Posts Tagged ‘The Grape & The Grain’
Wines for Australia Day
Drinks blogger James Robertson picks wines to celebrate Australia Day. AS WE wearily trudge through the tail end of winter, looking forward to those glimpses of spring, down under in Australia today they celebrate their national day. The BBQs will be lit, stubbies of beer will be in the cool box alongside some chilled bottles…
Read MoreREVIEW: Eteaket Tea
Drinks blogger James Robertson pours himself a cup of Eteaket tea. I AM a self-confessed tea junkie and have been lucky enough to have visited the tea plantations in Dayuling, Taiwan, and both China’s Wuyi Mountains in Fujian and Heng Mountain in Hunan. So when Eteaket, the leaf tea company based in Edinburgh, sent me…
Read MoreGreywacke Wild Sauvignon
Drinks blogger James Robertson enjoys a vertical tasting of Greywacke Sauvignon Blanc. THE other day I had the privilege of attending a vertical tasting of wines from Greywacke, a winery found in Marlborough, New Zealand. Marlborough is the home for some of the best New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs around. The climate and soil structure has…
Read MoreGin Extremes: From Shetland to Scilly
Drinks blogger James Robertson reviews gin from either end of the UK. WHO would have thought that you would find a gin distillery on the southern tip of the UK on the island of St Mary’s, part of the Isles of Scilly, and then 776 miles as the crow flies there is another one on…
Read MoreREVIEW: Lagg Distillery’s maiden single malt
James Robertson reviews the maiden whisky from Lagg Distillery on Arran. LAGG Distillery, the sister distillery owned by Isle of Arran Distillers, has launched its inaugural limited release single malt. A heavily-peated whisky matured in ex bourbon barrels, batch one has been highly anticipated and it does not disappoint. Lagg is located on the southern…
Read MoreEnglish sparkling wine for the Lionesses
Drinks blogger James Robertson picks two English sparkling wines to toast “the auld enemy’s” victory in the fitba. TIMING, they say, is everything and – along with 17 million other viewers – I watched the England women win the European Cup. The question therefore is what to drink to celebrate the win? Well here are…
Read MoreBank holiday rosé: Pink toasts for the Queen
Looking for bank holiday rosé wines? Drinks blogger Peter Ranscombe has you covered. AS THE nation prepares to raise a toast to Her Majesty during the platinum jubilee, it’s time for our regular review of rosés. Who knows what the weather will do over the long weekend? But rosé isn’t just for glorious bank holiday…
Read MoreChile: Where quality needn’t cost the earth
Chile once again demonstrates that it can produce high-quality wines at affordable prices, as Peter Ranscombe samples bottles from stablemates Santa Rita and Carmen. GAZE along the bottom shelf of most supermarket wine aisles and two countries’ bottles will jump out at you – Chile and South Africa. Both nations are renowned for producing cheap…
Read MoreLidl goes back to the future with French wine tour
Tomorrow’s Lidl wine tour promotion features French classics you may have forgotten, writes Peter Ranscombe. DON’T you just hate it when a tune gets stuck in your heid? I’ve been humming the theme to Back to the Future since getting a sneak peak at some of the wines in Lidl’s latest wine tour promotion, which…
Read MoreSteve Daniel: Finding wines off the beaten track
Steve Daniel, a buyer at wine importer Hallgarten, is sharing hidden gems from Georgia, Lebanon, and North Macedonia, writes Peter Ranscombe. FEW words make a wine writer’s heart leap like “off the beaten track”. In a world full of pinot grigio and Prosecco, cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc, it’s nice to lift your eyes to…
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