A pannier of ... Apples

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This panier de fruits is quite a find for lovers of wines off the beaten track.

This fruit basket is definitely heavily biased towards the apple orchards. The first impression on the nose is an attractive, very ripe apple skin aroma, maybe some ripe red variety with some aromatic herbal flower note.

The surprise is the crisp, fresh, mouth cleansing acid tang of the perfect autumnal apple, bright, life enhancing, and indulgent. Then the rich fruit tang starts to open up and show some oxidative character that combines the autumn fruit with a dash of honey, wild herbs and a warm, baked citrus note too.

A Wine worth seeking out and a perfect match for the fatty, indulgent dishes at Brawn in London

Taking Wine to the People (and shoppers)

Wine spends a lot of time getting us to find stuff.

"Find us on the supermarkets"
"Available in specialist shops"
"On all good Wine lists"

but if you want people to REALLY see the brand, you've got to take it to THEM.

That's the great thing about the Champagne bar at Westfield (and elsewhere). Put the bar in the middle of the shopping area and make it harder NOT to notice it than to miss it.

Champagne is not in everyone's price range, but they've cleverly put it next to the aspirational and designer shops.

A great place to explore styles, regions, cocktails and more.

Today, I'm trying some Extra Brut from Billecart Salmon. Really lively, refreshing and a great pick me up while waiting for someone else to do shopping. A crisp little shopping tonic to remind the body that there is a benefit to hanging out in shopping malls to counter the sore feet and aching back.

Great news those who love to taste wine

Did you know that the law detailed EXACTLY how much wine you had to be poured?

Thankfully, that law has just been made a little more wine-friendly.  

Most of us have been used to seeing 175ml (small) and 250ml (large) glasses on all wine lists. In recent months the 125ml (properly small) has been required on restaurant and bar lists too (thankfully) and the 250ml glass has morphed into the 250ml carafe of wine to be shared - BRILLIANT! 

However, in most cases, no restaurant or bar was allowed to sell you a measure of UNDER 125ml of wine. Why? Because it was supposed to protect you as a consumer, making sure you knew exactly how much wine you were supposed to get - no more, no less. The same is true of pints and half-pints. The glasses might get fancy but the little white mark is always there!

Enter the Enomatic

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(photo of Enomatic machines in The Sampler in South Kensington)

A few years ago an Italian company created the Enomatic, a machine that could dispense small volumes of a wine AND keep the bottle fresh for almost 3 weeks - so you could theoretically open the world's most expensive wines and sell them in tiny, affordable, pours over enough time to ensure you did not waste it.

They are very successful in places such as the USA. However in the UK there is a problem. A sample is around 25ml, meaning you get 30 samples to a bottle, but this is not a legal measure as it was not your "guaranteed minimum" of 125ml.

It didn't matter that this is actually what you wanted, asked for and paid for, it was still technically illegal.

It seems that practically minded local enforcement officers in Islington and elsewhere decided that sampling in a wine shop, such as the wonderful The Sampler, was OK - you were "testing & tasting" a wine you might buy in legal measures. However, their Westminster colleagues took a different view in the Wonder Bar at Selfridges. 

Having paid what I would guess was a VAST amount of money to create and fit out the bar, the inspectors forced Dawn Davies, the sommelier heading the Wonder Bar, to stop selling samples. The reason was that this was a place to eat & drink, not just buy wine, so they were "retailing" the samples. Crazy, but that was after all the law.

It so happens that I made my first visit to the Wonder Bar the day after that fateful visit, just as Dawn was reprogramming all the machines to stop sampling.

Thankfully, after a long campaign, the law has now been changed in part thanks to her lobbying efforts, and maybe we can start to get creative with ideas that enable customers to experience a broader range of wines, at affordable prices, and get more people to love wine.

Wine adverts that have gone fishing

I am all for creative marketing ideas to promote wine in general; wine drinking, wine travel, wine culture, wine beauty treatments ... even wine  dancing, but if I were to make a commercial called "I LOVE wine" I pretty sure this would not be what it would look like:

Fishing for attractive women with a wine bottle from a yacht whilst beer drinkers sit, impotently in their dinghy? Yup, those are exactly the stereotypes I'd want to make sure were in my script

(thanks to Peter Wood, who's own terrible wine video link led me to this discovery)