the wine thinker

Books are appealingly tangible but annoyingly bulky. Kindles are convenient, but not much fun to use… Korean students have, however, come up with something that goes a long way to combining the qualities of both. It’s still a prototype, but the video below offers a taste of what it may offer..

The news that Britain’s independent merchants have not rushed to join a “Specialist Drinks Retailers” buying group has apparently come as a disappointment to Anthony Borges, the retailer who has been trying to establish it for around a decade. Other members of the UK wine trade may be similarly disappointed over the next years or so […]

TESCOFFEE Ernest Gallo, it is said, refused ever to countenance purchasing a brand from another company. While he was still alive, Gallo famously invested many millions in raising the image of the family wine company, to the extent of physically remodelling the Sonoma vineyard in which it would produce a limited edition Gallo Reserve wine. […]

Context is everything. According to Wine & Spirit Association (WSTA) and Nielsen statistics, UK at-home consumption of wine retailing at over £10 has risen by nearly a third. This is great news, obviously, but before too many people crack open celebratory bottles of Prosecco, it’s worth considering a subsequent paragraph on the same (Chris Mercer) […]

Last night I had a horrible dream – or to be more precise, a nightmare. I was in a rented house in the middle of nowhere, and had just returned from a long trek with ravenous hunger pains and keen anticipation of the meal I was going to prepare with the food with which I […]

Flickr image by rebecca anne Here’s my serious suggestion. Any wine professional who says “the Chinese all add Coke (or Sprite or whatever) to their wine” should be forced to spend a week in China at their own expense. And then to write a 10,000 word essay on what they see. First, it’s fundamentally not […]

  I recently spent several days helping to choose the UK IWC Wine Merchants of the Year, a process that, I can confirm, was scrupulously run and involved a set of very impressive judges (myself excluded obviously). Among the criteria we considered was the quality and breadth of range offered by each of the companies. None, […]

Just imagine for a moment, that the year is 1965 and you have been asked to come up with a name for a recently-developed, revolutionary kind of packaging for wine. The format itself has all sorts of qualities, including convenience (of transportation, storage and usage) and potentially simple recyclability. All you have to do is […]