Championing Grower Champagnes

The Good Wine Shop’s second annual Grower Champagne Month this June saw a swathe events dedicated to celebrating these artisanal scale wines. Co-founder Derek Morrison explains why they do it, what it’s all about and how he is looking to grow this initiative for next year.

Q&A: Gonzalo Pedrosa, ex-chief executive, Sogevinus

Gonzalo Pedrosa has a refreshing take on how Port producers should collaborate in the way the Swiss watch industry did with Swatch – to boost the category as a whole. Andrew Catchpole catches up with the recently departed champion of the colheita style

Meet the buyers: On-trade specialists

James Lawrence catches up with the wine buyers and suppliers responsible for curating Michelin-starred wine lists across the on-trade

Q&A: Guillaume Deglise, chief executive, Vinexpo

Prior to the Bordeaux fair earlier this month, Guillaume Deglise spoke to Andrew Catchpole on the trends and developments shaping this year’s content 

Family Ties

With family-run businesses rife within the wine trade, what are the challenges involved in running
a winery with your loved ones? Lisa Riley investigates

Spotlight on Off-Piste Wines

Off-Piste Wines is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Established by long-term business colleagues Paul Letheren and Anthony Fairbank, the company has grown from a tiny embryo to one of the most respected supermarket suppliers in the UK, with a focused business model, and a turnover of around £30 million.

Jerry Lockspeiser: Three reasons to be cheerful

Ian Dury and the Blockheads released Reasons To Be Cheerful in July 1979, two months after Margaret Thatcher became the UK’s first female Prime Minister.

Guy Woodward: Why the wine trade should be targeting the young

Twenty years ago it may have been, but I can safely say that my membership of Manchester University Wine Society was a successful one. Not in terms of laying the foundations for a career as editor of a well-respected consumer wine magazine, a notion that would have been laughable to both me and my fellow members at the time. No, its main, possibly only, benefit was in meeting girls – and accumulating the brazen gall to actually speak to them.

Q&A: Phil Innes, owner, Loki Wine

With two new openings planned this year (God of Mischief willing), Loki’s Phil Innes talks to Andrew Catchpole about business and why the indie scene is on a roll.

Tim Atkin MW: Why wine and food pairing is not an art

At the height of her fame as a Strictly Come Dancing and Celebrity Fit Club contestant, ex-Tory MP Ann Widdecombe was asked to write a book about how to lose weight. Her response was that were she to produce such a work, it would be very short. So short indeed that it would contain just two simple injunctions: “eat less” and “exercise more”. 

Jerry Lockspeiser: What are we voting about on June 8th?

When we wake up on June 9th we will have a new parliament and a new Government, probably one that will last for the next five years.

Daniel Lambert: Outing Brexit's looming costs

Daniel Lambert of Daniel Lambert Wines calls for clarity on the likely levels of trade tariffs after 1 April 2019 and argues that the public should be told

Q&A: Tom Wilson and Lucy Holmes, Kanpai sake microbrewery, Peckham

Kanpai, London’s first sake microbrewery has just set up in Peckham. Anna Greenhous talks to co-founders, Tom Wilson and Lucy Holmes: 

Guy Woodward: A love letter to Bordeaux. No, really…

“Ahh, so you’re the one who hates Bordeaux…” said the late, great Denis Dubourdieu when we were introduced. Bordeaux’s pre-eminent authority on white wines, Dubourdieu was a man used to having his reputation precede him. Me? Less so. As I told the master winemaker, though, I don’t hate Bordeaux. We were drinking white Haut-Brion at the time, after all. But, as I also told him – and put into print as often as I could get away with at Decanter – I do hate its arrogance, its prices, and the nauseating esteem in which it is held by those old enough to know better.

Tim Atkin MW: Argentina and Chile are a joint wine force to be reckoned with

This year is the 200th anniversary of one of the key events in Latin American history. In January 1817, the Army of the Andes set off from Mendoza, determined to end Spanish rule on the other side of the mountains. At its head were an Argentinian, General José de San Martín, and an exiled Chilean, the wonderfully named Bernardo O’Higgins, who, after a brave and arduous crossing of the Cordillera, did indeed defeat their common imperial foe. 

Q&A: Julián Chivite, winemaker and owner, Bodegas Chivite

Q&A: Joe Fattorini, IWSC Wine Communicator 2017, talks passion vs professionalism

Presenter and writer Joe Fattorini has made a career out communicating about wine.

The political threat to our wine life

"Stick to wine, Tim - you're wasting time." If you spend as many hours as I do on social media channels, you get used to - and even rather enjoy - the odd spat, but this was different.

Jerry Lockspeiser: That's your bloody GDP. Not ours.

Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, recently announced an increase in the annual growth forecast for the UK economy from 1.4% to 2%. But things may not be as good as they sound.

Guy Woodward: Why is the wine trade still slow to deliver fulfilment?

As a middle-aged, middle-class man, my weekly highlight is Saturday morning, illuminated by a warm croissant (180ºC for eight minutes, served with passion fruit curd), a Nespresso coffee (medium froth, Ristretto pod) plus the weekend papers - and here's the most indulgent part - delivered to the door.