Following a 25-year career buying wine for Safeway, and selling to multiples with a variety of distributors, Mark Hughes has launched The Real Wine Company - a Web-based outlet for small and single-estate producers.
Nyetimber won the top prize at the 2006 English and Welsh Wine of the Year Awards for the fourth year running and Chapel Down Estate took away five out of the total of 13 trophies, including the Wine Guild Trophy for its 2004 Tenterden Estate Pinot Noir and the McAlpine Winemaker of the Year Trophy for Owen Elias.
The controversial growers leader Alain Vironneau has been named president of the CIVB after an unopposed election.
Ctes du Rhne wines will be advertising at cricket grounds this summer. Signage will appear at a number of high-profile matches, which will be televised on Sky, reaching a potential estimated audience of 400,000 to 450,000 viewers.
Thresher Group buyer James Griswood has swapped the specialist sector for the grocery sector, joining Tesco as a wine product development manager.
Ardbeg - the Islay malt whisky owned by LVMH - is launching a new cask bottling from 1965, which will be priced at more than 2,000 a bottle.
Pol Roger UK has entered the Scotch sector after winning the UK distribution rights for Highland single malt Glenfarclas.
By Larry Walker
According to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, global warming could wipe out most of the premium wine grapes in California by the close of the century.
Vinopolis - the City of Wine' visitor attraction on London's South Bank that opened in 1999 - has announced that it has increased its annual revenue from corporate events to 4.6 million, more than three times the amount generated after Vinopolis's first year in business.
Retailers and wholesalers are being warned to be aware of a scam involving Laurent-Perrier Ros Champagne.
Plymouth Gin has been relaunched with new packaging and market positioning - backed by a 15 million five-year budget from brand owner V&S, the Swedish company behind Absolut vodka.
After one hundred years of trading, the House of Townend is celebrating this year. It all began with Hull Kingston Rovers' star Jack Townend taking a pub tenancy - the youngest licensee in Hull at the time - and then starting to bottle Guinness on the side.
Heavily discounted branded wines and high government taxation are putting the future quality of wine sold in the UK in peril according to Jon Moromarco, chief executive officer, Constellation Europe, who was speaking at a leading drinks conference in London last month (June).
Read more...BY BEVERLEY BLANNING MW
Innovative ideas on how the wine business should market to today's consumer were suggested from industry outsider Terry McBride last week.
The 14th Vinexpo exhibition will take place from 17 to 21 June next year, at the Parc des Expositions in Bordeaux.
The Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) is to lobby the Government after a number of wine educators have been told that they need a licence to run educational courses.
The chief executive of the Wine & Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) has reiterated that wine companies are not complying with the Packaging Waste Regulations and are therefore opening themselves up to the possibility of prosecution, fines and backdated payments.
New Zealand has celebrated its largest-ever vintage - 185,000 tonnes with predictions of area under vine rising from 22,000 hectares to 30,000 by 2007/8 and a 300,000 tonne vintage by 2010/11.
Beaujolais producer Georges Duboeuf and his UK agent Berkmann Wine Cellars continue to stand defiant after the court ruling on 4 July 2006 which fined Duboeuf 30,000 (21,000) for illegally blending over 200,000 hectolitres of wine, mixing grapes from different appellations.
There are so many ways to answer this question that it is a struggle to know where to begin. But let's start with the most animal instinct of all: self-preservation. And let's start not with consumers, but with retailers.
