My wine diary
I want to talk about wine in a way that matters to me and hopefully to you. Wine in context. It will be mainly about London, I make no apologies for that. I love living, eating and drinking here.
Our social lives are punctuated by food and drink, usually - but not exclusively - wine in my case. I am passionate about wine and its relevance, people can feel confident about it without having to become anoraks. Know enough to have fun when ordering or buying something you haven't had before, it might just become a favourite.
There is so much average wine on sale in this country as the big retailers continue to promote wine as something to get you drunk. Commercial wines may not have the health risks associated with fast food but the bland momentary satisfaction is the same. As we search out foods that challenge, tempt and tantalise our palates so we should realise that wine is a source of great pleasure and will reward a little effort.
The effort includes paying a little more. The only thing I can say is that you're worth it. We should eat and drink less but enjoy what we do consume more. Taking some trouble over choosing ingredients and preparing them does mean taking up to half an hour a day to go to a specialist shop but it should be a pleasure not a chore. The same goes for wine. Drinking too much is boring, upping how much you spend on what you drink is a great way to appreciate what's in your glass and drink it slowly.
There are more technical sites and other places where you can look for details of climatic activity throughout the growing season etc. That's not what this is about. I will be talking about how much fun I have tasting things.
I come from a winemaking background but I am first and foremost a wine drinker. This is the kind of stuff I'd like to read, I hope you like it too.