How to Develop and Launch a Drink Brand

'How to develop and launch a drink brand’, the new book by Food and Beverage expert Richard Horwell is published on 21st March. 

The book is a definitive guide to launching a drink in the UK; a step-by-step guide covering everything from the idea to getting on the shelf in retailers. It will show you all the pitfalls and all the shortcuts. 

Since the pandemic there has been a huge increase in interest in food and drink, even the most unlikely brands have received considerable inward investment! Employees working from home and lining up at the supermarket have realised this is the industry they want to be in.

Our awareness and interest in health and wellness has grown and so has the Wellness and Functional Drinks sector. All this has led to a flood of new drink brands hoping to launch into this market, and swathe of entrepreneurs deciding this is the business they want to focus on. In short, it seems everyone wants to know how to create and launch a drink brand.

‘How to develop and launch a drink brand’ is there to answer the most common questions and help budding drink entrepreneurs get off on the right foot.

Drawing on over 30 years’ experience in the industry and having been behind the launch of over 130 brands, Richard Horwell shares his insights into the industry and what aspiring entrepreneurs need to know before they start spending any money on creating a new drink brand.

The book covers:

- Market Research

- Recipe Development

- Branding

- Packaging and Production

- Marketing to Buyers

- Export.

If you are thinking of getting into the Food & Drink Industry, you need to read this book.

It all seems so simple when you see drinks on the shelf or the ‘rise to fame’ of brands such as Red Bull. But it isn’t. Successful brands have years of hard work behind them before they appear on your radar and behind this there has been a lot of money and heartache. This book is the inside guide to what you need to do and know, if you are to have any chance of success in this very competitive world.

“I have been in FMCG for most of my life, having lived and worked in the UK, USA, Australia and the Middle East, I have had successful brands of my own that have sold, and also seen the downfall, of many great brands. I wrote this book to help budding entrepreneurs understand the journey they are about to embark on; knowledge is power, and the advice here will give you the best chance of success.” said the book’s author Richard Horwell.

Case Study: Launching a Canned Wine Brand and The Copper Crew

There has been a boom in canned wines, say Richard, with convenience being the driving factor.

But for a start-up there are a lot of issues you need to consider. Firstly you will be competing against big players with well-known brand names and very deep pockets. Secondly, to sell alcohol in the UK you need to be AWRS registered with HMRC and they don’t take this lightly, they look for well-funded businesses that have the infrastructure to be successful. Ultimately, it all comes down to money, so you need a lot more of it to launch a canned wine than you would in most other categories 

My feeling is that the trend will be flavoured wines. More flavoured wines will start to appear in cans as adaptations of Aperol Spritz or Kir Royal. There will also be more wine-based ready to drink cocktails in a can rather than just an unknown wine in a can.

The Copper Crew first launched their business in early 2020 - just as the country went into lockdown. 

A management consultant, academic and winemaker team, they had originally planned to build a word-of-mouth buzz and generate sales from attending outdoor events, such as concerts and festivals.

Forced to switch to an online-only model, they won awards and gained positive reviews from Jancis Robinson, Joe Wadsack and Ruth Spivey.

Their range was launched with a a white and rosé initially with the strapline: Not for the cellar. For everywhere else. A red and a special edition Sauvignon Blanc then followed to round out the offering.

Founder Oli says:

There is good growth in this sector but it is coming from a low base. The most explosive growth within drinks is found in RTDs in the UK; hard Seltzers are over-hyped and there has been significant stock shedding from big producers. However, the growth still remains rapid.

A lot of thinking in this space from conversations I've had with producers is you've got to just get out there and gain market share then worry about making money.

Convenience is a significant factor in the growth behind canned wine, but we've found the number 1 driver to be portion control. Therefore, canned wine has a perhaps unexpected resonance with older age demographics (50-80). Many of these consumers are actually more opened minded than people (younger age demographics) just getting into wine.

On a practical front, there many, many issues we faced as a start-up in this space and the biggest has been cashflow. In our business it's a tricky balance and is often the critical thing is simply keeping the lights on.

I think any book on setting up a drinks business must go through the fundamentals of accounting for duty and invoice financing

Book details

The book is available from Amazon and all good bookshops, plus direct from the Brand Relations website www.brandrelations.co.uk

The Author

Richard Horwell is the owner of Brand Relations, a specialist food and drink marketing and branding company based in London.

Over the last 14 years, Brand Relations has been behind the launch and development of over 130 brands in the UK. Richard has also built up and sold companies of his own in the Food and Beverage sector. He has over 30 years’ experience in marketing FMCG brands around the world, having lived and worked in the UK, USA, Australia and the Middle East.

