How can you tell you've encountered a London summer? That's right, it's usually raining. So, as the clouds began to roll over on another soon to be wet summer's day, a small crowd descended upon the Bistro Bruno Loubet, London, to meet and taste the wines of Mike Aylward, winemaker of Ocean Eight wines.
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Warren Adamson, market director for New Zealand winery Craggy Range, gives his views on the country's latest vintage report, which shows yields down 18%.
Read more...So as the dust settles on another year at London's premier wine show I ask myself, what did I make of it all and what has changed over the years?
Read more...We were really excited to be part of the WineStars event. An innovative concept, it enabled us to see the brightest and best of the wine world, and shone a light into corners that we may not have looked into ourselves. With the opportunity to screen and shortlist entries in advance, it was very positive for us.
Read more...I heard about Wine-Stars through the www.wine.co.za newsletter, entered online and started following Wine-Stars on Twitter.
Read more...Pitting your wines against the best of its rivals is either a very clever PR exercise or a recipe for a disaster.
Read more...There are wineries, and, well, there are wineries. With memories of my recent tour around some of the western Cape's most splendid wine estates still fresh, I was expecting the vineyards in Georgia (the former Soviet republic not the home state of Newt Gingrich) would be different. But not this different.
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Lemonia, the most family-friendly, plate-smashy, authentic Greek restaurant in all of London was the venue for Marks & Spencer's latest press tasting on Friday.
Dominique Vrigneau, buying director at Thierry's Wine Services offers his view on which French presidential candidate offers the best choice for the country's wine industry.
Read more...A five-bolt lock pins the rust-coloured door to the hillside. Trees sprout above, just in leaf, their roots wrapping around, but unable to enter. Beneath, Dimitri Bre?evi?'s winery unravels, church-like in its proportions, verdegris mottling concrete walls and blood of Christ soundlessly maturing. Mightily built, this cavern was conceived as a water tank in 1928, converted for war shelter in the early 90s, and, just months ago, recognised as actually here by cartographers and authorities...
Read more...Call them natural wines. Or call them artisan. Or minimal intervention. Or real. The people who love them, and indeed the people who make them, aren't too bothered about definitions. They let the wine speak for itself. Yet it's funny to me what fervour those little words stir up in the wine industry, despite making up only a minuscule portion of the world's wines.
Read more...Anne Krebiehl tasted around 30 wines from Navarra - and found they don't conform to one singular taste and aren't on Parker's radar - meaning "great value for us".
Read more...Trapan's sharply designed winery, complete with Super Mario-style tubes plumbed into the ceiling of the tasting room (one plugged with a clock), felt too clean and too new to spit in. Besides, Bruno Trapan's well-made wines were hard not to swallow, particularly the completely delicious, un-macerated, oak-free Malvasia, drawn from tank.
Read more...A leading Chinese producer has created the world's first traceable Chinese wines in a bid to help consumers distinguish authentic wines from bootleg imitators.
Read more...Alex Down, 28, blogger on The Riesling Revolutionary and self-confessed German wine fanatic, recently made the decision to leave his job as a lawyer in the City to follow his passion for wine. The first stop on his wine adventure is a month's work experience at legendary German winery, Weingut Hermann Dönnhoff. Below he recounts his first week in the job:
Read more...Simon Bennison works for digital marketing agency Alienation Digital, and spoke about how to turn your customers into brand ambassadors online at last month's Harpers' Consumer Forum.
Read more...Justin Keay reports back on a recent visit to 12 South African wineries.
Read more...Douglas Blyde talks to dandy and gourmet, Nicolas Kenedi, the official adviser to Martell on its 'Pure Gourmet' food matching philosophy...
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What do you get when you fly a group of French bigwigs to South Africa to judge wines made by their antipodean colleagues? An entente cordiale or a guerre froide (cold war)?
Imagine, a woman - let's say between the ages of 22 and 63 - walks into a cocktail bar, somewhere in the world. She's had a long, hard day bashing away at the glass ceiling at the law firm/pension provider/bank where she works, and she just wants to sit at the bar and forget it all for a while, before heading home to her version of domestic bliss.
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