The future of wine packaging part 1: None at all

I took a stroll down Amwell Street in Islington a couple of days ago and discovered a rather interesting shop. While some stores charge for plastic bags to help reduce landfill waste, Unpackaged go several steps further and remove almost all packaging from everything they sell. From nuts to pasta, from jam to shampoo, the idea is to bring your own container from home and refill it. Not only does…

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Majestic Wine Warehouses: Last man standing

There have been a lot of changes on the high street over the past few years when it comes to buying wine. Not so long ago, if you needed to get your hands on a bottle, you could pop out to the local off-licence: Victoria Wine, Unwins, Wine Rack, or the like. There would never be one far away, in every town around the UK. But since then, more and more of us have bought our wines at the supermarket…

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Why Californian wine is so expensive in the UK

It’s easy to forget how new California is to making wine. Whilst in Napa Valley last month, I had the good fortune of meeting John Shafer – founder of the eponymous estate situated in the Stags Leap district. He is one of the founding fathers of Californian wine, and though hardly a spring chicken, is still as sharp as a knife. Their first vintage was the 1978. To give it some perspective, Barone…

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Waitrose: Still the best supermarket for wine

This year Waitrose have won all four major drinks awards for ‘Supermarket of the Year’ (International Wine Challenge, International Wine & Spirit Competition, Decanter World Wine Awards and Drinks Retailing Awards) and it’s not hard to see why. Their recent range tasting was not without its ups and downs, but the diamond bottles outweighed the underperformers. They have been at the top of…

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The Wine Society: Impressive value

In a world of Enomatic machines, crowd sourcing and Twitter fire-sales, The International Exhibition Co-operative Wine Society Limited might sound like a bit of a throwback. They are a co-operative society; they have ‘1874’ proudly stamped on their logo; they are based in a large office in Stevenage. Sexy they are not. But their wines are. And they are unbelievably cheap. It is one of over 5,450…

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New trends in California: Moscato and Primitivo

White Zinfandel is dead. Long live Moscato! It is ubiquitous, and uniformly awful. It tends to have the aroma, sweetness and complexity of a bag of penny sweets that has been sitting in the sun. So I for one am pleased to hear that White Zinfandel is finally falling out of fashion in California. “That’s what my mom used to drink when she was young” was one comment. Now, younger drinkers looking…

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