{"id":2049,"date":"2011-01-12T16:52:37","date_gmt":"2011-01-12T16:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=2049"},"modified":"2011-01-12T16:52:37","modified_gmt":"2011-01-12T16:52:37","slug":"laithwaites-experts-choice-tasting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/uncategorized\/laithwaites-experts-choice-tasting","title":{"rendered":"Laithwaites Experts&#8217; Choice tasting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/P1110055-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2056\" title=\"P1110055-1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/P1110055-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"353\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/P1110055-1.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/P1110055-1-300x211.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/P1110055-1-150x105.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/P1110055-1-400x282.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Spent this morning judging at Laithwaites Experts&#8217; Choice tasting, held at the Worx in Parsons Green. The concept? Laithwaites staff do a pre-screening of their range and then present around 200 wines to be tasted blind by a mix of their staff and journos like me, working in panels of four. We rate all the wines, and the highest-rated of these make it into the offer (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.laithwaites.co.uk\/LW\/jsp\/templates\/ourwines\/experts.jsp\">last year&#8217;s offer<\/a>, to get an idea of the results).<\/p>\n<p>Why is this a good idea, and why should I spend my time doing this? Well, very few wine merchants have found a way to sell wine to customers that doesn&#8217;t involve reducing the price. This Experts&#8217; Choice selection was a great success last year with Laithwaites&#8217; customers, because it gave them reassurance that the wines would be good.<\/p>\n<p>The Laithwaites creative team were out in force, with a camera crew led by Red Johnson (he&#8217;s the son of Hugh, who was also tasting) and a photographer (whose life was probably made quite difficult by the bizarre mix of normal and orange-tinted sodium lighting in the room). Pictured above: Tony Laithwaite being interviewed. Pictured below: the team were keen to see which wines had made the grade, when the bottles were revealed.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/P1110060-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2057\" title=\"P1110060-1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/P1110060-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"344\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/P1110060-1.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/P1110060-1-300x206.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/P1110060-1-150x103.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/P1110060-1-400x275.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spent this morning judging at Laithwaites Experts&#8217; Choice tasting, held at the Worx in Parsons Green. The concept? Laithwaites staff do a pre-screening of their range and then present around&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2049"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2058,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049\/revisions\/2058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}