Wines

A New Source of Wine Bargains

7 August 2012

One of the benefits of being involved in the wine industry, as I was from 1993 until 2009 (with another two years of consulting), is that I didn’t need to put much effort into procuring my next case of wine. And, I hardly ever paid retail prices. Let’s just say I got spoilt. The other [...]

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Sport in Cyberspace. Champagne in Real Life.

16 March 2011

We’ve all had “you had to be there” moments, when we’ve been recounting a humorous experience, which in the retelling is not as funny as it was first time around. In fact, it may not even be the slightest bit amusing, in which case one is desperately looking for the nearest carpet to hide beneath. [...]

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For the best use of a barcode in a label design, the award goes to…

13 December 2010

Awards used to be simple things. Time’s Man of the Year (which one year went to the PC), the Novel Peace Prize (which used to be collected in person), or the Oscar for Best Picture. These days there are awards in so many niche categories that almost anything has a shot at getting an award. [...]

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Putting the Family back into Family Day

30 November 2010

Mention the word Joostenberg, and a whole lot of positive associations spring to mind. The first of these relates to their Chenin Blanc Noble Late Harvest, which I think is one of the finest botrytis wines produced in South Africa. When it was first released – coinciding with the Joostenberg launch in the late 90s, [...]

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Gewurztraminer Meets Banana

4 August 2010

Often, I think, too much is made of food and wine pairings. Achieving the perfect complement between the flavours of the wine and food (in the midst of myriad subjective factors) is almost impossible, and threatens to distract from the enjoyment of either the food or the wine. Having said that, wine dinners can be [...]

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Wine & Prejudice

17 March 2010

I find South African sauvignon blanc a most interesting case study, on a number of different levels. When I first entered the wine industry, in 1993, winemakers were obsessive – with a capital O – about making fabulous sauvignon. If one is attempting to do something really well obsessive is good; no complaints about that. [...]

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Vintage 2000, Ten Years Later

11 March 2010

The world has changed a lot since the charismatic André Simon founded the International Wine & Food Society in 1933. Almost everything that we take for granted, as far as gastronomy is concerned, didn’t exist. There weren’t celebrity chefs, households generally existed on the basis of one comprehensive cookbook, and the range of produce available [...]

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The Lynchpin of a Wine Bargain

25 February 2010

There are few marketing exercises that have given me as much pleasure as launching Cloof’s Bordeaux-style blend Lynchpin to the British media … at a chateau in Bordeaux! Not only was the wine offered en primeur (a la Bordeaux), but I also put together a mini-conference entitled “Is the New World killing Bordeax” AND I [...]

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No Time Like the Present

13 January 2010

In a movie restaurant scene that (to wine geeks, at least) could be as famous as Sally’s fake orgasm (When Harry Met Sally), Miles takes himself off to a burger joint with his prized bottle – a 1961 Chateau Cheval-Blanc – which he proceeds to drink out of a Styrofoam cup. Up to that point [...]

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Skin Contact

30 November 2009

While in Mumbai last week I was a guest at two Bertani wine dinners. Apart from the pleasure of watching other people doing work that I normally do, the wines were a real eye-opener. Amarone is not a new wine experience for me, but I don’t think I’ve had any for ten years. Also, I [...]

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