jamie goode's wine blog

A great day out today. My first visit to Wembley with City, and they won the cup semi-final against UTD. A superb game. No match report; just some pictures.

My buddy Rob.

Just a brief post this evening. I’m tired, after a week’s enjoyable but thorough tasting at the IWC.

Today was another good day, with another fun panel (above). From my perspective the best thing about the IWC is the chance to work alongside colleagues, getting to know new people, and learning from the experience of tasting [...]

I’m very tired after today’s tasting at the International Wine Challenge. RTL woke me up at 0330, and then again at 0400 – she was barking like a dog possessed, and we don’t know why. And I was also quite late to bed after my game of football, followed by a few glasses of Central [...]

So, day 3 of the International Wine Challenge has come and gone. Today, the panel I was part of tasted 109 wines, which was a comfortable number. It’s important that you don’t taste so many that your palate becomes physically fatigued: this can happen. 109 wines, tasting from 9.45 to 4.15 pm with an hour [...]

Day 2 of the International Wine Challenge has finished, and I’m beginning to get in the swing of things.

Just as an athlete gets into shape through training, I reckon wine tasters can get their palates sharper through intensive tasting. Not that I’d claim to be some Olympic-level taster. That would be ludicrous. It’s just that [...]

For the next two weeks I’m going to be filling the role of ‘panel chair’ at the International Wine Challenge (IWC), the world’s largest blind tasting competition.

For a freelancer like me, it is quite nice to have a couple of weeks where I’m doing something that resembles a normal job. I have to get out [...]