// 

Walking Cambridge

A book of eight walking tours around Cambridge

I have made Cambridge my home for the last twenty years and explored it with my wife, children relatives and a succession of visitors.

It's not a big city (that's actually one of the things I most like about it) so I thought there was little left to learn. This Walking Cambridge guide, however, still provides plenty of history to explore.

My go-to one-liners about Cambridge are:

- it does not have all that much to see, but what it does have is world-class

- Cambridge is basically a university and a hospital with a small, fenland market town wedged in between

A key historic distinction in Cambridge is between "town" vs "gown"; it's a sad truism that the history of urban Cambridge in no way compares with the history of academic Cambridge.

You could also add a newer, third category that has emerged only in recent years - of which I am one. London-commuters are those Cambridge residents who are neither "gown" nor "town" and in many ways have the least connection with the city.

For me, this was what I most enjoyed about Walking Cambridge; not so much the well-documented touristy stuff that I first discovered on moving here, but the more obscure local history that gives personality and depth to the streets I walk along to take my kids to school or got to the shops.

However, any visit to Cambridge necessarily starts with the academic side of the city centre; the winding cobbled streets, the river, the Backs and the first walk does exactly that, starting outside the great gate of St John's, covering much of the Backs and ending at Great St Mary's.

But Cambridge also has a history as a city; so whilst the University is what non-Cantabridgians first think of when they hear the name "Cambridge", those of us that actually live there also exist in the physical space of Cambridge as well as in its intellectual and conceptual aura.

Appropriately, then, of the eight walks in the guidebook, only one focuses solely on the world-famous college part of town; the remainder dive deeper beyond the well-trodden tourists paths and, in the process, tell more of the history of Cambridge as a city.

So, the way you might use this book depends on your relationship with Cambridge:

- if you have not previously visited the city, then start with the University Walk for its history and the Castle Walk for its views

- if you already know the well-trodden tourist areas of Cambridge, start with one of the suburban walks: the Station to Station Walk and Mill Road To Romsey Walk both take in my part of south-central Cambridge and include almshouses, the Kett and Foster families and the David Parr House.

Author Andrew Kershman describes being inspired to walk the streets of Cambridge, spotting unusual things and finding out the stories behind them, by the view from the tower of Great St Mary's in the centre of Cambridge and, having finished the last walk, "ascending the those same 123 narrow steps and looking down to recognise Senate House, the path from Caius leading to St John's and to the south, the road to Trumpington, passing the treasure trove of the Fitzwilliam Museum."

The guide itself advises:

- Walk along pavements embedded with flowers, discover how John Hodson rose from a college servant to become a rich man, only to lose it all in a famous scandal, and find a monument erected by the deposed prince of Siam in memory of his faithful pooch.

These walks will not only take you through ancient college cloisters to reveal Cambridge’s most famous sights, but also lead you far from the well-trodden tourist path, bringing to life long-forgotten voices and telling some surprising tales.

Author: Andrew Kershman

Price: £11.99

ISBN: 978-1-902910-66-6

Format: 320 pp, w105mm x h148mm

Full colour, 9 Maps, over 400 photographs

Wines of the French Alps: Wink Lorch

Wink Lorch's tasting of Alpine wines and book celebration at Terroirs, London

Cheese, wine and bread is a simple and classic combination. Yet simple need not mean unsophisticated; a flight of 28 Alpine wines chosen with impeccable taste, superb Alpine cheeses and fresh baguettes plus chat with Alpine vignerons and merchants.

I have long agreed with Wink's view that Alpine wines have their own particular character, a certain light freshness, reminiscent of an Alpine meadow.

The wines selected by Wink were not so much defined by their Alpine nature as all bearing a family resemblance.

There was fizz (in two colours), whites and reds, youg wines, old wines, magnums, aromatic wines and versatile wines, varietals and blends with obscure grapes such as Gringet, Mondeuse, Chasselas, Persan. There were even cross-border wines from French, Swiss and Italian-grown grapes and a pair of bottles from the year the Berlin Wall came down.

In general, the whites were lemony and leesy-oatmealy with white stone fruit; the reds showed red berry fruits with fine tannins. Delicate wines with a Burgundian elegance, they were harmonious, balanced and savoury and of a very good standard all round.

Head to any of the merchants who supported the event and try some of these wonderful wines - ideally, two or three bottles for a comparative tasting over some Gruyere and Comte.

Vine Trail
Alpine Wines
Bibendum
Caves de Pyrene
Raeburn

And if that piques your interest, check out Wink's book, Wines of the French Alps: Savoie, Bugey and beyond.

