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How did your family come to own not just a hotel but also an island?
My parents purchased the island in 1973 with the intention of creating a hotel out of the main house. Initially, the idea was to run it as a hotel in summer and a religious retreat in the winter, because my father was a Church of Scotland minister. But at the end of the first year, after running the hotel for four months without a break, they decided the idea of the religious retreat wouldn't work and just kept it as a seasonal hotel. When they opened in 1973, every bedroom had its own bathroom, which was unusual for the time and meant they had a leg up on everyone else.
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Burgundy brand Blason de Bourgogne is to sponsor the 2005 French Film Festival UK, running 4-14 November. The festival takes place in a selection of leading independent cinemas, including the Riverside London, Edinburgh Film House, Glasgow Film Theatre and Cineworlds in Manchester and Birmingham.
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The Wine and Spirit Trades' Benevolent Society has announced the dates of its forthcoming events in 2006.
The Vintry Ball takes place on Thursday 9 March 2006 at the Dorchester in London, and the Benevolent Banquet will be at the Hilton on Park Lane on Tuesday 9 May 2006. The New Year's lunch has been scheduled for Friday 13 January.
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The Thresher Group has introduced a new online application and selection process to revolutionise' its branch-manager recruitment.
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Youngs pubs are running a month-long promotion of South African wine.
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The French Wines campaign is holding a trade tasting of French wines retailing at 8 and over at Vinopolis, London.
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Western Wines will no longer handle the distribution of the Bellingham and Douglas Green South African brands, following DGB's decision to open a UK office to handle distribution and marketing for these brands.
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Jeremy Beadles has been appointed to succeed Quentin Rappoport as Chief Executive of the Wine & Spirit Trade Association starting on 1st January 2006.
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William Grant & Sons has snapped up the French brandy company Raynal & Cie, thus adding the Three Barrels and Raynal brands to its portfolio.
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After many years of deliberation, a ruling has just been passed that the youngest eau de vie in a bottle of XO Cognac must be at least 10 years old, some four years older than the current minimum age, reports Stuart Peskett.
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Wine writer and former Virgin Wine merchandising director Chris Orr, is to head up a new wine service for Quintessentially, the 24-hour virtual concierge service favoured by the Sloane set'.
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Wine Intelligence, the leading research organisation specifically for the wine sector, is launching its first Leading Thinkers' Seminar, which will take place on Thursday 24 November at the Great Eastern Hotel in London.
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Responsible drinking campaigner The Portman Group is relaunching its non-drinking designated driver campaign, I'll be Des', to remind drivers of the dangers of drinking and driving in the run-up to the festive season.
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The generic body for Bordeaux wines, the Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux (CIVB), has joined
the ranks of the Wine & Spirit Education Trust's (WSET) Corporate Patrons.
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Perhaps the most unifying factor in the Italian wine scene at present is the fall in grape prices, which seems to be happening from north to south and east to west.
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Consumer wine magazine Decanter is to launch a dedicated Far East edition next month - the first western wine magazine to do so.
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Two men are under arrest and 13 people are under investigation by Italy's Guardia di Finanza (fiscal police), together with police of the fraud squad called out by Siena's district attorney in yet another alleged sofisticazione (wine adulteration) involving fake Tuscan classics.
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Siegel Wine Agencies - best known for its range of premium German producers, such as Hermann Donnhoff - has been bought by New World specialist, Australian Wineries, for an undisclosed sum.
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On the back of the departure of a large part of Constellation Europe's senior executive team - chief executive Christopher Carson, marketing senior vice president, Graham Oak, and chief operating officer Richard Peters (with further cuts to
the marketing department rumoured to be in the air) - Constellation supremo Richard Sands has blamed tougher' trading conditions in the UK for only a modest rise in profits.
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There's a reason why Harpers' 2005 South Africa supplement is resplendent in flowers. It's nothing to do with the Chelsea Flower Show or the Royal Horticultural Society, it's all about biodiversity in the Cape.
The South African wine industry is pioneering a project to conserve the Cape Floral Kingdom and, in doing so, it gives Wines of South Africa (WOSA), the country's generic body, a great consumer marketing campaign giftwrapped on, as it were, a platter.
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