Cocktails in Chiswick

London recently had a week dedicated to cocktails and who doesn’t like a well mixed cocktail? I’ve visited a few cocktail bars in London and the best seem to be located centrally but if you’re one of the lucky ones who live in or near Chiswick, you’ve got a gem of a cocktail bar/restaurant on your doorstep....

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Falanghina & Auchentoshan for a Shacklewell Night

Walking up Kingsland Road and then merging onto Stoke Newington Street, I was wondering if I would ever find the venue for Shacklewell Nights’ latest dinner. Past rows of closed shops with the metal shutters locked tightly, Turkish grocers and off-licences, I spied a hipster with a clipboard in the battered open doorway of...

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Bisol, Venissa and an obscure grape called dorona

I was standing in the middle of Bisol’s vineyards in the heart of the Cartizze region of Valdobbiadene in Northern Italy with a glass of prosecco in hand when I spotted an odd, rusty looking chimney-like apparatus sticking straight up out of the earth at the end of the vineyard. Being The Winesleuth, I had to ask,”What...

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Design Wine, Italian wine the next day…

Do you know The Onion? If not, it’s a satirical newspaper that started at the Univ. of Wisconsin back in the 90′s. Now you might be wondering what The Onion has to do with wine. Well, I’ll tell ya. A friend of one of the original founders left, moved to Italy and decided after a long circuitous route that...

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Riccardo Prosecco wins the Taste of London summer wine award

At the recent 2011 Taste of London wine awards, Riccardo Prosecco was awarded the Taste of Summer wine award. It was a tough competition, over 80 wines were blind tasted one early Wednesday morning and after much discussion and to-ing and fro-ing, Riccardo Prosecco won the day. Riccardo was up against some tough competitors but at...

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