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The Institute of Masters of Wine (IMW) has announced a drive for better communication with the trade through improved events and a more accessible approach.
The IMW intends to raise awareness for its educational programme through greater publicisation of its events programme, which will highlight three major tastings each year, focusing on Burgundy, Bordeaux and the Rhne Valley.
Masters of Wine events have traditionally attracted a limited cross-section of participants due to high ticket prices, but the IMW is keen to make them the definitive tastings for these regions, hoping people will be prepared to pay for and use them as a point of reference for all other relative events.
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John Hart, who worked as Unwins' wine-sourcing manager until the company went into administration over the festive period, has joined the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET)
as examination coordinator.
Hart joined Unwins in 1982, working in stores for eight years, before moving to a training/human-resources role at head office. There, he ran WSET courses for Unwins staff, including Intermediate, Advanced and Diploma programmes.
He joined Unwins' buying department two and a half years ago, where, in his words, he watched the steady, painful decline from a ringside seat'.
Hart told Harpers: I am really pleased to still be involved in the wine business, and I suppose this is actually a fairly logical progression to my career.'
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Gravitas owner Martyn Nicholls has bought an 18-hectare
site in Andalusia, Spain, to produce Riesling.
Nicholls, whose wines have won nearly 60 medals in the past two years, said he drove 50,000 miles over five years across the world to find his ideal site.
He said: The site is 1,400m high, and it has Spain's biggest snow mountain behind it. The temperature is closer to that of the Rhine Valley than people would think. The soils are just like the Mosel Valley: schist and slate. There are only really about a dozen Riesling vineyards in Spain, mainly in Pnedes. In Spain, you have crisp, cold nights but also longer, warmer days. It's effectively the difference between Marlborough and the Loire with Sauvignon Blanc.'
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Plantings of Syrah are on the rise in New Zealand - at the expense of established varieties like Cabernet and Merlot.
The figures were discussed at a seminar titled New Zealand Syrah: New World Fruit, Old World Structure' at the annual trade tasting in London. Pinot Noir is in top spot by a country mile, but Syrah is gaining ground, albeit from a small base, with plantings up 418% since 1998. By 2007, there should be around 265 hectares (ha) of Syrah planted. Merlot is on the wane, plantings having peaked three years ago, while Cabernet has remained static at around the 1,500ha mark.
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The managing director of one of Australia's largest family-owned wineries, De Bortoli Wines, has accused its big, stock-market-listed rivals of damaging the Australian industry as a whole by capitulating to short-term pressures.
Darren de Bortoli added that 2006 would see the toughest operating conditions in the past 20 years' and that things would stay bad for a drawn-out period' due to grape oversupply.
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What did you do before setting up Inverarity Vaults?
I had always intended to join the army, but within seven weeks of arriving at Sandhurst I had torn my ligaments playing rugby and was medically discharged. So I applied for a place on the management trainee course at Oddbins and worked for them for two years. Then I joined Champagnes & Chteaux, selling their wines on a commission basis to hotels and restaurants. But I always knew I wanted to come back to Scotland, so when my father retired as production director of The Distillers Company Limited (DCL), he suggested that we create our own blended Scotch whisky. My passion is wine, so I started the wine business by importing a pallet of Domaine de Thelin's ros, which is still our house wine.
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In the wine world, Australia punches above its weight. Consider the facts: in terms of production statistics, Australia isn't really a big player on the global wine scene. While 160,000 hectares (ha) under vine may sound a lot, compare this with the Languedoc's 250,000ha, or even Sicily's 200,000ha, and it's somewhat surprising that the Aussies have a reputation as one of the giants of the wine world. What is the secret to their success? It's likely to be down to several factors, but one of the key elements seems to be that, relative to the size of its industry, Australia has a very active wine-science community working on relevant, industry-driven projects, and its winemakers have gone on to apply the fruits of this research in the pursuit of quality.
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BOB - Buddies of the Benevolent - kicked of its 2006 programme with a Cocktail Bingo' night on 18 January at Fulham Town Hall and raised close to 1,000 for the Wine and Spirit Trades' Benevolent fund. Almost 100 members of the trade attended, drinking a fair amount of beer, wine and Cuba libres. The Mentzendorff team were the big winners on the night, walking away with three of the prizes: a meal for two at Vault, a leather bag and a bottle of Inniskillin Icewine.
Four more events are planned for this year, including a boat cruise in July and a salsa night in September.
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Chelsea FC manager Jos Mourinho is in negotiations with The Portuguese Cork Association (Apcor) to be the public face of a pro-cork promotional campaign.
Mourinho, a wine lover who last year presented Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson with a bottle of 1965 Barca Velha, has yet to finalise the deal, but he is expected to sign, with the campaign to be launched in March.
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The Bunch, the group of independent wine merchants formed in the early 1990s, has decided to scrap its traditional January tasting, instead moving it to the autumn.
Alun Griffiths MW, MD of Berry Bros & Rudd (BBR) and chairman of The Bunch, said: When The Bunch was set up, the members decided to ensure that their press tasting was the first such tasting of the year, starting the year off in style. At that time, there were no Burgundy en primeur tastings to compete with it.
