Whether this summer ever gets into the swing of things or not the ambitious plans of the drinks industry, to seduce us to try their wares, must plough ahead regardless. From pairing fine wines with fast food to cocktail fruit fusions made by wine producers and abandoning the ancient art of ummm…. drinking through your mouth…. by absorbing your drink in a mist of breathable booze: this season has been all about breaking with tradition.

The main trend emerging from the Médoc region of Bordeaux is not quite so remarkable but for an area that dines out on centuries of winemaking history it’s Merlot of all things that is paving the way for a new future. ………

Headlines take many different forms in the drinks trade; there are the attention grabbers “strap on booze baby seeks funding,” the David & Goliath tales of “Champagne Jayne” and the softer, sweeter entrepreneur success stories of the likes of The New Zealand Cellar but the ones that catch my attention the most centre around the wine trade’s ability to shoot itself in the foot.
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Take Beaujolais for example. Once the envy of wine regions around the world for its Beaujolais Nouveau marketing masterpiece it is now the underdog of the trade, fallen out of favour with the wine drinking fraternities the mere mention of it’s sorry existence is whispered these days with a pitying tone.

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We’ve done it. We’ve traded London and our beautiful little terrace house for more space, fresher air and a longer commute… We’ve moved into ‘project renovation’ where the to do list is longer than our driveway but there is light at the end of the tunnel: our kitchen, which makes Rachel Khoo’s Little Paris Kitchen look lavishly equipped will be redesigned, knocked down, and rebuilt which means I can create a space perfect to host a wine fridge of serious proportions.

In the mean time however we are here in Surrey like fish out of water, the area is missing a decent pub and a decent wine bar; forget our house I can feel a village renovation of the wine sorts is needed as well. I’m yet to find out whether people here are wine drinkers. Are they classic connoisseurs or plump for plonk sort of folk, would they embrace the new or stick to their safety wines? And would the sense of wine adventure I was used to in London be a distant memory here or could I take a bottle of Turkish wine to a neighbour’s house and be welcomed back or never invited again? ………

“If you were a wine what wine would you be?” Is a question I get asked a lot. It’s one that I find as frustrating as those magazine articles annually on repeat “what summer style are you?” “Are you a ponytail girl or down and wavy: what your hair style says about you” as if we all need to be pigeon holed in an irritatingly patronising way. Funnily enough I was told what wine I’d be by fellow wine’o @Winebird – and of all the wines in the world she declared me a Côte Rôtie! If only I could afford it!

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A non-wine-trade friend of mine is taking her WSET certificate for fun and asked me why she ‘s being taught wine country-by-country instead of grape-by-grape. “People I know are just as likely to select a wine by grape as they are by region” she said. Good point.

Although arranging wines in this way in supermarkets hasn’t been successful I love the fact that her freedom from the trade has allowed her to think outside of the wine norm and she’s definitely onto something. Could thinking of wine in this way help broaden our wine drinking horizons so that Argentina becomes known for more than just Malbec and Spain for more than Tempranillo? ………

Given the rise and general acceptance of the screw cap, why are we still being asked to taste a wine when we’re out and about “if it’s not sealed with a cork doesn’t that mean it can’t be corked?” I was asked. Is the offer to taste a wine now just a ritual that is so embedded into our routine that to not be asked to taste the wine would above all else be rude? Or are we being asked to taste the wine to see if we like it? Could we reasonably return a wine that has been especially opened for us on our request just because it’s not quite what we fancied? Or are we all too scared of not knowing what it should have tasted like in the first place so nod-and-smile and drink it anyway?

In NYC recently a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed against a wine store and its owner by a customer who bought a number of wines he “didn’t like”. ………