jamie goode's wine blog

Delighted to find three beers from Bakewell-based brewery Thornbridge in Waitrose today. They’re all brilliant.

First up, Thornbridge Jaipur India Pale Ale. It’s aromatic, spicy and hoppy with a hint of malty sweetness and complex, concentrated flavours of citrus, herb, spice and bitter hops. 8.5/10

Next, Thornbridge Kipling South Pacific Pale Ale. It’s made with Nelson Sauvin [...]

Now this is a really smart beer. It’s a Belgian beer with aspirational ideas, and it’s now available in 75 cl bottles.

Belgian beers are really interesting, but they tend to be niche. Supermarkets generally stock Leffe (in both Brune and Blonde forms, the latter being very respectable and quite affordable when on promotion), Duvel (quite tasty) and [...]

Really enjoying beer at the moment. Here’s another great one, this time from Chicago’s Goose Island. Great to find this in Tesco, and it wasn’t expensive. I wish you could have great wine experiences for less than £2!

Goose Island India Pale Ale (Chicago, USA)
5.9% alcohol. Nicely hoppy with a deliciously bitter, tangy citrus and spice [...]

I’m aware that this is a wine blog, but I assume that readers are interested more broadly in great flavour experiences, so occasionally I dabble in food and other drinks. This is one such occasion.

It’s a fabulous beer from Mikkeller (website here), which is the project of Danish brewrer Mikkel Borg Bjergsø. One of my [...]

This Belgian beer is something special. It’s a Gueuze, which is a blend of lambic beers. These are made by spontaneous fermentations, and are naturally quite sour in taste. Brewery website is here.

It’s very much a wine-lovers beer. It’s completely dry, and on the back label it suggests that this beer can be kept for [...]

Regular readers will know that I occasionally foray into territory other than wine. Most frequently, this involves beer.

I’ve been tasting some beers for a future Sunday Express column this evening, and two stood out.

First, Tesco Finest Traditional Porter, from Harviestoun Brewery. It’s inky dark and full of flavour, with lovely malt, chocolate and roast coffee [...]

Yesterday I headed over to the wilds of Southwark, to talk about beer marketing. Someone wanted to know my perspective – as an outsider – on beer. So it got me thinking, and here are some of my thoughts. Many of these also apply to wine marketing, but for now, I’m considering beer.

The beer world [...]

It has been a fun weekend. We headed over to my sister’s place on Friday intending to stay for lunch; we ended up staying two nights. I had to send Fiona back home to pick up some wines for a blind tasting, though!

Yesterday afternoon I headed over to the White Horse in Hedgerley in the [...]

BrewDog (website here) is a provocative, creative and innovative brewery in Scotland, currently making some of the UK’s most interesting beers.
I tried three of them, all available in Sainsbury’s. They’re brilliant. To quote one of the back labels: ‘The UK beer scene is sick. And we are the doctor.’

BrewDog Punk IPA
5.6% alcohol. Lively and fresh [...]