Rosé: Understanding the pink wine revolution - Elizabeth Gabay MW

A new book on rosé wine by Elizabeth Gabay MW

Wine comes in two colours, right? Red and white.

No wait, vin jaune is yellow, Madeira is amber and sherry can be brownish; Champagne is kind of mushroomy and then there are orange wines.

And actually red wine isn't generally red - more often purplish or cherry-coloured. White wine is certainly not white but covers the spectrum from greenish to yellow.

And we don't use an English word for pink wine but call it rosé instead - including an accent and an extra syllable to differentiate it from the accent-less flower by any other name. Pink / rosé wine is perhaps the only wine colour style that meets its description; it genuinely is pink, even if it comes in a range of shades.

It may seem quaint or old-fashioned to write about the entire topic of wine of a certain colour, yet as Liz notes in her introduction, rosé wine has benefited over the last twenty-five years from a boom in quality and production volume, so a re-appraisal of this "ugly duckling" among wine styles is overdue.

Exploring ‘unicorn’ rosés, largely unknown, unreported and unrecognized and often difficult to find, remaining hidden to most consumers, Liz starts with the question ‘What is a rosé?’, something that sounds simple enough, but for which she finds there are numerous exceptions.

Subsequent chapters cover the history of rosé wine, viticulture and winemaking, and rosé regions from Provence to other classic French regions via North America, the southern hemisphere, pink sparkling wine and the rest of Europe including the Balkans, the Adriatic and the eastern Mediterranean before addressing the business of rosé.

The book concludes that formerly an ugly ducking, rosé is now emerging as a beautiful swan in a dynamic revolution that is only just beginning.

Available from Amazon, priced £30

Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Infinite Ideas Limited (15 Jan. 2018)

BIY - Brew It Yourself

A new book by The Two Thirsty Gardeners

You don't actually need a beard (hipster or non-ironic) to buy Brew It Yourself. But a sprinkling of New Age stubble, like that on the eponymous thirsty gardeners, will certainly help.

The book is arranged into sections starting with The Basics before moving on to the tricky areas of wine and mead.

I have had various flirtations with home brewing and, unless you find natural wines a bit too crowd-pleasing and mainstream, it is generally easiest to stick with cocktails and liqueurs with an occasional foray into beers.

The novice, then, should start at the back of the book with Glogg, a Swedish mulled wine that uses ingredients you are likely to have lying around and requires a preparation time of minutes rather than weeks

Likewise, the egg nog recipe is equally straightforward and Christmassy.

Other infusions, liqueurs and cocktails are more versatile and simple enough to give the confidence to move onto something more ambitious.

Beers and ciders require more kit, attention and patience but the end results can be a pleasing source of reliable quaffing - a good alternative to a six-pack from the supermarket.

Lager, IPA and wheat beer are all here along with off-the-beaten track beers like honey ale, Viking ale and liquorice stout.

If you want to go all Good Life, there is parsnip wine (extra authenticity if grown on your own allotment), oak leaf, rhubarb and fragrant fig.

And don't forget your chunky-knit jumper.

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Whisky Quarterly Magazine

Whisky Quarterly - the first issue

Whisky quarterly is a new publication edited by writer and photographer Colin Hampden-White.

 

The glossy magazine aims to reach enthusiasts and connoisseurs alike whilst still providing a good read for those who don't drink whisky.

 

A few decades ago, virtually all whisky was blended into homogenous brands and there was no interest in the underlying constituent single malts, so a periodical on the subject would have been unthinkable, not to say somewhat pointless and dull.

 

Today, the first edition covers whiskies from Japan, Tasmania and Texas - and Colin's eye as a photographer means that it is also gorgeous to look at.

 

There are articles on off-the-beaten track distilleries, plus recommendations of interesting whiskies to look out for, some not generally available.

 

With its high production values and double-figure price, Whisky Quarterly is clearly aimed at a more affluent market with a certain level of disposable income - and the time / energy to hunt out the rare bottles available only at auction. However, not all the whiskies mentioned are expensive, and the cheapest is just £19.95.

 

And given that single malts have only recently come into fashion, even the more expensive bottles are arguably much better value than certain trophy wines.

 

£10, available by subscription only.

 

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Sediment - The Hardback

A review of Sediment

 

The best wine writing concerns itself not so much with the liquid in the bottle as with certain fundamental truths.

 

In much the same way as great travel writing touches on history, politics and psychoanalysis, features people and places as if characters in a novel and is both literate and articulate, so writing about wine should consider more than just fermented grape juice.

