jamie goode's wine blog

Christmas eve has been a nice family day so far.

A quick dog walk, a visit with the boys to Fiona’s folks in Lightwater, some last-minute present buying, off with the boys to the gym, a late lunch in Nandos and a trip to Bushy Park to see the deer (with the obvious Christmas link). This [...]

I apologize for talking about talking about wine, but there’s a lot of discussion on wine writer ethics at the moment. This discussion has been led by the excellent Palate Press, who aren’t afraid to say difficult and controversial things where they feel this is needed.

Their latest article tackles the issue of ‘pay to play’, [...]

So, we’ve seen the food from Friday night. Now the wines. Special shout out to Greg Sherwood for bringing along two older reds, which he served blind. They were both fabulous, and one was from my birth year, so it was extra special.

Champagne Taittinger Prelude Grand Cru NV, France
Richly toasty with nice citrus freshness. Powerful [...]

When I started out drinking wine, supermarket wine ranges were extremely variable. There were some terrible wines: wines that made you gag. As a student, and thus a bottom-feeder, the challenge was to find something cheap and drinkable. It was hard.

Then, as I got to know a little about wine, I started buying more expensive [...]

I have been leafing through issue 38 of The World of Fine Wine. One article that has got me thinking is a book review by David Williams, who is one of the magazine’s best writers. He’s discussing an an anthology of wine writing from The New York Times, but in his introduction he looks at [...]

The UK is considering Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) of alcohol, with an initial level of 45 p per unit.

Initially, I couldn’t see a downside, from the perspective of a wine lover. It would make the cheapest bottle of wine £4.22 according to the BBC News story linked above. In Scotland, where a MUP of 50 [...]

From 1986 until 1992 I spent six years at Royal Holloway University of London, first doing a BSc and then a PhD. Last night, I returned for the first time in almost 20 years (I went back in 1993 for my PhD exam) to do a wine tasting for postgrads and some staff in the [...]

Andrew Jefford at work

I can’t think of many recent pieces of within-trade wine communication that have had such an impact as Andrew Jefford’s keynote speech at the recent bloggers conference, which he has posted on his website.

Jefford addresses some of the issues that those of us who write about wine have been grappling with [...]

Had some friends round last night, so four interesting reds went into decanters. These friends weren’t wine geeks, and I always enjoy seeing the way non-wine-nuts respond to wine.

So, from right to left, the four bottles:

Musar 2004 – the current release of a wine that divides opinion. I love it. Although Musar isn’t considered a natural [...]

Isn’t the Guildhall in London just fabulous? It’s properly grand and very old, and it proved to be a great setting for last night’s IWSC Awards Presentation and Banquet. It was my first visit to this venue, and I was attending the banquet because I had been shortlisted for the inaugural Blogger of the Year [...]