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American entrepreneur Donald Trump is the latest in a long line of celebrities to launch a super-premium vodka.
Connecticut-based Drinks Americas signed an eight-year agreement with Trump, last seen in the UK as host of TV show The Apprentice, to distribute and sell Trump Super Premium Vodka. The company already sells country singer Willie Nelson's Old Whiskey River Bourbon, chef Roy Yamaguchi's Y Sake, and actor Paul Newman's Own Lightly Sparkling Fruit Juice Drinks.
Trump, who does not actually drink alcohol, said: The premium-vodka category is where the very best of fashionable spirits brands compete. That is the place for the Trump brand.'
He added that by the summer of 2006 he expected the T&T' (Trump and tonic) to be the most-called-for cocktail in America'.
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Habanos, the Cuban cigar appellation, has teamed up with AOC Armagnac to attempt to show how well they complement each other.
Some 22 Armagnacs from a dozen houses were blind tasted in Paris by spirits journalists and cigar connoisseurs. Each house was asked to present Armagnacs in two categories: XO blends and Hors d'Age; and vintage Armagnacs.
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Earlier this month, Chilean voters made history by installing Michele Bachelet as the first elected female president in the history of Latin America. The vote came as something of a surprise to many Chile watchers, who have become accustomed to thinking of the remote nation as one of the world's more socially conservative countries - a place where divorce only became legal during the past couple of years. But for the car-horn-tooting thousands who thronged the centre of Santiago to celebrate Bachelet's victory on 15 January, the election of the doctor and single mother was confirmation that the Chile of the 21st century is becoming a very different place from that of the previous decades.
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Six complaints made by the public concerning drinks products were upheld last year by The Portman Group, the organisation that promotes responsible drinking and marketing.
In its annual report, the group's chairman, former Met Police Commissioner Lord Condon, said: Unlike last year, when the theme of "sexual success" dominated the complaints, this year saw a return to a more eclectic mix of complaints against a wider range of provisions to the Code [of Practice].'
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Con Moshos, a winemaker at famed Australian producer Petaluma for 25 years, is leaving the comp`ny to take over the reins at Eden Valley winery Mountadam.
Moshos's departure follows that of the estate's founder, Brain Croser, who gave up his consultancy role there last year. Petaluma was taken over by the Lion Nathan wine group in a hostile takeover in 2001.
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Two former divisional directors of New World wine importer Vinoceros, Anthony McIndoe and Ray King, have launched a new wine company, Discovery Wine, based in Manchester.
The new business, backed by corporate finance house Ballard Campbell & Partners, is currently building a portfolio of New World wines that meet the particular need of independent wholesale and retail sectors, as well as developing a range of own brands aimed specifically at the multiple sector'.
King added: We are already developing a range of quality entry-level wines that will hit the market in early spring.'
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Bibendum Wine has created a new business, Bibendum Wine International, to manage distribution for a number of wine brands in Europe.
A key partner in the new set-up is Lion Nathan, which shares a joint venture with Bibendum in the UK. The new company will be run by Lars Venborg, who is a former commercial director of Michel Laroche.
Bibendum MD Dan Jago said: There are products, skills and processes that the UK industry can successfully offer to other distributors in Europe, and we intend Bibendum to be at the front of this integration.'
Lion Nathan MD Peter Cowan added that the new venture will create a very efficient and effective export management structure'. Lion Nathan brands include St Hallett, Petaluma and Knappstein from Australia, Wither Hills from New Zealand, and Oregon-based Argyle.
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How do you get consumers and the trade talking about a 50,000-case brand with next to no above-the-line marketing budget and without the help of an expensive PR agency? Nick Dymoke-Marr of Orbital Wines managed it, for the cost of 100 bottles of wine (+ p&p). And all by the power of the blog.
First, some numbers. At the last count (in December 2005) there were 26 million blogs - short for weblogs, a kind of interactive online diary - in the world, with 85,000 new ones being created each day. And the number of blogs devoted to, or mostly involving, wine? Just 56 worldwide, according to http://wineblogwatch.arrr.net. At least one part of the wine world isn't faced with a glut.
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Guilty or not guilty. Happily, that is neither the question nor the answer for the Grand Jury Europen (GJE). As it sips, swirls and spits its way through the evidence presented by more than 150 anonymous vinous witnesses, it may well consider cases of assault, breach of contract, deception, extortion, fraud, negligence, price-rigging and treason, as well as mitigating circumstances such as crimes passionnels and diminished responsibility. But its decisions will not be rendered in a stark one- or two-word verdict. Rather, they will take the form of a summary, with charts and graphs and scores out of 100. As such, some will find them harder to accept than others.
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Thresher Group is offering franchises on several hundred' of its 2,000 shops, with its 12,000 staff getting first chance to get involved.
On the back of positive Christmas trading figures, up 15% on December last year, chief executive Roger Whiteside said the move was a strategic step for the business that will enrich our own expertise in the drinks retail sector by mixing it with local knowledge and the flexibility of our franchisees'.
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