 

Sediment, a collection of essays from The Sediment Blog pulled together to form chapters of a book contains at its heart a gleefully ironic paradox; styling itself as two gentlemen and their mid-life terroirs, it is old-school, lofty and self-deprecatingly superior in a way that only old money can be.

 

And yet its focus is unashamedly on the cheapest end of the (mostly) supermarket selection.

 

Rather like Sir John Gielgud's Master of Trinity College discussing the fiery undergraduate sprinter Harold Abrahams in Chariots of Fire, the writers of Sediment, known as CJ and PK, take a quizzical and aloof interest in the cheapest of wines - in much the same way that you might inspect a particularly unattractive bug under a microscope with a combination of horror and fascination.

The set-up, then, is hilarious - as is often the text, with dry, caustic put-downs and quaint observations delivered with withering condescension.

 

The other strapline of Sediment is "I've bought it so I'll drink it". And occasionally this sentiment tips over into the writing. The risk with any confessional narrative is that of over-worked self-indulgence. "I've thought of it, so I'll write it" or "I've blogged it, so I'll publish it" might sometimes be an apter observation.

 

Like many a "Greatest Hits" collection - for that is effectively what this is - the best cuts are at the beginning whilst those in the middle occasionally drag a little.

 

At their best, the essays that make up Sediment inform, entertain and reveal a truth about ourselves; often, they are not actually about wine at all but are stories about the curious rituals surrounding wine and its consumption; PK's English Aspirations holds up a mirror to a host of society characters and gently teases their bumbling ridiculousness in the way that Richard Curtis did with Four Weddings and A Funeral.

£10.99 in hardback from amazon; provided for review.

Hardcover: 224 pages

Publisher: John Blake Publishing Ltd (6 Nov 2014)

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Image from Chariots of Fire: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGlEg54mm_A0qIMWQfHqNJ66igcH2wwAkPWFCoQlFR2jdRa-AYTza1vO64UgO7tbVFsxUrksBCiygjONDC9tRrwipShyphenhyphengDrfMdKgyPupnBAXdvYNAldrUJ_7qC_dMr1Qp91cB2UOzl9680/s1600-h/Image28.17.jpg

Wine and Identity: Branding, Heritage, Terroir

Book review: Wine and Identity: Branding, Heritage, Terroir

Dense, concentrated and long - and that's just the introduction.

Generally, an involvement in wine is more of a lifestyle choice than a business decision.

There is a Romance about being in wine that seems to be anathema to any discussion of it as a consumer product to be made, marketed and sold for the best price possible.

Working in wine is perhaps a bit like fashion or acting - it appeals to many people but only a very few actually make good money out of it. Those who see wine as primarily a business rather than merely a lifestyle are noticeably in the minority.

With the average price of a bottle of wine in the UK around a fiver and, of that, about 30p being the cost of the wine itself, there are many easier ways to make money than in wine.

The key challenge is pricing, which is supported by branding. However, branding is an investment that does not come easily to a fragmented, small scale, individualistic and variable sector such as winemaking.

Academic, encyclopedic books on wine tend to cover the grapes, vineyards and chateaux of the world's wine-producing regions - as if production of the stuff were the only thing that mattered.

This book looks at the flipside of the process - the sales-side marketing of wine.

It is not a light-hearted, easy read - rather, a reference text aimed principally at the academic market, it is a thoroughly researched, well-supported series of case studies of branding and marketing in the wine world.

The introduction alone reveals a depth of thinking far beyond the average level of debate by even some of our best-known and serious-thinking wine journalists.

The potential audience for this book, I suspect, is not amongst wine journalists - even if it should be. Rather, it may prove most useful for the marketing and PR people of wine and tourism trade bodies; the case studies often relate to regions (California, Otago), countries (Slovenia, Georgia) or entire styles of wine, such as sherry.

In addition, there are chapters for the sociologists and trend-watchers on Baby boomers vs Gen Y, winery architecture and online terroir.

It is an academic textbook (24 authors, three editors, most of them Drs or Profs) and rather reads as one - for all its business management stories, it is no great page-turner (lots of referencing and acknowledgements rather slow the pace.)

But it is full of facts and information - for anyone looking to build a wine brand, it provides reliable and detailed insight into how this can be achieved.

Each chapter is written as a case study with key conclusions at the end.

Of the 18 chapters, five are devoted to heritage, six to branding and five to terroir. Yet, as the book's introduction recognises, these are intersecting, overlapping themes - albeit ones that have been largely overlooked in the academic literature to date.

Ultimately, it is a book "for anyone who has held aloft a glass of wine and pondered some of the intriguing stories that might exist behind this historic and gratifying beverage".

