Whenever I need to get into Central London, and I have time, I prefer to take the bus. I don’t know why, the train is usually faster (unless someone has jumped on the tracks,which happens more often then you’d think) and anyway, I just love watching the streets of London pass by. My bus, the 176, goes straight thru...
read morePicture it – 10:20 Monday morning, just sitting down to the laptop, still in my jammies with a nice big pot of coffee by my side, thinking of heading over to the California wine trade tasting later that afternoon. (Riiiiing, riiiiing) “Hullo?” “Denise? Hi, it’s Dan from Bibendum. Listen I’m very...
read moreI, literally, got a message in a bottle the other day. Turns out the FriendsofGlass have found me and want me to join in their campaign. Seems glass containers are getting a bad rap nowadays what with PET, tetrapak, cardboard containers, amongst other kinds of alternative packaging to good ol’ glass bottles. What are the cons...
read moreOne of the best things about my job is that I have the luxury of taking time off to attend all the fantastic trade wine tasting events in London. Wines of …Austria, Italy, Tuscany, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal, just to name a few of the events this past month. I went to the Annual tasting of Portuguese wines sponsored by...
read moreLast night’s wine was, among others, the ’99 Opus One. A gift from my good friend Nick, he insisted, “Denise, you must open this wine on your birthday”. Who am I to argue? I was having a small dinner with a bunch of wine professionals and their partners so I thought it would be fun to do a blind tasting...
read moreThe Groucho Club is probably better known as the place to see media movers and shakers but last week one upstairs room was taken over for the Stokes Fine Wine Spring Portfolio tasting. It was a small affair but as we know, bigger is not always better. The standouts, for me, of the tasting were some amazing New Zealand wines....
read moreI was invited to a Japanese food and wine matching dinner the other night. Japanese food is notorious for it’s difficulty in matching with wine. Sweet, salty, spicy, fried, grilled, raw, cooked, with all those flavours and textures to match in one sitting, it’s no wonder most people stick to beer, saki or when push...
read moreI was going through my video footage the other day and found this snippet from the Guilty Pleasures dinner back in early February. Seeing as I will be hosting a pork belly summit at my house in a few weeks with the same bloggers from that dinner, meet the players, er, bloggers….. [viddler id=764d79a8&w=437&h=333]...
read moreOk, here’s is a crazy idea. Invite consumers to try some wine, pick the ones they like best, set a price and then buy $100,000 AU worth of wine based on their recommendations at a live online auction for your online wine company. Who would be so crazy as to let consumers do that? Rowan Gormely founder of Naked Wines,...
read moreLast week Catavino (Ryan and Gabriella Opaz) based in Terrazas, (near Barcelona) Spain, were in town to do a bit of networking and stopped by Vinoteca to host an Iberian wine & web tasting. The Winesleuth was there to taste along with her fellow winebloggers, Spitton and Surf4Wine. There was a wide selection of whites and reds...
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