Simon, you are the head of the oldest and arguably the most prestigious Wine & Spirits Merchant in the country. When we met, what most surprised me was that if you had had the choice, you would have rather gone into acting /directing than the wine business. Tell our readers a little bit about this… … Read more →

#7WordWineReview… all the latest news Regular readers will know that 12×75.com started a massive Twitter craze called #7WordWineReview whereby its users provide a fast paced, instant, succinct review of the wine they are drinking in just seven little words. We reported in March that the #7wordwinereview had gained in popularity to the extent that over … Read more →

I visited Cardiff at the weekend – it’s a city I like very much.  On Saturday my friend and I trawled the little arcades and went into lovely fashion boutiques and vintage clothing shops.  We’d already had a bottle of wine with lunch so I ended up spending quite a bit.  Anyway, it was in … Read more →

Winemaking and robots – together at last I was looking for an interesting topic to write about earlier when I discovered this BBC video regarding the little robot that has been designed to help French growers to tend their vines.  You have to watch the video all the way to the end but it is … Read more →

  It’s surprising to encounter a novel new wine-related product that we really rate here at 12×75.com – a lot of the time when we review ‘innovative’ new products, it becomes very apparent that they are not really very innovative at all and in fact their inventor has just taken an existing product and made … Read more →

Working in the trade, I once dropped a very fine bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape on my toe. I learned three very important lessons straight away. 1. Good bottles of wine tend to be very heavy 2. They don’t bounce and 3. Red wine makes a terrible mess. Oh, maybe 4 lessons… 4. when you … Read more →

Ask any wine lover to list wines they have tasted from unlikely places and nine times out of ten, I bet they’ll put the Lebanon’s Chateau Musar near the top of the list.  A true ‘Marmite’ experience, the wines of Musar are something you either love or just don’t get.   My first encounter with them … Read more →

I’ve been reading on Decanter.com the rumours that red-faced shoe-throwing football manager Sir Alex Ferguson has plans to purchase a vineyard in the south of France.  What a delightful change of direction after 26 years with Manchester United.  More brilliant than this news though, as potential blog-fodder, is the fact that he compared Cristiano Ronaldo … Read more →

The Drinks Business reported on 16th May that Robert Parker had slammed the concept of “Parkerisation” – read the article here.  It’s hardly surprising that he’s reluctant to embrace a concept that implies he has a very particular taste in wines and scores wines that suit his palate very well, and as a consequence, these … Read more →

Some of our regular readers of 12×75.com and By The Bottle (Have you not downloaded issue 2 yet?  Shame on you.  Get it here – in English in portrait mode and switches to Chinese in landscape mode!  It is SO COOL!) Anyway, some of them have suggested that we start a LinkedIn group wherein we … Read more →