Bond is back and with him a whole trail of advertising, product endorsements and no doubt some not-so- subtle brand placements in the film itself. Bond may be the best when it comes to getting the women and putting the world to rights, but the whole Bond franchise still leads the way when it comes to using a brand and image to sell a whole load of product.
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It's day three (and my last day, sadly) in Cannes, and I'm sporting a minor hangover, thanks to a very nice dinner with the Pernod Ricard lot last night. They took a bus load of journalists up into the hills for dinner at a michellin starred restaurant at which I managed to drink just enough wine to give me a bit of a fuzzy head this morning.
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Well, I broke my no-drinking-on-the-job rule today. Only because two of the people I interviewed insisted that a small tipple accompany us to the table.
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Well I made it to Cannes - just. Getting up at 2:30am never will be my idea of fun, even if the cabbie who took me to the airport seemed to think that "by the time you get there, get a couple of drinks down you, you'll be well away."
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I'm off to Cannes on Monday for the TFWA fair - otherwise known as the world's largest piss up.... sorry I mean duty free trade fair.
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Falling prices and rising costs are not a happy combination. But companies with strong brands, like LVMH and Pernod Ricard, don't mind paying more for grapes in the short-term because they sell their wines at a premium. They can absorb the extra costs and still remain profitable.
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One name missing from the ever-rolling credits of "those to blame" for the crisis of our drinkin', bingin', crunked-out-of-their-bonce yoof is Margaret Mead. A mildly controversial American cultural anthropologist, her Coming of Age in Samoa: A Study of Adolescence and Sex in Primitive Societies was an early classic in the field of ethnography - the study of peoples and cultures.
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Despite the danger of pandering to the nanny state, it is hard not to sign up to the idea of the Government educating children in schools about the rights and wrongs of alcohol.
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In the final part of our of our blog special from Argentina, the group bid Argentina a final farewell with a refreshing Torrrontes from AltaVista. Over the past few days the winners of the Harpers/ Wines of Argentina Steak Your Claim competition have been updating us on their progress as they enjoy a tour of each of the main wine regions and visit key producers to give them a taste of what Argentina can offer the UK. They've been sending back missives of their travels. Dominic Crolla writes...
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In the next installment of our blog special from Argentina, Jenny Mackenzie tells us why she's starting to feel like the ambassador's wife. Over the past few days the winners of the Harpers/ Wines of Argentina Steak Your Claim competition have been updating us on their progress as they enjoy a tour of each of the main wine regions and visit key producers to give them a taste of what Argentina can offer the UK. They've been sending back missives of their travels. Over to Jenny...
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Today Meeghan Murdoch takes the reins in our blog special from Argentina. Over the next few days the winners of the Harpers/ Wines of Argentina Steak Your Claim competition are updating us on their progress, as they enjoy a tour of each of the main wine regions and visit key producers to give them a taste of what Argentina can offer the UK. They are sending back missives of their travels. Over to Meeghan...
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It's the turn of Jake Crimmin again to update us on all the latest from Argentina. Over the next few days we are running a blog special from the winners of the Harpers/ Wines of Argentina Steak Your Claim competition. Each of our five winners are enjoying a tour of each of the main wine regions and visiting key producers to give them a taste of what Argentina can offer the UK, and sending back missives of their travels. Here's the latest from Jake...
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I come across some strange stories in my daily trawl of the internet's various newswires, but this one takes the biscuit for being one of the most ludicrous I've come across of late.
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New Zealand offers a unique proposition in that the wine industry is not governed by a burgeoning set of rules imposed on other wine-making countries -we have the freedom to choose where and how we plant, and control commercial factors such as pricing and markets.
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In the latest installment of out blog special from the winners of the Harpers/ Wines of Argentina Steak Your Claim competition, wine business entrepreneur Dominic Crolla tells us why he's dreaming of steak. Over the next few days, each of our five winners are enjoying a tour of each of the main wine regions and visiting key producers to give them a taste of what Argentina can offer the UK, and sending back missives of their travels. Here's Dominic's blog...
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Last week we joined forces with Harpers to try to introduce some sanity to the public debate on alcohol, emphasising that the official figures, yes the Government's own figures, show alcohol consumption is going down.
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It would be hard to find a business sector that is more resilient than the drinks industry. No matter what is thrown at it, the trade simply brushes itself down, and gets on with the business of buying and selling drinks.
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Continuing our blog special from the winners of the Harpers/ Wines of Argentina Steak Your Claim competition, Emily O'Hare of the River Café contemplates on The End Of The World. Over the next few days, each of our five winners are enjoying a tour of each of the main wine regions and visiting key producers to give them a taste of what Argentina can offer the UK, and sending back missives of their travels. Here's what Emily has to say...
Our winners of the Harpers/ Wines of Argentina Steak Your Claim competition are now down in Argentina discovering Argentine wines for themselves, in the flesh as it were, for the first time. Each of our five winners will be enjoying a tour of each of the main wine regions and visiting key producers to give them a taste of what Argentina can offer the UK. Over the next few days, our five intrepid explorers will be sending back missives of their travels in a special Steak Your Claim blog. So if you can face reading about drinks colleagues enjoying themselves - and working of course - on the other side of the world, check out their blogs over the coming days.
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Helping out at a recent consumer wine event, it occurred to me that we can all play our small part in reducing the industry's dependency on promotional activity.
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