 | Catching up on some wine news | | 2:52pm Thu 14 Aug 08 | I don't like August. It's a flat month in the wine world. Everyone's on holiday and my daily flood of emails from wine-maker friends and colleagues completely dries up.
From The Oxford Times |
 | An area of lovely, charming wines | | 6:21am Fri 8 Aug 08 | If I could have my first ever trip to Burgundy again, I wouldn't head for the famed vineyards of the Côtes de Nuits or the Côtes de Beaune, instead I would drive south and begin in the Mâconnais.
From The Oxford Times |
 | Value bubbly has no less sparkle | | 4:28pm Fri 1 Aug 08 | James Wilson tells a lovely story in his book, Terroir: The Role of Geology, Climate and Culture in the Making of French Wines, about his conversion from bourbon to Champagne as his chosen analeptic.
From The Oxford Times |
 | Oxford, a centre of wine learning | | 9:56am Thu 24 Jul 08 | If I had a bottle of wine for every time someone told me I had one of the best jobs in the world, I could start having baths in the stuff. People envy the regular wine tastings and who am I to blame them?
From The Oxford Times |
| New- versus Old-World Wine | | 10:13am Sunday 20th July 2008 | Recently I took part in a day-long seminar aimed at potential Master of Wine (MW) students. It's a notoriously tricky exam to pass and, it seems to me, is undertaken by the mad, the brilliantly gifted or the doggedly determined.
From The Oxford Times |
 | Use your sommelier! | | 4:07pm Tue 15 Jul 08 | I am writing my column this week in the stunning city of Santiago do Compostela after a week-long tour of the vineyards and wineries of Galicia. It has been a fantastic few days, not just for the wines, the scenery and the food, but for the company I found myself in.
From The Oxford Times |
 | Do you know how much you drink? | | 2:06pm Thu 3 Jul 08 | Three people have asked me how many units of wine I drink a week in the last four days: the osteopath, the dentist and my friend who popped round for supper. I suspect my average consumption is something like a bottle and a half to two bottles a week. I was brought up thinking that there were six glasses in a bottle and that one glass roughly equalled one unit. So, there I was thinking I was somewhere between a nine to 12-unit a week girl.
From The Oxford Times |
| Wines for Wimbledon | | 1:32pm Thursday 26th June 2008 | The house I grew up in had large French windows that opened up on to the garden and the public pathway beyond. In the same way that it offered a perfect vista from which to watch the village comings and goings, so too passers-by were able to keep their eyes on us.
From The Oxford Times |
| Pick a fruit day to open the wine | | 9:29am Friday 20th June 2008 | I have just emerged from one of the most frustratingly inconclusive tastings I have ever taken part in. Four of us were assessing 30 wines of varying styles, with a view to including them in a new wine list.
From The Oxford Times |
| Taking rosé seriously | | 4:38pm Wednesday 4th June 2008 | I'm not that old and I can't claim the decades of wine trade experience that many of my colleagues can. Despite that, I can still remember the days when a producer would put forward his bottle of rosé only after we'd worked our way through the more serious' reds and whites.
From The Oxford Times |
 | Beauty of South Africa and its wines | | 1:45pm Thu 29 May 08 | If there is a country that I have visited which I regret not having had more time to tour its wineries, it is South Africa. We holidayed there a couple of years ago, travelling from the Waterberg to the north of Johannesburg all the way to Cape Town via the Great and Little Karoos.
From The Oxford Times |
| Some recommended books on wine | | 2:22pm Thursday 22nd May 2008 | If there is one thing that I buy as compulsively as wine, it is books. I have, quite literally, thousands of them; some 400-odd cook books at the last count.
From The Oxford Times |
| Wine quiz | | 12:00pm Friday 16th May 2008 | I know we're not quite at the final May Bank Holiday but as this coincides with English Wine Week, I've decided to run the May Bank Holiday Wine Quiz a little early. So, whether you whiz through it now or decide to keep it until the holiday, good luck!
From The Oxford Times |
 | A night at The Harrow, Little Bedwyn | | 4:47pm Thu 17 Apr 08 | There are lots of things I love about eating out - the (hopefully) lovely food, the ear-wigging and people watching and savouring every mouthful, and, top of my list, that you are safe in the knowledge that you are not responsible for washing up.
From The Oxford Times |
 | Tasting wine on the move | | 11:40am Thu 27 Mar 08 | I'm just back from a few days of wine tasting in France; not this time on a no-frills airline but via that much more relaxing Eurostar from the remodelled St Pancras station.
From The Oxford Times |
 | Moules frites and Muscadet | | 11:47am Thu 20 Mar 08 | As a child, I spent many Easter and summer holidays with my adopted French family, more often than not swimming, sailing and playing in and around the Atlantic coast.
From The Oxford Times |
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