 | Oxford, a centre of wine learning | | 9:56am Thu 24 Jul 08 | | If I had a bottle of wine for every time someone told me I had one of the best jobs in the world, I could start having baths in the stuff. People envy the regular wine tastings and who am I to blame them? |
| New- versus Old-World Wine | | 10:13am Sunday 20th July 2008 | | Recently I took part in a day-long seminar aimed at potential Master of Wine (MW) students. It's a notoriously tricky exam to pass and, it seems to me, is undertaken by the mad, the brilliantly gifted or the doggedly determined. |
 | Use your sommelier! | | 4:07pm Tue 15 Jul 08 | | I am writing my column this week in the stunning city of Santiago do Compostela after a week-long tour of the vineyards and wineries of Galicia. It has been a fantastic few days, not just for the wines, the scenery and the food, but for the company I found myself in. |
 | Do you know how much you drink? | | 2:06pm Thu 3 Jul 08 | | Three people have asked me how many units of wine I drink a week in the last four days: the osteopath, the dentist and my friend who popped round for supper. I suspect my average consumption is something like a bottle and a half to two bottles a week. I was brought up thinking that there were six glasses in a bottle and that one glass roughly equalled one unit. So, there I was thinking I was somewhere between a nine to 12-unit a week girl. |
| Wines for Wimbledon | | 1:32pm Thursday 26th June 2008 | | The house I grew up in had large French windows that opened up on to the garden and the public pathway beyond. In the same way that it offered a perfect vista from which to watch the village comings and goings, so too passers-by were able to keep their eyes on us. |
| Pick a fruit day to open the wine | | 9:29am Friday 20th June 2008 | | I have just emerged from one of the most frustratingly inconclusive tastings I have ever taken part in. Four of us were assessing 30 wines of varying styles, with a view to including them in a new wine list. |
| Taking rosé seriously | | 4:38pm Wednesday 4th June 2008 | | I'm not that old and I can't claim the decades of wine trade experience that many of my colleagues can. Despite that, I can still remember the days when a producer would put forward his bottle of rosé only after we'd worked our way through the more serious' reds and whites. |
 | Beauty of South Africa and its wines | | 1:45pm Thu 29 May 08 | | If there is a country that I have visited which I regret not having had more time to tour its wineries, it is South Africa. We holidayed there a couple of years ago, travelling from the Waterberg to the north of Johannesburg all the way to Cape Town via the Great and Little Karoos. |
| Some recommended books on wine | | 2:22pm Thursday 22nd May 2008 | | If there is one thing that I buy as compulsively as wine, it is books. I have, quite literally, thousands of them; some 400-odd cook books at the last count. |
| Wine quiz | | 12:00pm Friday 16th May 2008 | | I know we're not quite at the final May Bank Holiday but as this coincides with English Wine Week, I've decided to run the May Bank Holiday Wine Quiz a little early. So, whether you whiz through it now or decide to keep it until the holiday, good luck! |
 | A wine masterclass from Australia | | 10:48am Thu 8 May 08 | | Last week I was sat in Australia House taking part in a masterclass aimed at capturing "the past, present and future of Australia's leading wine expressions". |
 | A night at The Harrow, Little Bedwyn | | 4:47pm Thu 17 Apr 08 | | There are lots of things I love about eating out - the (hopefully) lovely food, the ear-wigging and people watching and savouring every mouthful, and, top of my list, that you are safe in the knowledge that you are not responsible for washing up. |
 | Easy — don't go without a case! | | 3:30pm Thu 3 Apr 08 | | INCREASED security at our airports is all well and good and perfectly understandable but it has caused me more than a little angst. |
 | Tasting wine on the move | | 11:40am Thu 27 Mar 08 | | I'm just back from a few days of wine tasting in France; not this time on a no-frills airline but via that much more relaxing Eurostar from the remodelled St Pancras station. |
 | Moules frites and Muscadet | | 11:47am Thu 20 Mar 08 | | As a child, I spent many Easter and summer holidays with my adopted French family, more often than not swimming, sailing and playing in and around the Atlantic coast. |
 | Eating and drinking — Spanish style | | 2:25pm Thu 13 Mar 08 | | It's the morning after the 24th Investiture dinner of the Gran Orden de Caballeros del Vino at the Four Seasons Hotel in London and I'm happy to report that I am pretty fresh and (remarkably) hang-over free. |
 | Moving with the wines | | 10:13am Fri 7 Mar 08 | | I am writing this week's column from bed. I am neither ill nor tired. It is just that it is the only piece of furniture, along with my laptop and wireless router, that the removals firm have left me with. I have limited time before I am unplugged and left on the floor so I shall get a move on. |
 | Mothers vote for wine | | 10:07am Fri 29 Feb 08 | | It doesn't take an awful lot to get me tipsy. You would think that, after all these years of endless wine tasting, I would have developed an above-average tolerance. Sadly, it just isn't the case. |
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