They started picking grapes in the Douro on 30 August as growers and producers started to count the cost of the drought in Portugal this year - it has hardly rained since May and this is the third dry winter in a row.
Read more...Bottle Green has signed a deal that will see its Chilean PKNT brand sponsor popular-music event The Q Awards 2005.
Read more...The Napa Valley Vintners (NVV) has opened a petition book for its 2005 worldwide tasting tour to garner support for its initiative to promote and protect location'.
Read more...Oxford-based wine importer Stevens Garnier has taken over the distribution for premium McLaren Vale producer Wirra Wirra Vineyards.
Harpers would like to point out that Moreno's marketing manager is Christopher Payne, not Piper, as was reported in the Raise your glasses' feature (Harpers Spain supplement, 9 September). Apologies for any confusion caused.
Read more...German entrepreneur Achim Niederberger has purchased the historic Pfalz wine estate of Reichsrat von Buhl for an undisclosed sum.
The Jeroboams Group is opening two new stores in London next month in St John's Wood and Islington.
Read more...William Reed Publishing, the Crawley-based publisher of The Grocer, Morning Advertiser and Off Licence News, has bought Wine International, Wine & Spirit International, Drinks International, the duty-free title Frontier, and the Intenational Wine Challenge.
Read more...The Wine Society was the surprise star of this year's International Wine Challenge (IWC) awards dinner, winning the Overall Wine Merchant of the Year award - one of the industy's most sought-after accolades.
Read more...Wine educator Susan Hulme has become the 249th Master
of Wine after successfully completing her dissertation.
In the week that its closest rival, Sainsbury's, was made IWC Supermarket Retailer of the Year, Asda has become the latest of the major multiples to make big changes to its buying team.
Read more...It was once a truism that even the most ardently Anglophobic producer would not have disputed: though it was never going
to lead the world in terms of production, the UK was the most dynamic, most diverse and most influential wine market in
the world. More than that, it was both the spiritual home and the shop window of the global wine trade, the place where the reputations, styles and sales of the world's wine production were made and broken, and where the world's most knowledgeable merchants and consumers gathered to discuss, buy and drink the results. Forget New York - when it came to wine, if you could make it in London, Bristol or Edinburgh, you could make it anywhere.
Coonawarra's potential as a great wine region was first recognised during the Gold Rush by Scotsman John Riddoch, but it was Samuel Wynn's investment in 1951 that started the ball rolling towards the international recognition that Coonawarra enjoys today.
Read more...Between 150 and 300 producers ransacked the local offices of the INAO in Mcon following the decision to reduce yields for the 2005 vintage.
Read more...Violent thunderstorms brought the harvest in southern France to an abrupt halt last week. An alert rouge' was issued on 6 September for the Gard, Hrault and Aude departments - the second time since 2001
Read more...While demand has been stronger than some traders expected in the UK, Europe and the Far East, it has been feeble in the US: the weakness of the dollar, the high prices paid for the 2003s, and the less-than-enthusiastic reports of influential reviewers such as Robert Parker and Wine Spectator have shrunk the market there. Some US shippers have even been declining their allocations of first growths.
Read more...PLB Wines has joined forces with Bordeaux specialist Cordier to distribute its wines in the UK off-trade.
Read more...Cantina La Vis, the Trentino cooperative that took over the privately owned Casa Girelli earlier this year, has pledged to put its region on the map'.
Read more...Despite the drought that has gripped Spanish wine regions in 2005 (with early reports suggesting yields will be down between 15 and 40%, depending on who you listen to) the Iberian nation can wipe the sweat from its brow and look to the future with a renewed sense of optimism.
Read more...Bibendum has joined forces with the NSPCC for its latest fine-wine quiz.