Technical details and website blurb

Wine and Identity: Branding, Heritage, Terroir
Edited by Matt Harvey, Leanne White, Warwick Frost
Routledge – 2013
256 pages
Hardback, £85

In an increasingly competitive global market, winemakers are seeking to increase their sales and wine regions to attract tourists. To achieve these aims, there is a trend towards linking wine marketing with identity.

Such an approach seeks to distinguish wine products – whether wine or wine tourism – from their competitors, by focusing on cultural and geographical attributes that contribute to the image and experience. In essence, marketing wine and wine regions has become increasingly about telling stories – engaging and provocative stories which engage consumers and tourists and translate into sales.

This timely book examines this phenomena and how it is leading to changes in the wine and tourism industries for the first time. It takes a global approach, drawing on research studies from around the world including old and new world wine regions.

The volume is divided into three parts. The first – branding – investigates cases where established regions have sought to strengthen their brands or newer regions are striving to create effective emerging brands.

The second – heritage – considers cases where there are strong linkages between cultural heritage and wine marketing. The third section – terroir – explores how a ‘sense of place’ is inherent in winescapes and regional identities and is increasingly being used as a distinctive selling proposition.

This significant volume showcasing the connections between place, identity, variety and wine will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics interested in tourism, marketing and wine studies.

To purchase, click here: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415814195/

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'Winebird's VINALOGY': Launch Party

Winebird Helena Nicklin is the creator of the Vinalogy, an analogy that paints a memorable picture of anything wine related and says PAH to dry facts!

With a blog and YouTube channel under her belt, she is now launching a book; I went along to the party to hang out with the beautiful people of the vinalogy (but frankly, I would pay money to listen to them reciting the phone directory).

Signing in:


A mermaid, a rugby player, an author and a polo player walk into a bar ...



Well hello Malbec! Form an orderly queue ladies - it's men in sporty outfits (and a mermaid - bet she drinks like a fish)



 

Vinalogy the book: wine basics with a twist

 

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On Sediment, Wining and Dining

Links
Winebird - website, twitter, YouTube

Kicking The Kremlin

A review of Kicking The Kremlin by Marc Bennetts, published by Oneworld; sub-titled Russia's New Dissidents and the Battle to Topple Putin, the book covers the grass roots anti-Putin movement (if it can be called such a thing) from around 2000 to 2013.

Situated in the centre of Moscow with walls up to six metres thick and 19m high, the Kremlin is a potent symbol of Russia's totalitarian rule.

It was the seat of power for Russia's leaders until the early 1700s when Peter the Great, affecting a more European outlook, moved his capital to the newly-constructed city of St Petersburg, before reverting back to its original status in 1918 when the bolsheviks, fighting for the survival of their revolution and the new Russian state, decided to hunker down.

Russia - the largest country in the world, spanning nine time zones - has always had authoritarian rulers, due to a combination of history and geography. A vast, flat country with long borders and a land empire acquired very quickly, it is at almost constant risk of attack or disintegration; Ukraine was for centuries more a province than a separate country, yet in 1991ceded from the then Soviet Union and became an independent nation - a fact many Russians have still not yet fully accepted.

In the early 1200s, a horseback warrior, Genghis Khan, struck out from Mongolia and conquered Russia almost overnight-  there followed nearly four centuries of eastern rule. Instead of experiencing the Renaissance, Russia was enslaved under the despotic Mongol Yoke.

Authoritarianism is not, therefore, something new in Russia - it is, rather, the normal state of things. Given a political education by the Mongols, Russia's tsars named themselves after the militaristic absolute rulers of ancient Rome, the caesars.

Russia is also heir to the original Christian church - the centre of orthodoxy moved from Rome to Moscow via Byzantium and Kiev.

Vast yet physically vulnerable and with a great spiritual heritage, Russia is a battered and wary, yet proud country. Three-fifths Asian, it did not leave the feudal era until 1861 and has not developed democratic structures and principles in the interim - a civil war, two world wars and the collapse of two empires have resulted in a focus on survival at all costs during difficult times and a tendency to stagnate at others.

The greatest threat to a totalitarian regime is a propserous, comfortable and well-educated middle class that dares to aspire to greater freedoms and can communicate that desire openly. Russia's rulers have always understood this and state censorship has long been standard practice.

Under the communists, anything that might allow the free exchange of ideas was tightly controlled - exit visas, border controls and closed cities restricted freedom of movement, whilst state industries focused more on armaments than on anything that might facilitate communication, such as personal transport, telephony or any consumer electronic devices.

