by Anne | Jul 28, 2023 | Beginners' wine tips, The Price of Wine, Wine Basics
Admit it. Are you guilty of having ordered the second cheapest wine in a restaurant, because you didn’t quite want to be seen going for the cheapest, but didn’t really want to spend any more than that? If this is something you have done, fear not, you are...
by Anne | Jul 28, 2023 | Beginners' wine tips, Wine Basics
What does the term ‘vintage’ mean in wine? Does it mean the same as when you use it to describe cars or fashion? I tell you in under one minute in this brief but informative video…. The next question to ask, of course, is why the vintage of a wine...
by Anne | Jul 28, 2023 | Beginners' wine tips, Wine Basics
Hope you’ve enjoyed some good bottles recently. Last time, I explored that strange ritual in restaurants where you, the guest, are asked to taste the wine – NOT to see if you like it, but so that you can check whether or not it’s faulty. I promised I’d talk more...
by Anne | Jul 28, 2023 | Beginners' wine tips, Wine Basics, Wine Tasting
If you eat out regularly in restaurants, you’ll know that when you order a bottle of wine the waiter or sommelier asks ‘who would like to taste the wine?’ and then pours a small sample for checking before they serve the other guests. Why does this happen? Sadly it’s...
by Anne | Jun 11, 2021 | Beginners' wine tips, Wine Terminology
Wine writers use the word ‘balance’ a lot. ‘A beautifully balanced example of a Pinot Noir, with silky tannins and a fragrant finish’…or ‘this Chardonnay, wearing its oak lightly, has the most exquisite balance’. The...
by Anne | Jun 11, 2021 | Beginners' wine tips, Wine Terminology
Today we’re talking about skin. Grape skin, to be precise. And more specifically, something IN the grape skin – tannin. It’s another one of those wine terms you hear bandied around all the time. ‘Oh, this Cabernet is so tannic’, or...
by Anne | Jun 11, 2021 | Beginners' wine tips, Wine Basics, Wine Terminology
Ever heard a wine expert talk about the acidity in a wine? Acidity is present in all wines. If you can remember back to your school chemistry classes, you might have a memory (distant or otherwise!) of the concept of pH, a scale used to indicate how acidic or alkaline...
by Anne | Jun 11, 2021 | Beginners' wine tips, Wine Tasting
In another post, we talked about Jilly Goolden and the seemingly impossible task of emulating the experts’ litany of descriptive words, when all we can smell is in fact ‘wine’. We also looked at why, when wine is simply made from grapes, it smells of...
by Anne | Jun 11, 2021 | Beginners' wine tips, The Price of Wine
Having established in a previous post that most of us are not in the market for spending money on Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s wines, I promised you that I’d share with you my own personal sweet spot for how much you need to spend to get a decent bottle...
by Anne | Jun 11, 2021 | Beginners' wine tips, Wine Basics
The above is a question I get asked a lot, especially now that we are seeing the term ‘vegan’ more and more on wine labels and on restaurant wine lists. Why, wine-lovers ask me, is it necessary to specify that a wine is vegan? Isn’t it made from...
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