I’m in Serbia. It is my first time here, and I’ve come to act as a judge in the Serbian wine awards competition Great Serbian Wine Tasting 2013, which is…
Sainsbury’s ends fake ‘half price’ wine offers, for now
For more than three years I have been complaining about the fake half price wine offers in supermarkets. See here, here and here. What’s wrong with a deal? Nothing, it’s…
Are we making too much of grape varieties?
Has the case for grape varieties been overstated? Do we make too much of them? Andrew Jefford thinks so. Writing in his latest blog for Decanter he argues that: Too…
A wine manifesto
So, here is my wine manifesto. The idea for putting together this document came to me while I was sitting in Bar t’at in Ilkley on Wednesday, and I finished…
Interviews and copyright, a grey area?
A travel writer, Mike Gerrard, is in potential legal trouble with Bill Bryson. Mike interviewed Bill a few years ago, and recently released this interview as an ebook. Bryson’s publishers…
Knackered Mothers’ Wine Club, from blog to book to TV gig!
Last week I attended one of the events at the Henley Literary Festival, titled Blog to Book. It was a session with two bloggers who have gone on to secure…
Some more thoughts on authenticity in wine
I have been reading an interesting paper in which some researchers from the University of Oxford scanned the brains of people using fMRI while they were looking at paintings. Now…
Why I don’t post negative reviews
There was a comment on twitter this week suggesting that the lack of negative reviews by wine writers (in contrast to restaurant reviewers, for example) is because we’re afraid to…
The Coravin in action, a video
Today I caught up with my buddy Daniel Primack of www.aroundwine.co.uk at a tasting. Rather excitingly, he had with him a Coravin. The Coravin isn’t yet available in the UK…