I still think the best way to learn about wine and wine regions around the world is to save up your pennies and head on out there. If you spend a couple of weeks in the vines in amongst the winemakers and farmers, with the wine, the food, the scenery, the weather…well, it all kind of …
Filling In The Blanks With “Australian Wine Discovered” Read More »
I only really started being more serious about wine three or four years ago. I didn’t grow up with lots of wine in the house either. I’m also more of a blogger/experience person than a full on wine journo or professional taster. Effectively I’m just making plenty of excuses here as to why my palate …
Soaking it up from one of the best palates in the business Read More »
That constant niggle of whether I’m doing the right thing by trying to ram my way into the wine industry never wants to go away. I grew up as an introverted maths geek, became a reluctant finance geek, and then a very angry young man working in an office somewhere in London. I don’t miss …
I’ve no idea why it happened, but this weekend something clicked in me, and weirdly in most of my classmates in the final year of our WSET Diploma. The panic in terms of the volume of work has set in and I’m absolutely shitting it!!
Sitting in a lecture room used to bore me to tears. I loved studying maths at uni, but lectures went so quick that I mostly lost the plot after 5 minutes and sat there for the next 55 minutes scribbling as quick as I could and trying not to forget to breath. And the …
I’ve had a complete shocker. Well I have and I haven’t. In the sense that I haven’t I’ve been hugely privileged to be invited on this amazing trip to Napa and Sonoma with the Californian Wine Institute in March. I genuinely can’t wait, I’ve heard so many amazing things about the West Coast of the …
Normally I don’t really give much mind to New Year’s Eve. Just cos a digit at the end of the year is ticking over once, who cares, right? Forced merriness? No thanks! But this year, for some reason, as we’ve now said goodbye to 2016, I think it’s the first time in my life I’ve …
Last few weeks I’ve been trying to kick myself up the proverbial arse to get reading my WSET (wine exams) books again. I’m only half way through the 2 year Diploma programme. Most people I did year one with have already started, if not finished it, taking their 6th and final exam a couple …
Not sure who’ll remember, but at the end of last year I was finishing up my first year of the WSET Dilpoma. I had to do a piece of coursework on…and I’m not making this up…the Renaissance in Gin! What a great topic?! But the journey from starting it to it finishing (last week) was …
So me and my class mates from the WSET Diploma Year 1 are just getting our final year one marks back. There are six units in the whole 2 year program, and you do units 1, 2, and 6 in the first year. I nailed 2, I scraped through 6, and it looks like I’ve …
