A stimulating presentation from Anne Krebiehl MW, presenting the German wines, and Professor Barry Smith, Co-Founder of the Centre for the Study of the Senses, presenting on how our senses interact. Barry started off by reminding us of our main senses: Touch Taste Smell Sight Sound Balance But there are many others………and they all […]
On March 3rd, stock for Lidl’s Easter wine promotion should be hitting the shelves and I dare say there may be a sweetener for what is in store in the weekend papers. The main feature this time is that more New World wines are included, some of which I was really excited about. Look out […]
Random ramblings of a first time visitor to South Africa’s winelands For a lover of fine wine, initial impressions of the Cape are highly promising. As soon as one sees the prices in a bar or restaurant, one is aware of the favourable exchange rate: and I was delighted to find that I could […]
Australia is a country that I used to travel to regularly so I was excited about my return in October 2015 with 44 other Masters of Wine on a tour that took in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Since parts of Australia are 4.4 billion years old, the oldest known things on planet […]
Coravin is a device that enables wine lovers and restaurateurs to serve wine from the same bottle over a period of up to 12 months, using Argon gas to release wine under pressure and to keep the wine fresh after each serve. It uses a needle to penetrate the cork, so neither capsule or cork […]
Having joined the annual En Primeur tastings in Bordeaux at the beginning of April, here are a few musings: – 2014 is a very good vintage on the left bank and a good vintage on the right bank. Cabernets tended to do well, so the right bank properties with higher % of Cabernet Franc […]
Most wine tastings I attend are, of course, integral to my job with my principal clients and approached with solemnity and reverence. Occasionally an opportunity comes along to attend a tasting purely for the purpose of learning – and, dare I say it, for the pleasure of experiencing less familiar wines. So when one […]
At the risk of sounding like a press release, an exciting new course on (and, even more temptingly, in) Champagne has just launched. Organised by the Avize Viti-Campus and harnessing the resources of the Université de Reims, the course lasts five days and reveals Champagne in unexpected levels of detail and candidness. What’s more, because the presenters are […]
There can be no better time to visit Champagne than mid-October when the vineyards are resplendent in their Autumn colours and the the vignerons are relaxed and content having brought in a good vintage, in this case 2014. Consequently, an invitation to spend 3 days there in the company of other European Champagne Ambassadors was […]
“Georgia is to winemakers what the Amazon is to botanists” – the words of American winemaker Jeff Vejr, a specialist in qvevri wines and speaker at the recent International Wine Tourism Conference in Tbilisi. Certainly, 8,000 years of winemaking history and 523 indigenous grape varieties confer on Georgia a position of some eminence in the […]