The watershed moment came with glasnost, Mikhail Gorbachyov's policy of "openness" and freedom of communication. His attempts to restructure the economy ("perestroika") floundered and paved the way for the economic chaos of the Yeltsin years, but the free speech genii was out of the bottle.

The Putin years have witnessed a crude-but-effective re-taking of control over all television broadcasting  - add to this endemic corruption and weak democratic structures and the country is once more totalitarian in all but name.

For his book Kicking The Kremlin, Marc Bennets records the tales of various anti-Putin protesters - from eco-activist Yevgenia Chirikova to evangelical-yet-nationalistic lawyer Aleksei Navalny by way of punk band Pussy Riot.

The way Bennetts tells it, they are united by little more than a dislike of Putin. A fragmented and divided opposition facing an authoritarian crackdown is hardly a fair fight and the image of kicking against the bricks of the Kremlin walls is an appropriate metaphor for the futility of such protests.

The focus on personality is also a weakness - whilst it is easy to cast the ex-KGB officer, sometime Prime Minister and now President (again) as a hate-figure, totalitarianism and corruption in Russia is about more than one person, even if he is the long-term ruler of the country.

The building blocks of democracy are free and fair elections, an independent press, freedom of speech and the rule of law. It should come as little surprise to learn that Russia does not score - has never scored - highly for any of these.

Calls for the removal of one person from power - even if successful - do nothing to solve the underlying issues of an undemocratic country and merely risk the replacement of one despot with another - as evidenced by the Russian revolution.

Where both the anti-Putin protesters and Bennets' book seem to miss the point is in making their protests personal rather than structural - an undemocratic removal of Putin would do nothing to advance the cause of democracy in Russia.

But, with free and fair elections, an independent press and the rule of law in place, there would be the potential for opposition figures to emerge, cut their political teeth and stand for democratic election.

It is not as rousing a slogan as "Rossiya bez Putina" ("Russia without Putin"), but has the potential to be far more effective.

The book ends, however, on a half-optimistic note; a younger generation, wealthier, savvier and more comfortable generally, are increasingly finding Putin an absurd irrelevance, a faintly ridiculous, diminutive old man who takes his shirt off for the cameras.

As current events in Kyiv show, a peaceful and controlled hand-over of power is infinitely preferable to the alternative.

Book provided for review.

Bibliographic details:
ISBN: 9781780743486
Publication Date: 6 February 2014
Extent: 288 pages
Dimensions: 146mm× 225mm
Subjects: Current Affairs / Politics

Food DIY Launch Party at Fitzbillies

For the launch of his Food DIY book, Tim Hayward invited a group of friends to his restaurant Fitzbillies for a launch party.

The very concept of DIY food evokes a different, earlier era - in this country now, up to two generations have grown up not knowing how to cook and relying on tinned and packaged food.

Post-war austerity and socialist inclinations led food production in Britain to be treated as more of an industrial process than an artisan one. The cultural nadir was perhaps the 70s - a decade in which I remember everything being either frozen, tinned or out of a packet.

Yet the same period also saw the very beginnings of a backlash and a move towards greater variety in diet, whilst the inexorable march of pre-prepared food continued for the majority; it may have started small - prawn cocktail and Chablis - but fresh seafood and French wines were the beginnings of a more sophisticated and artisan way of dining.

Fast forward through 30+ years of celebrity chefs and food lifestyle magazines and making one's own food is right on the zeitgeist.

Ironically, this increased interest in the making of food stems from greater wealth - it's a middle class obsession with rural, artisan authenticity as escapism from our urban lifestyles, not an economic necessity or cultural habit.

It was, after all, Britain that invented industrialisation in the 1770s and, two centuries later, the industrialised food of the 1970s is merely the logical and inevitable extension of the spinning jenny and Stephenson's Rocket.

This polarisation of attitudes to food is a deeply anglo-saxon issue, peculiar to Britain and the US: the rise of fast food and pre-packaged food vs a middle class enthusiasm for artisan methods.

In continental Europe, the distinction between the two is less profound; an enthusiasm for artisan food is more part of the general culture than a backlash against the rise of industrial food. The French do have their hypermarches, but they are stocked with good local wines and cheeses, different types of breads and fresh (often live) seafood.

The food at Fitzbillies has a peasanty feel - there is no urban fussiness here; rather, it is simple classics well made.

The wines for the evening were, likewise, good straightforward crowd-pleasers and both from southern France - a Picpoul and a Carignan.

The picpoul was the better match of the two with the meal, with a food-friendly freshness and an atypical honeyed weightiness whilst the berry fruit of the Carignan tended to clash with the flavours of the food.

