While noble rot concentrates the sugars, allowing the water to evaporate and imparting the grapes with an attractive sweetness, gray rot attacks the grapes, leaving them tasting distinctly rotten and ruining at least part of the crop.

WSJ: Will Lyons on Wine: The Bitter Economics of Sweet Wines

Japan is more like a battered vessel, which has rotten timbers and many leaks, and the right question to ask is whether the rate at which the government repairs the ship and bails it out can outpace the spread of rot and entry of water.

ECONOMIST: Goodbye, Hashimoto

They're all on all utility services, like water and electricity, but they've been left to rot, because crofters couldn't pay the VAT to do them up.

BBC: NEWS | UK | Scotland | Rain, tiny planes and automobiles

The biggest current scandal, relating to some dodgy police property deals, may pale beside the News International saga, but with its tactical leaks and water muddying it shares some of the same themes, and has already begun to expose the rot within South Africa's establishment with depressing clarity.

BBC: Winter means strike time in South Africa