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Having joined The Wine Society’s team in 1973 as promotions manager, Payne became the head buyer in 1985. He stepped down from this position in 2012, when Tim Sykes took over, but has remained on the buying team ever since. As part of his responsibilities, Payne has bought in every region throughout the years but, in recent years, focused mainly on Italy and Bordeaux. He was also instrumental in introducing wines from Eastern Europe and Greece to the portfolio. The Wine Society described Payne’s ...

‘When I started producing wine, the wineries were all in a very bad condition,’ said Askaneli Brothers president Gocha Chkhaidze, recalling the poor state of the Georgian wine industry shortly after the country declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. ‘There was inadequate sanitation, a lack of know-how and old-fashioned bottling lines. People were unable to make wine sustainably, vineyards were not sufficiently cared for, agronomists were unskilled and used to harvest the maximu ...

As the summer season comes to a close and many wineries prepare for harvest, more than 400 active wildfires continue to burn in British Columbia, a handful of which the BC Wildfire Service designates ‘a potential threat to public safety’ in major cities, small towns and the vineyards in between. Sparked on 15th August, the season’s most destructive wildfire – the McDougall Creek Fire – had the province’s wine industry on its knees. Spreading over 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres), it initially thre ...