Starters
Home-cured smoked salmon with capers and hollandaise, globe artichokes

Main
Whole roast suckling pig, buttered wilted greens, roast potatoes and crackling

Dessert
Trifle

Tim's book Food DIY is available from amazon, priced at £16

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Food DIY on amazon - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Food-DIY-Everything-sausages-sourdough/dp/1905490976

On Sediment, Wining and Dining

If we define wine bloggers as "self-published writers about wine on the internet", then that covers everything from Jancis Robinson with her team of writers and paywall site, to the person who has a bottle of wine for Sunday lunch, photographs it on his iphone and writes a few lines about it as a review.

In the middle are various types of amateur and semi-professional wine bloggers - who may or may not get sent regular samples and invitations to trade events as a journo.

However, there are also professional journos who write about wine as a sideline hobby - some have merely an interest in wine whilst others may be professionally qualified.

What sets them all apart, though, is the quality of the writing and thinking - compared to those of us who have never written for a living.

One of my current favourite wine blogs is Sediment; it's low on dry technical stuff and high on anecdote and observation - in a quirky, edgy and dryly cutting sort of way.

Like the best wines, it is well-structured and complex yet also appealing.

Its authors, known only as CJ and PK and describing themselves as "Two gentlemen and their mid-life terroirs", turn out to be not just professional writers but published authors, each with several books to their name.

And now they have a new one - written under the name of Sediment: Wining and Dining - the Sediment Guide to Wine and the Dinner-Party is an ebook short, which costs less than a glass of wine. Less than a SMALL glass of wine, they say.

CJ and PK describe it as "eight original essays, in our inimitable style, offering typically idiosyncratic advice about every aspect of wine at that most daunting social occasion."

There’s an introduction to the book in their blog and you and you can find the book on Amazon.

I can't tell you any more about the book itself because they didn't bother to send me a review copy. However, another (also professional) writer whom I very much admire, Henry Jeffreys, said "they didn't send me a copy either so I splurged £1.99 Money well spent "

In any case, because I enjoy their blog so much, I readily agreed to give it a mention here.

Other related articles
Steve's Grenache and The Grape Escape
Chris Kissack's Pocket Guide to Bordeaux

Links
Sediment - website, twitter

Chris Kissack's Pocket Guide to The Wines of Bordeaux

Chris Kissack's Pocket Guide to The Wines of Bordeaux, published by the somewhat clumsily-named MagBook, aims to have the depth of information of a book with the turnaround time of a magazine and is priced part-way between a book and a magazine.

Bordeaux was my first proper introduction to decent, reliable wine - for me, Bordeaux has never been about particular, world-famous First Growth chateaux or the great appellations; rather, I've more generally found enjoyment and value in good, everyday wines.

And that's the problem with Bordeaux - it's so many things to so many people; with an output greater than the whole of Australia, it can be a status symbol for Asian billionaires or an investment vehicle for speculators; an eye-wateringly expensive indulgence or an everyday wine; a wine to mature for years, decades or even more or something to drink shortly after vintage.

It can be red or, increasingly, white. It can be rosé. It can be sweet.

The book is extremely well-written (all of it, unusually, by Chris himself) and is laid out logically and clearly.

In his introduction, Chris says that the book is aimed at everyone from the novice to the deep-pocketed enthusiast with introductory sections on the minor regions and more in-depth analyses of the great Chateaux, plus a review of the last decade of vintages and some more off-the-cuff magazine articles on topical issues, such as the rise of China and changes to the en primeur system.

There are also a few "static" sections on professional storage and the right type of glasses that feel like they've come straight out of the wine-book identikit archive.

Overall, however, this MagBook's strengths are perhaps also its weaknesses - the almost 150 pages of it contain vast amounts of information and Chris' enthusiasm for and depth of knowledge about the region is patently clear.

But for me, it feels in many ways like an old-fashioned reference book and would benefit from more in the way of wisdom and less base information.

Moreover, there is very little price information, and since we know prices for Bordeaux can vary greatly, it might have been useful to structure some of the sections around price - I am rarely, if ever, going to spend several hundred pounds on a bottle of wine, for example, so why not put the details of all those wines in a separate section that I know is out of my range.

Since there is also no information on where to source the wines described or recommended, the guide feels more like a compendium of background information than a useful what-and-where-to-buy.

And this is a pity - because Chris is clearly an expert in Bordeaux with a huge depth and breadth of knowledge. But with so much information available on Wikipedia and the ability to read it on the daily commute with an iPad, the general background information here is of less use than it would have been even a few years ago.

