Thank You and Happy Holidays
It’s Christmas Eve and I’m sat here with Mrs 12×75 having just completed all the prep for tomorrow’s lunch. The Xmas Frank Sinatra album is on in the background and I’ve got a rather generous glass of sherry in close proximity. I know it’s all coming to an end though as I can see Mrs 12 reaching for the remote to play back episodes of Strictly Come Dancing. Time to write. I must confess it’s not the first time I’ve written a blog slightly ‘merry’.
I love this part of the year, it’s a time to reflect on the past 12 months whilst hatching plans for next year. It’s a time for friends, family, food and wine. A winning combination.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you, our readers first and foremost. Without you, it’d just be myself and my mother reading this blog – so thank you ! We hope we’ve kept you entertained and have kept in line with our ethos of taking the stuffiness out of the wine world.
We would also like to take this opportunity to thank our interviewees this year:
Simon Berry, Maximilian Riedel, Tony Laithwaite, Aline Baly & Adam Brett-Smith
It’s rare that I get to publicly thank my writers. Both Geordie & Steph are incredible writers, well informed, quirky and great to work with. I envy their writing and hope to catch up soon. Geordie has been saddled with the role of Contributing Editor and makes a conscious effort to attend a lot of the tastings that we are invited to (it’s a hard life).
12×75 is lucky enough to have sponsors and we are eternally grateful to Premier Cru, L’Assemblage, BWI, Fine & Rare, Bordeaux Index. We have not kept a penny of those funds and have ploughed those into projects that we think fill certain gaps. Got The Bottle is the UK’s first fine wine search engine. It compares both prices and quantity amongst the UK’s top merchants and we’re grateful to have access to price feeds from all of the above and others like Berry Bros, Goedhuis, Roberson and Farrs.
Our sponsors also made it possible for us to launch By The Bottle Magazine, a digital wine & lifestyle magazine. Geordie (Editor) and I had great fun putting it together and we thank our writers for their efforts in helping. We’ve had literally thousands of downloads and we look forward to putting some more editions together for next year.
The #7WordWineReview phenomena still continues; both on twitter and in reality. I personally look forward to attending the London dinners let alone organising them each month. Every month the wines continue to astound me and having done 18 dinners – we’ve seen, tried, and tweeted over 500 different wines. It’s been so much fun. It’s the one night of the month that Mrs 12×75 won’t comment on the state that I come home in. Result. The people who attend regularly, rarely, once – I thank you all equally.
The dinners are sometimes held in Toronto headed up by Steph whilst Lidia hosts the Orgeon Chapter. Matt and Charlie plan, organise and host the Birmingham and Manchester chapters respectively. All of our chapter heads do an amazing job and it’s truly remarkable how between us the #7wordwinereview dinners could be one of the largest most organised international wine dinners around?! Who knows, maybe baby.
Our thanks of course to Renee for keeping all of us #7WordWineReview chapter heads in line and for simply being who she is.
All that’s left to say is eat well, drink plenty and enjoy the holidays. See you next year!
