The Wine Society is a mail order wine club with a difference. The International Exhibition Co-operative Wine Society was founded as a non-profit-making organization when a ‘committtee of gentlemen’ met in the Albert Hall in 1874 to discuss setting up a co-operative company to purchase wine ‘in unadulterated condition’.

There was an article way back in the American wine magazine, The Wine Spectator, on BYO (bring-your-own-bottle) restaurants. One of the magazine’s reporters had held his nose to rummage in the dustbins of various American BYOs and came up with the depressing conclusion that most people had taken along the cheapest wines they could lay their hands on.

I have to confess that I don’t know a great deal about Butlins, never having been on a Butlins holiday, or whatever you go to Butlins for. Of course if you’re more used to foreign travel, it’s easy to be snobby about Butlins but my ex-neighbours used to take the family there and by all accounts had a great time. The fact that 1.5 million people pass through Butlins every year shows that there’s more interest here than you might have realised, if, like me, you’re ignorant of what goes on at its Bognor Regis, Skegness and Minehead resorts.

William Shakespeare, bless, distorted the historical record for the sake of poetic licence when he had Richard III crying out on the field of Bosworth in 1485: ‘a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse’. What he was more likely to have said was ‘Cahors, Cahors, my kingdom for Cahors’, only his French pronunciation was rubbish, so thanks to the bard, it appeared that he was offering his entire kingdom for a horse.

Sur le Pont Valentré, On y déguste, On y déguste...

Since the Decanter Man of the Year Award is notable for the quality of the party thrown by the winner of the award, it seemed like a grievous oversight that until this year the magazine had never once given the gong to a Burgundian. I thought it was high time there was some decent wine to drink at the party so when last autumn I suggested somewhat tongue in cheek to Sarah Kemp that the obvious candidate for the award was Aubert de Villaine of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, I hardly thought that she would take me up on the suggestion.

It was good of Wines of Argentina to bring the Argentina Wine Awards to London. The gold and trophy winners decided by an international panel of Masters of Wine in Mendoza in February were shown at a tasting hosted by Argentinian wine champion Phil Crozier at The Gaucho Grill in London’s Swallow Street, always an apt venue for a wine tasting. As far as I know, this was the first time a panel made up just of Masters of Wine was put together for the purpose of judging a set of international awards.

Here are the promised tasting notes on my Top 100 wines tasted at the Bordeaux 2009 primeur tastings (check out my Top 100 post on 6 April). As I’ve said before, it’s important to remember that until these wines are bottled, they are as yet elemental, raw and unfinished and so the descriptions relate to how the wines tasted in the week before Easter and are therefore only a snapshot of how they are likely to develop over time.

It’s seriously good news that Gérard Basset has finally won the best sommelier in the world competition. Gérard has achieved much in Britain since he first worked here in 1983 after coming over to watch his football team St Etienne four years earlier, but the ambition that has propelled him forward since his first job here has always been to become the best sommelier in the world. Of course some of us already felt that he was, but he wanted the official seal of approval.

Gérard shows how it's done

I wonder if you have heard of Mayfair Cellars, or Uvine, or Greens, or the Hungerford Wine Company, or Meyniac & Cie.? No? Well that’s good, because you’ll be able to sleep at night if you buy en primeur blissfully unaware of the losses suffered by consumers when these companies, English and French, went pear-shaped.

After Act 1, the harvest, and Act 2, the making of the wine, the curtain opened on Act 3 in bright Bordeaux sunshine on Monday last week. And then the rains came. It was a hectic week of tasting the new vintage for the many thousands of trade and press visitors descending on the region to make their assessments of the quality and value of 2009. I don’t know exactly how many visitors there were, but Paul Pontallier said on Wednesday that at Château Margaux alone, they had seen 650 visitors that day, and would have processed well over 2000 by the end of the week.