© Cape Times Friday 20th May 2016The older I get, the more I find myself becoming like my mother. I say the same things, my hair looks like hers and I am showing a worrying tendency to shop for comfortable clothes and shoes – flatties and elasticated waists are now order of the day. So I don’t think that the word ‘cool’ really applies to me anymore...

© Cape Times Friday 15th April 2016I don’t think any grape variety shows the disconnect between people who drink wine and people who write about wine as much as Sauvignon Blanc. So many of the local wine-writing snifferati dismiss it as too simple, totally untrendy, utterly soul-less, commercial crap, yet the fact remains that for most restaurants,...

© Cape Times Friday 15th January 2016When is a cork not a cork? When it’s agrafe.  This sounds like some kind of wine geek joke doesn’t it? But actually, it’s not a joke at all but an old/new way of making sparkling wine.  So, as this weekend is set to be full of romantic bubblies getting popped, I thought it would be nice to talk about a new bubbl...

© Cape Times Friday 15th January 2016I’m not quite sure yet what 2016 will be the Year Of (I’d like to think it would be the Year of the Falling Rand – here’s hoping) but I’m fairly certain that 2015 was the Year of the Sommelier. The official definition of a sommelier is “A restaurant employee who orders and maintains the wines sold in the restaur...

© Cape Times Thursday 31st December 2015Were you at the Nederburg Auction this year? If so, you’d have heard the brilliant UK wine journalist Robert Joseph talking about how to sell more wine. One idea which I particularly remember, mostly because it was so simple, was to put your wine in a box. He was talking about sales of wine at duty-free shops...