Between now and 16 March, most major wine retailers in the UK will donate 10% from selected wines to Wine Relief 2007, part of Comic Relief and Red Nose Day. With the exception of Oddbins and Asda, the likes of Tescos, Sainsburys, Sommerfield et all are offering a selection of wines whereby 10% goes to Wine Relief, details of the wines can be found in store.
Wine Relief has been running for several years raising a total of £2 million to help change lives in the UK and Africa, so consider these wines when shopping in the UK this month, and make sure to come tell us on Bottletalk whether they made you laugh or cry or even gave you a Red Nose

Had a very pleasant surprise the other day. I was flicking through the latest Time Out London paying particular attention to their Food and Drink section when I noticed a nice little write up on Bottletalk.

“This smart new online forum for wine lovers allows anyone to rate and comment upon bottles they like or dislike. A centralised tagging and rating system aims to create a rolling up-to-the-minute database that can be browsed by score or keyword. Thus a search by ‘blackcurrant’ yields a list of bottles that have put quaffers in mind of that aroma and taste. It’s a nice idea, but will only work if enough people contribute to give the average scores any credibility. It’s open to abuse from people with vested interests. But scepticism aside, this is a slick, visually appealing website.”

Thanks! It is fantastic being recommended by such a well established London magazine and even better finding out by just browsing through the magazine over breakfast. We have had great write-ups online - UK TechCrunch and Spittoon to name a few - but reading something in print has a certain added excitement about it!

Jancis Robinson will be hosting a couple of wine tastings for world leaders, CEOs and Bono at Davos. For those of you unfamiliar with Davos it is a small town in Switzerland that also hosts the yearly World Economic Forum also known as Davos.

A couple of the wines that Jancis will be presenting are a 1975 Cheval and a 1952 Latour.

So, if Tony Blair, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch or Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page would like to give their experiences on these wines at Bottletalk please feel free.

All Headline News reports on a story from The New York Daily News about the worlds largest wine bottle which contains nearly 64 gallons of Australian Shiraz and stands at over six feet tall.

The Guinness Book of World Records named the wine bottle the world’s largest in 2005. The bottle recently visited the US from Australia as part of a marketing campaign called “G’Day USA: Australian Week.”

As much as one in fifty screw top bottles of wine could give you a nasty whiff, experts have reported. 

This is due to the screw top not allowing the wine to breathe the way a cork does, creating  sulphidisation and leading to a smell described by many as resembling rotten eggs.

The International Wine Challenge event tested 9,000 wines from around the world with screw tops and found 2.2 per cent of screw top bottles suffered from sulphidisation.

 It has also been reported that wine drinkers are more likely to detect the rotten egg smell than the smells associated with a corked wine, leading to debates about the use of screw tops until a more advanced method can be created to resolve this issue.

Within the next three years the UK wine market will grow so big that wine drinkers here will spend more on still and sparkling wine than any other European country according to a report sponsored by VINEXPO.

By 2010 wine retail sales will reach nearly £5.5 billion at which point the British will be spending more on wine than the French, Germans or Italians, making the UK the biggest retail wine market in Europe.

However, this is not explained by the amount of wine we drink here in the UK - less than the top four wine drinking countries France, Italy, the USA and Germany with the UK coming in at 5th - but by the fact we pay considerably more for a bottle of wine than most other European countries.

The research also shows that Australia has overtaken France as the UK’s number one wine supplier. Between 2001 and 2005 the volume of French imports fell by just under 8% while imports of Australian wines rose by just over 50% to put it at the top. At the same time imports of wine from the USA more than doubled while imports from South Africa rose by more than 50%.

Beyond the UK, the research confirms that the USA will become the world’s biggest wine consumer by 2010, overtaking Italy and France, whilst China will be the ninth biggest wine consumer by 2010.

The study of the UK wine and spirits markets for 2005, with forecasts to 2010, is part of a global research project commissioned by VINEXPO, the world’s biggest wine and spirits fair, held in Bordeaux, France. The research was conducted by leading drinks researchers IWSR in 28 wine producing countries and 114 wine and spirits consuming markets.

As we all know Christmas and New Years can be a time to splurge on the finer things in life, like wonderful wines. Whilst we at Bottletalk HQ did our fair bit of overindulging and spending over Christmas we also love to know the best of the best that the Bottletalk members have been tasting.

These can be found on the Desert Island Wines page - so have a look, and let us know if you agree with the nominations there, or add your own.

Cheers,

Emma

http://www.bottletalk.com/wine/profile/emma