Breweries come and breweries go, usually passing on their equipment to the next newcomer down the line. So most small operators start with hand-us-downs, re-used equipment. Occasionally, however, you come across a bunch of people who have done the whole thing themselves, literally from the ground up. From laying the foundations for the building to […]

Drinks Podcast

Urban Alchemy Brewery, Barnet

Do you like Prosecco? Good for you! I don’t especially like it – I’d rather have Champagne, Cava, Ferrari, English sparkling, Methode Champegnoise or new world sparklers. Turns out there are very good reasons for this: The stuff we know as Prosecco in the UK is not the best sparkling wine to be had from the […]

Prosecco House London

Sizzle or Steak? If you have a hugely popular event and you give it a name that precisely describes it, then it might sound a bit dull: “A room full of people tasting fermented grape juice and spitting” is not enticing. But call it the Champagne Bureau’s Annual Tasting and things are getting better. The […]

The Official # Champagne Experience Day

2016 was a busy year for the Comité Champagne … it saw the launch of some terrific initiatives: the Champagne Campus and the 3D VR app telling us about the region and the wines. But the big news was the designation of the Champagne region as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Each of those would justify […]

New Horizons for Champagne

The origins of Craft Beer and Craft Brewers are lost in the mists of time … or rather, the designation “craft” too indistinct to be seen clearly. No-one knows what a Craft Beer really is but we know one when we drink one. It could well be said that Zero Degrees, the brewery and Pizza […]

Zero Degrees

Britain makes all sorts of beer – amber, dark, stout, blond, golden, etc. one thing we have not yet started to make to any great extent is fruit beers. These are often sneered at as alcopops or girls’ drinks but, trust me, at up to 8.5% and with flavour profiles that truly challenge, they are nothing […]

Liefmans Fruit Beers and Duvel Blonde

Sports and booze – it’s not normally a good mix. Except when sportpeople move into making the stuff. Vijay Armitraj, whom we’ve spoken to elsewhere on this site, launched a couple of wines from India, likewise golfers: Bernie Els, makes very good wines, Greg Norman is making wines in Nappa and now Sir Nick Faldo has joined […]

Sir Nick Faldo – Personal Collection

When you are VERY successful, when you have the highest-selling red wine in the UK and a range of awards in your award cabinet (we all have one, don’t we?), do you rest on your laurels? Do you sit back and admire your success? No, you don’t because the a) there’s someone right behind you, […]

Cono Sur at Fizz

Brazilian wines. You’ve seen them – they’re the ones that look just like anyone else’s wines. They are in Waitrose, Marks and Spencer and other retailers but don’t go looking for bright Brazilian colours or the yellow, green and blue of the Brazilian flag – they’re nowhere to be seen. Brazil takes its wine pretty […]

Wines of Brazil

There comes a time when you want to gather friends and enjoy an evening with a bit more of a purpose than simply chatting, drinking and singing (maybe the singing is just my circle of friends). There are games nights, Murder Mystery Dinners (I highly recommend the range from Paul Lamond Games), tastings and many other, […]

Beer Tasting at Home

Fizz, the Sparkling Wine Show in London every autumn is a terrific opportunity to get your taste buds and nose around some of the best new non-Champagne sparking wines on the UK market. It’s held in Church House in London in their glorious round hall and is organised by the indefatigable Ben Campbell-Johnson. It is […]

Premium Cava at Fizz with Richard Hemming MW

We’ve all been to Real-ale festivals, big and small; and we thought that CAMRA’s offering a few months ago at Olympia in London was pretty impressive. It was big but, depending on how you measure these things, it wasn’t the biggest: Wetherspoons are claiming that crown with festivals in every one of their pubs simultaneously, […]

Wetherspoon’s World’s Biggest Real-ale Festival

If you are a French wine-maker, it is likely that you are a fairly small operation and that you could benefit from some sort of collaboration with other makers – be it through a coopérative or a négociant. Some, like the group calling itself Rhône Vignobles, choose a looser connection. They held a tasting, with […]

Rhône Vignobles

The Champagne Bureau’s Annual London Tasting was held this year in One Great George Street, ’round the corner from Downing Street, the Palace of Westminster and along the park from Buckingham Palace. As ever, the Peretti team set up a splendid bash. The great, the good, the adequate and the befuddled congregated like wildebeest to […]

Champagne Bureau Annual Tasting 2015

There is a dance or an on-going negotiation between, on the one hand, bar owners and brands and, on the other, the customers and it’s based on one agreed ambition: both sides want us, the drinkers, to have a good time. We want to do that with the minimum of fuss and the bars and brands […]

Psychology of the drinker

Wine, booze, liquor, the work of the devil, the sweat of the angels, call it what you will, it's grist to the mill and lubrication for the soul.

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Drinks Podcast

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