The flavor of red fruit in wine

The fifth of Redbreast’s Dream Cask offerings, released to mark World Whisky Day tomorrow (Saturday 21st May), is a 30-year-old single pot still whiskey produced by Irish Distillers at its Midleton Distillery in Co Cork. Unlike previous single-cask releases, this year’s Dream Cask combines two casks chosen as their favourites from Midleton’s vast inventory by master blender Billy Leighton and blender Dave McCabe. Leighton’s cask is a first-fill Oloroso Sherry butt filled in May 1990, while McCab ...

Only 10? I feel a little like I do when faced with a hefty restaurant wine list. So many lovely wines, so little time to do them justice. My mind tracks the names, vintages and regions in fleeting time, flipping like a kaleidoscope. The effort is always accompanied by that nagging worry you’re missing the absolute gem. All the while, your dinner date is itching simply to get on and tuck into the evening with a good glass of wine. The Tooley household has been through a lot in 2021, including som ...

The latest survey from trade body WineGB shows that sales of English and Welsh wines have now increased by 69% between 2019 and 2021. The star performer is the direct-to-consumer sector, which is up by 265% over two years. It now represents 57% of all sales, up from just 36% in 2019. That means English and Welsh wine producers are increasingly cutting out the middlemen – supermarkets, specialist merchants, bars and restaurants – and selling directly to their devotees, either via their ecommerce ...