt: Learn stories behind masterpieces
Online Platforms Preserve Traditions for Future Generations
A family recipe only survives when someone writes it down or shares it aloud. The same goes for:
– Cultural dances,
– Songs,
– And visual art forms.
Think video archives, community podcasts, and crowd-sourced story projects. They keep endangered languages and folk traditions alive in digital spaces.
Local experts teach online classes to global audiences eager to learn skills from textile weaving to calligraphy.
Heritage gets to stay vibrant as more people document and celebrate the stories that shape their communities across generations.
Endnote:
Every click or scroll opens doors to new perspectives and talents. Our shared stories, preserved and expanded by digital tools, help build a more connected world. Arts and culture now reach into daily life. It does so more effectively, shaping how we see each other in small but lasting ways.
