Tony, thank you for taking the time to talk with us here at 12×75.com   In my opinion my first question ought to be about your rock, colleague, friend & wife; Barbara – Tell us how you went from being rebuffed by her (a few times), to eventually marrying her. Fancied her at University (she … Read more →

By Geordie Clarke / Contributing Editor With anything that grows, it is guaranteed that crop yields and quality levels in any given year will fluctuate with the challenges that each season brings. Too little rain. Too much rain. The wrong kind of rain at the wrong time of year.  Too much frost.  Too much sun. … Read more →

Our regular readers will be used to us bleating on about taking the stuffiness out of fine wine.  Sometimes, though, it becomes very obvious that ‘stuffiness’ and ‘snobbery’ are two very different things.  I’ll get to that in a moment, but first I want to take you back a few days to an article I … Read more →

A recent survey by Laithwaites demonstrated that customers are turned off by the notes on the back of the wine label that advises you about how the wine tastes, Harpers reports. Evidently 55% of those surveyed said the wine descriptions were not helpful to them.  I thought this survey was quite interesting –back when I … Read more →

  While flicking through websites today for interesting news articles that might inspire me for this blog, I got somewhat bogged down in all the Margaret Thatcher news.  Some people love her, some people hate her, and those people really loathe her, WE GET IT.  I decided to take a break from the more serious … Read more →

Drinking and Ping Pong – together at last   12×75.com isn’t exactly known for being a review site, despitethe fact that all of us seem to do an awful lot of eating and drinking and socialising all the time.  So today I’m going to break the trend and tell you about a place that is … Read more →

I’m so glad that the clocks have changed now and we have a bit of light in the evenings.  I was beginning to get a bit grouchy  and grumbly but I feel like my mood is beginning to lift now, and I’m really trying not to moan and complain.  It’s a bad state of affairs … Read more →

12×75.com can exclusively reveal that the great Robert Parker has announced his retirement.  In a brief statement that few would have expected, Parker has vowed that this year’s visit to Bordeaux will be his last, and he will be retiring from his role as a professional wine critic at the end of 2013. Parker will … Read more →

We have two printers in our office.  Or rather, we were forced to get a second printer because the first one is so ridiculously stupid and awful. We’ve kept the old one since it has a few additional functions that the new one doesn’t have, like scanning documents and photocopying. The main reason we needed … Read more →

………….. 12×75.com style     What a strange 12 months it has been for Bordeaux.  While we were hardly expecting Bordeaux to spend very long revelling in the glory of the rather ordinary 2011 vintage, on reading most articles about French wine you would almost think they had slipped off the map completely.  Burgundy, on … Read more →