For Goodness Sake
POSTED ON 24/08/2013I was discussing the joy of Japanese sake with a couple of wine merchants when they both turned to me and said disparagingly ‘but it’s made of rice, not grapes’, as if that somehow made it a lesser drink than wine.
A Muscadet Keeps the Doctor Away
POSTED ON 17/08/2013Remember that thirstquenching, bone dry white wine from the Loire we used to knock back by the bucketful before Bridget Jones discovered chardonnay? What ever did happen to muscadet? Once all the rage, it went the way of Hungarian merlot, Romanian pinot noir and prawn cocktail. Why? What happened quite simply was that it was washed away by the New World tsunami of chardonnay and sauvignon blanc because it couldn’t compete on flavour and wasn’t oaky or powerful enough.
The Game Changer
POSTED ON 10/08/2013According to a recent tweet, ‘wine is the ultimate blind purchase; you can't even look at it properly until you've cracked open the bottle’. Six years ago I would have agreed, but not any longer. It was in 2007 that I first slotted my wine smart card into a bright, shiny and new enomatic machine at The Sampler in Islington’s Upper Street. Into my glass gurgled 25 centilitres of nectar, and then another, and another.
Virgin Territory
POSTED ON 03/08/2013If you’re the kind of customer who flies Virgin Atlantic, borrows Virgin Money and signs up to Virgin Active because you’re a fan of Richard Branson and the Virgin brand, then Virgin Wines might not be for you. Not because there’s anything wrong with the brand, far from it. It was started by Branson in 2000, but subsumed in 2005 under the Direct Wines umbrella that also includes Laithwaites and Avery’s.
To Buy or Not to Buy (with apologies to Hamlet) - The Do’s and the Don’ts of Wine Investment
POSTED ON 01/08/2013Two years ago in November, I was invited to be part of a panel discussing wine investment at the Hong Kong International Wine & Spirits Fair. I felt a bit lonely as a consumer wine journalist because the other panelists representing various wine trade interests were setting out their stalls. There was a broker, an auctioneer, a wine merchant, a wine fund manager and a wine cellar adviser. All of them extolled the virtues of investing in wine.
