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Wines in the press- August 19-21

There are still a lot of people, especially women that claim they don't like British beer, despite the Campaign for Real Ale announcing a 40% rise in people trying real ale in the last five years, says Fiona Beckett.

Perhaps they just haven't tried it recently, she adds. She thinks the best place to start is with heavily hopped India pale ale, such as the Kernel brewery's fragrant, fruity India Pale Ale CCA (widely available £2.70-£2.95 for a 330ml bottle). Beckett also recently enjoyed O Garden from the Otley Brewery (£2.94 for a 500ml bottle, realbeerbox.com). It's a delicious, clear wheat beer spiked with coriander, cloves and orange, with a whoosh of elderflower on the nose, she says. It seems to Beckett the reason for the resurgence in real ale drinking, is that it hasn't been as exciting for years. "If you don't think of yourself as a beer drinker, it's time to think again."

The Sunday Telegraph

Anyone ordered red wine with fish in a restaurant lately? Asks Susy Atkins. Red wine with fish is not always a great idea at all, even in these liberal times. But if you choose low-tannin, light and juicy reds the problem is half solved - Beaujolais, Pinot Noir or a simple, young, unoaked Spanish red, or the lightest Italian reds and Australian Tarrango. Atkins advises for a successful marriage you need a relatively meaty, rich fish or seafood dish, which hits the mark with the right reds a great deal better than delicate white fish or creamy oysters. She recommends Taste the Difference Penguin Sands Pinot Noir 2009, Central Otago, New Zealand (Sainsbury's, £9.99), to pair with barbecued salmon, salt cod or fish in a red-wine sauce.

The Independent

Asda recently claimed its "world beating wines can give you plenty of spare change from a fiver". Questioning this Anthony Rose says at its summer press tasting, of the 138 wines on show, only 23 cost less than £5 - most were in the £5.97-£8.97 range. Not that Rose is complaining as Asda's trading up is in line with the general trend. Neither is he denigrating Asda's efforts to move upmarket. If other supermarkets can do it successfully, why shouldn't Asda? "What's hard to swallow is the inverted snobbery behind the notion of Asda as consumer champion for selling wines on the cheap." The latest report from market research specialists Mintel found, 55% of Britons who buy wine to drink at home buy "depending on which has the best discount". "If such deep discounting means lower quality, lack of adventure and binge drinking, bully for Asda and the myopia of being unable to tell the difference between price and value."

The Financial Times

Those who visit wine cellars professionally quickly learn to look for a collection of empty bottles of great wines from other regions and other producers, says Andrew Jefford. It means the producer in question has wider perspectives than his or her own hillside. When Jefford visited Australian wine producer Rick Kinzbrunner of Giaconda, in Victoria, he gave Jefford eight wines to taste blind. Four, had come from his own vineyards in Victoria's Beechworth; the other four proved to be from Burgundy, the Rhône and Bordeaux. In Australia, Kinzbrunner is something of a lone wolf: a self-taught winemaker who learned most of his craft in California. He told Jefford: "The biggie for me, is what's in the bottle. I hear so much talk about vineyards, terroir, organics, natural winemaking, low sulphur, whatever - but if the wine doesn't measure up, it's all irrelevant." Jefford say Kinzbrunner will be releasing a Nebbiolo, he says that this "neurotic" grape variety and his Piedmontese travels have made him rethink almost everything he does in the winery. I've tasted it: it's authentically light yet craggy, full of the fruits of experience.