Well it seems my eagerness of news from my sales manager about his travels and likley encounters at a wine tasting at the Tower of London was wasted effort on my part. He did not meet any well known wine critics such as Oz Clarke or Jancis Robinson or Hugh Johnson.

 He did however try a great selection of wines from around the world, some of which I hope to be adding to our ever growing list so keep an eye on the web site for further details.

Stelvin - industry name for screw cap - Although the word "Stelvin" itself is a trade mark name created by an Australian company called Australian Consolidated  Industries Ltd  who bought the rights to manufacture the product in 1970. Before then the French were using the screw cap which they called "Stelcap-vin" and had been since 1959 as an alternative to the cork. Another not so well known name for screw caps is "ROTE's", short for "roll on, tamper-evident". A wine fact!

Yesterday I sent my sales manager to the tower of London, not because he had commited treason but to attend an annual wine tasting by Boutinot, one of our suppliers.

Now, I recently attended an annual wine tasting at Claridge's in London and had the good fortune to meet Oz Clarke briefly and taste a couple of wines with him. Since that chance meeting with Oz Clarke I have challenged my sale manager to see if he can find someone of equal fame and importance in the wine industry whilst at the Tower of London.

He is due in later this morning and I eagerly await to see if he was successful in his task.

 I will keep you posted.

Once again I found myself doing another wine tasting last night. This time I showcased 22 different wines from around the world at the request of a local Yatch club.

The theme of the evening was London Underground Stations and at each station there was a different wine to try. The idea came from one of the club memebers who said it was a tradition from New Zealand. We presented all sorts of wines with the focus mainly on New Zealand wines such as Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc.

The event was very well attended with just under 100 people there and by the end of the night all the wine had been consumed and everyone looked happy and contented.

Last night we had our first in-shop wine tasting event and I have to say it went very well.

We had a good turn out despite the weather, numbers in the region of 25 all there to listen to us (or Steven to be more honest) talk about Bordeaux wines and of course to try them. We featured 10 wines in total from Graves and Margeaux to St Emilion and everything in between. We even had a very good dessert wine to finish with.

I think the most popular wine of the evening was the Chateau Canuet 2000 from Margeaux at £22.49, which we decanted to get the best of the rich flavours.

 Steven gave an excellent presentation of each of the wines throwing in one or two interesting facts along the way such as -

Did you know that there are between 700 & 900 million bottles of Bordeaux wine produced every year by over 10,000 Chateau's - now that's a wine fact as James may would say.

I am looking forward to next months tasting where we will be focusing on wines from the Rhone in France. Already we have a good number of spaces booked so I am hoping for an equally successfull evening on the 05th March.