Chianti. Cheap and cheerful, comes in a wicker covered bottle, which, when empty, make handy candle holders. Well, that might be the old image of Chianti, and you can probably still buy that type of wine, but last weekend we had a tasting of Chianti Classico at the shop to dispel those hoary old myths and a bit of food and wine...
read moreWhen Penny from the Bluebird wineshop told me she was hosting a cigar and cognac tasting, I was excited, a bit hesitant but also very curious to attend a cigar and cognac tasting because I’d never been to one. Although I love a good Cuban (cigar or otherwise), cognac has a rather fusty old image in my mind and I didn’t...
read moreI’d like to thank the academy…(me and the Tempus Two) So, continuing on with my dinner with Ana and Nigel. By now, we were done with the food and moved onto a straightforward Chilean sauvignon blanc because somebody had brought it and we couldn’t really leave it there all by itself in the bag, now, could we? The...
read moreBy last Wednesday, I’d sufficiently recovered from the EWBC in Rioja to face a bottle or 3 again. Now it was time for some white wine. A new Korean joint, Cah Chi, has just opened up in my neighborhood and the best thing about it is that it’s BYOB, something of a rarity in London and the corkage fee is a very...
read moreThe town of Briones overlooking the vineyard The second day of the EWBC was held at the Dinastia Vivanco winery in Briones, Rioja. Dinastia Vivanco was founded in 1915 but despite that, they have a state of the art facility, opened by the King of Spain in 2006. More importantly, they have an awesome museum of wine. You’ll...
read moreThe Bluebird Wineshop in Chelsea had become one of my favourites because of their great winetastings and Penny Johns, the manager has come up with a great list of tastings for the Autumn. This Wednesday, Sept 10th, she is hosting a Fine Cognac and Cigar tasting in the courtyard of the Bluebird Restaurant. Amanda Laden from Delamain...
read morejamon iberico After the EWBC Winebloggers Invitational on Friday nite, we had to get something in our stomachs so off we went to dinner in the old part of Logroño. All the meals in Spain start with jamon iberico (spanish ham), at least that’s what we got at the start of every meal, including breakfast. After a neverending...
read moreMore from the EWBC ’08, this time it’s the Winebloggers Invitational and, to see me interviewed, check out the following link from VinusTV (click here) who were on hand to interview all us bloggers. It was great fun to see what the other bloggers brought for us to try. There were wines from as far away as Canada (a...
read moreRioja vineyard On the plane back to England from the EWBC I was exhausted!! But what a weekend! I met loads of really great people, drank plenty of fabulous (and interesting) wines, visited some fantastic wineries, met the winemakers, had my eyes open to the possibilities out there regarding the web via the both the roundtable...
read moreThe following are some of my notes from the European Winebloggers Conference 2008 (EWBC) in Rioja. Flying over the Bay of Biscay this morning, looking down onto the green craggy hills of the sun-drenched Spanish coast was a bit of a surprise. Over the years, I’ve visited Spain many times but always the southern coast of Spain...
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