Dominic Ashby’s practice explores wine, hospitality, and contemporary dining through writing.
His work spans editorial and commissioned formats, shaped by close observation and lived experience.
2026
Off-menu -
Auren’s Deli and The Practice of Reciprocity.
B.Y.O.B. Magazine 2.1 -
Garrigue or Gariga:
Engineering Allegiance to the Other Side
2024
The Healthy Times Issue 5 - Demystifying Mythical Grapes: Backyard Aromas
The Preserve Journal Issue 10 - The Path to Remembrance:
A Sommelier's Deep Dive into Sake. An Interview with Masaru Terada
2021
The Preserve Journal Issue 5 - Wines of Change:
The Conscientious Drinker
Auren’s Deli and The Practice of Reciprocity:
Read the aricle
excerpt:
“ The expectations of the third space are diffuse. Last week, I witnessed firsthand the most egregious misuse of this: a coffee shop co-opted into a free storage closet. Usually third spaces are places of unabashed revelry. They harbour a vibrating and necessary underscore for people far and wide, providing instrumental nourishment to neighbourhoods, cities, and broader communities. But demonstrated there in the coffee shop was an acute misconception of what these places should do for us, and what we should do for them
”
Garriugue or Gariga: Engineering Allegiance to the Other Side
ISBN: N/A
152 x 210 mm
112 pages, Softcover
excerpt:
“The wines seem hewn from the herby haze of the hills around them, boasting intoxicant-level scents of dried marjoram, wild figs, and juniper. They are the salt of the earth, and breathe new life into the phrase rusticity: displayed here it is beautiful, like walking into an old tavern, thick with candle smoke and the seeping smell of all things long ago. They are built for the ages, and lean themselves amicably toward the table, company, and voluminous food. ”
Demystifying Mythical Grapes: Backyard Aromas
ISBN:978.3.9505660.0.0
160 x 240mm
180 pages, Softcover
excerpt:
“I plucked strawberries from a verdant green patch sprawling around the garden beds and snuck them in my mouth. I snapped off fern shoots and used their analgesic effect for insect bites, during naive quests to discover what was on the other end of holes in the garden. The smell snatched at my nostrils and clung to my skin, deep green grilled earth. I snuck sun-drenched apricots from my neighbour's backyard, scrambling over fences, juice running down my arms. And I hoarded sweet treats at the back of that ill-fated shed, snuck under shirts from the Greek-run corner store, unbeknownst to my parents.”
The Path to Remembrance: A Sommelier's Deep Dive into Sake. An interview with Masaru Terada
Softcover
160 x 240mm
130 pages.
excerpt:
“But the bottles that continue to occupy significant space in my mind are those from Terada Honke. Through each experience with them, I think I get a better understanding of the drink in the glass, but the next time throws me off ‘the scent’, and takes me down a new path, to a new garden of plentitude. The bottles are always alive in the best sense of the word, never faulty, always individual."
Wines of Change:
The Conscientious Drinker
Softcover
160 x 240 mm
140 pages.
excerpt:
"Australia can be held up as a prime example of this focal shift in concern for provenance and farming. Not only is this rooted in restaurants and farming communities, but also in a young, constantly shifting, and decidedly malleable wine industry. The winds of change have pushed Australia towards conscious consumption and forward- thinking wine production, its viticultural industry striding forward in the face of inevitable change."