Rosie Davenport, founder of specialist sustainability and communications agency Impact Focus, stresses that wine brands should find a competitive advantage in sustainability – if it’s well communicated.
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As Bibendum’s new sales director, Andrew Ingham is determined to tear up the old-school rulebook. Andrew Catchpole finds out how.
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There are a few grapes still out there on the vines, but the verdict on the quality of the 2025 crop was harvested some time ago. After a run of challenging years, South Africa is completing one of its greatest ever vintages. “Seriously promising” is how Eben Sadie, the country’s most famous winemaker, describes it.
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I have got to be honest about natural wine. I am not a fan. As a pioneer of organic wine distribution in the UK it hurts me to say that. I started back in 1985. I am a believer that less is more when it comes to natural flavours, environmental responsibility and personal health. But I just don’t like the taste of nine out of 10 natural wines that I try.
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Andrew Catchpole catches up with the UK’s leading Rhône expert ahead of his inaugural Rhône Roots Tasting in London.
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Artist-turned-winemaker and restaurateur John Wurdeman explains to Andrew Catchpole how he came to be at the forefront of Georgia’s natural wine movement.
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Geoffrey Dean visits Daniel Pisano, export manager at Pisano Family Vineyards in Uruguay’s Canelones region, where brothers Gustavo and Eduardo are winemaker and viticulturist, respectively.
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Jason Millar assesses the 2023 en primeur campaign and finds the system in good health.
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Following portfolio additions and a team restructure, there’s an upbeat mood at Fells, as Andrew Catchpole discovers.
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Canned Wine Group chief commercial officer Ben Franks says the trade should be leveraging its buying power to bring about a sustainable future
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From Margaret River to Mendoza, Barolo to Burgundy, I’ve seen some picturesque vineyards in my time. The B58 Winery in Beaulieu was not one of them. Muddy, grey and damp, the scene that February morning would do nothing to dispel an outsider’s preconceptions of English wine.
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Cramele Recas founder and co-owner Philip Cox talks Andrew Catchpole though his ambitions for native Romanian varieties.
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Winemaker Bruce Jack talks to Andrew Catchpole about how his business has learnt from its mistakes and how South Africa is working to improve its premium position.
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You know those times when something comes along that hits you on the head like a sledgehammer? An experience that wakes us up to seeing things from a wider perspective. The jolt we get ripples beyond the issue itself to how we see our lives, both personal and professional.
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Jason Millar on why the trade needs to get behind the WSTA-led wine duty campaign.
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A light bulb suddenly clicked on for Queena Wong, the private wine collector turned founder of Curious Vines during the first Covid lockdown. It was 2020, and for large swathes of the global population – and in many cases, women in particular – their worlds had suddenly become much smaller. Speaking ahead of Curious Vines’ first meet-up of 2025 in January, which focused on wellness via low & no, Wong describes a situation that suddenly felt like women had been “set back ten years”.
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The government won’t talk to the trade about its assumptions on duty receipts because it gets them from the OBR. The OBR won’t talk to the trade about its assumptions on duty receipts because its only customer is the government. You couldn’t make it up.
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Where are the highest vineyards in Europe? Switzerland? The Alto Adige perhaps? Both have sites that are vertiginous when you compare them to most of the continent’s classic wine regions. But the correct answer is Spain. Not Gredos or Ribera del Duero, both of which are pretty elevated, but Tenerife. Piedra Fluida’s Los Frontones vineyard in Vilaflor sits at a lofty 1,687m.
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Andrew Catchpole catches up with a tech-entrepreneur turned fine English winemaker at his Oxfordshire estate.
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Wine has long run in the family of Stellios Boutaris, winemaker & CEO at Ktima Kir-Yianni, and the tradition shows no signs of ending. Andrew Catchpole dropped by.
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