I posted a couple of days ago about hyperselection, and whether or not this was a good thing in red winemaking. At lunch yesterday I had a discussion with Elizabeth…
Hyperselection: is it a good thing?
The idea of selecting grapes for quality isn’t a new one. It can be done in the vineyard (choosing which grapes to pick, or going through before harvest and getting…
In Serbia judging wine
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…