June finished with a five day, four city trip to Ireland to promote Beaujolais wines with a series of masterclasses. We did Cork, Dublin, Galway and Limerick. Here I am…
2018 in review: quite a year (part 1 of 2)
2018 began in New Zealand, where I’d been staying for Christmas. It was to be the first of several joy-filled trips to this wonderful country. This time last year, I’d…
Why wine must be wine
I’ve been involved in a few social media discussions about whether or not it’s time for wine to modernize. In order to appeal to a wider audience – and recruit…
Why it’s worth entering wine writing competitions
I enter wine competitions. Not all of them, but many, if I feel I’ve done something that year that’s of merit. It’s worth the effort of entering. It takes a…
You don’t drink the same wine at home
Wine is situational. Wine doesn’t exist outside of a drinking experience, and that experience is part of our perception of wine. Often, in the wine world, people talk about the…
Champagne Pommery’s English sparkling wine
This is the first English sparkling wine launched by a Champagne producer. It’s the result of a partnership between Champagne Pommery and Hampshire-based winery Hattingley Valley. The wine is named…
Just because I’m learning it doesn’t mean I’m stupid
Most introduction to wine books are deeply unsatisfying. Why? It’s because when people try to take the role of educator, they forget that many of their readers are actually quite…
Resisting the puritans
When I was much younger, one of my favourite TV shows was the Rowan Atkinson comedy Black Adder, and of the various series, the second, set in Elizabethan England, was…
Sowing seeds of change
We live in a complicated, turbulent world. I guess it has always been complicated and turbulent. Every generation seems to think things have deteriorated a bit. But the world does…