Adelaide Hills Gold
POSTED ON 21/11/2009Thank you, Paul (Henry), for the introduction. At the London Wine Trade Fair this year, I was being introduced as the speaker at a seminar on the wines of South West France by a Frenchman, who was asked to introduce me as Anthony Rose of the Independent and thewinegang.com. He promptly informed the assembled audience that they were about to hear from 'Anthony Rose of ze Independent and ze gangbang.com'. I can't speak for the quality of the information on the gangbang.com, but I can vouch for the wine website, the winegang.com I share with four other British writers.
The Greatest Show on Earth (well, almost)
POSTED ON 16/11/2009“Great show on Saturday. The crowd were really switched on and, as I said, I thought the pace of things was just right”.
“Just wanted to say what a fantastic tasting you organised on Saturday. It was really well organised and there was a fantastic atmosphere. The consumers who attended were really interested in wine and it was great to take them through some of the wines in our range”.
Wine walking at Vinopolis
Krug Clos d'Ambonnay 1996 on Guy Fawkes
POSTED ON 09/11/2009I’ll say that again: Krug Clos d’Ambonnay 1996. I think that Krug Clos d’Ambonnay is the most expensive individual bottle of champagne in the world, on release at least, so when I was invited to join Olivier Krug and a group of the specialist champagne press for lunch on Guy Fawkes in the Krug Room at The Dorchester for the launch of the second vintage of this super-cuvée, the 1996 Clos d’Ambonnay, you can probably guess how long it took me to work out if I could squeeze it into my, er, crowded schedule for the day.
An Open and Nutt Case
POSTED ON 02/11/2009Highly likely as it is that the current classification of drugs is arbitrary, it would be wrong if defending the ex-drugs tsar Professor David Nutt were to result in the demonization of alcohol per se. How easy it is to say that ‘alcohol is to blame for…etc. etc.’ without considering how it’s used and our own responsibilities. How easy to make alcohol the scapegoat for society’s ills. And how easy for a government to be seen to be doing something by introducing price controls on amounts and prices as if that were anywhere close to the root of the problem.