So, I'd really like to see a bit more emphasis on something different and unique - be it value-added expert wisdom or even just entertaining anecdote and opinion of which I'm sure Chris must have plenty.

Also, some information on indicative pricing would help to provide something of a structure - it is one thing to read a description of a sub-region or specific chateau, but another thing altogether to be able to afford it these days.

£6.29 (hardcopy) / £4.99 (kindle) from amazon - provided for review.

Additional review by Jim Budd here.

Links

Chris Kissack - website, twitter
Pocket Guide to The Wines of Bordeaux - ebook on amazon

Steve's Grenache

With a book, a band and a wine to his name, Steve Hovington might seem like a walking game of charades.

Or, alternately, a polymath Renaissance Man.

However, a more apt metaphor perhaps is the dabbling gentleman dilettante as, by his own admission, he has historically struggled to find his place in life and make a success of it.

Having narrowly missed out on being a synth-pop star in the early '80s and endured the subsequent slow, painful death of any hope of musical success, he seems to fall into a decade-long, rainbow-chasing, procrastinating funk of not really doing much at all except ending up in retail.

Not exactly rock and roll, then.

But, somehow or other, a company all-expenses-paid wine-tasting trip to Chianti country seems to bring him back in touch with his inner rock-star VIP diva and he discovers a real interest in wine.

A couple of glossed-over job changes later and he ends up working for local independent Cambridge Wine Merchants and also one evening resolving to make his own wine.

With only the vaguely-defined end-goal in sight, he eventually arranges to "borrow" four rows of vines from Nicolas Berggasse of Chateau Viranel in the Languedoc for one year and sets about maintaining the vines, thinning, harvesting and treading the grapes, and making and bottling the wine - all by hand and all under both the tutelage of Nicolas and the sceptical eye of the Berggasse pater familias, Gerard.

Resisting the temptation to name his wine Chateau Mid-life Crisis, he labels it simply Steve's Grenache and then takes a couple more years to write and publish the book of the wine.

I went to the launch party for Steve's Grenache a few months ago at the Cherry Hinton Road branch of Cambridge Wine Merchants, where he was also showing some of the wines of Chateau Viranel whose vines he had borrowed and at the end, he kindly gave me a bottle of his wine and a copy of the book for review.

I also managed to track down B-Movie's back catalogue on Spotify to review all three together.

The music, early-80s futurist New Wave synth-pop, feels over-conceived and under-developed, more defined by its genre than genre-defining compared to the way that bands like Bauhaus or label-mates Soft Cell, for example, created a new and unique sound with their first albums.

And on first reading the book, I was also disappointed, most probably due to the weight of my own expectations.

I had expected to find a driven, creative genius with a skewed but insightful view of the world, compelled to express his vision through the power and poetry of his lyrics.

I had also imagined a world of private jets, outrageous riders, groupies and hangers-on and general, booze-fuelled excess.

But this is no Led Zeppelin or Guns 'n' Roses and what I actually got was a headmaster's son from the coal-mining area of the East Midlands with a A-level in design and a penchant for gimmicky outfits who had never quite got over Not Making It Big.

Instead of the visionary Romantic living the rock-star life - even if only in his head - I found someone a bit like me, someone in the real world with a family, a boss and financial considerations to make.

So no rock and roll and not actually that much about wine-making either, as much of the book is taken up with very practical details, such as buying trial vines at a garden centre, emailing old friends with his plans or coach journeys to budget airports to get to southern France.

It's all very middle class and grounded in reality, with key moments from his previous life told in flashback and only hints or snippets of the highs and lows of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle - radio interviews, wild fans and a final disastrous tour.

But reading the book a second time, I found it very different.

Neither a rock autobiography nor a how-to guide on wine-making, nor indeed a pastoral retreat in rural France, it is actually the story of a man pulling himself together in the middle of his life, accepting his place in family life and society and acknowledging that things hadn't worked out quite as well as he had hoped but getting on with it anyway.

Whilst a global hit record can make you famous the world over and touch the lives of millions (and the same is also broadly true of the world's greatest wines) scaling back your ambitions, accepting your fanciful dreams as just that, setting your sights on something far more modest (but actually more achievable) - this is the very stuff of the male mid-life crisis.

And so it becomes a redemptive tale - just not the one I had originally expected to find.

After borrowing the vines, taking instruction from a talented young winemaker, flying budget airlines and calling in a favour to transport the finished wine in a mini-bus back to the UK, Steve's redemption is not about finding love, friendship or material success.

It's not even really about the wine.

Rather, it is about him finding his place and re-gaining a sense of purpose, direction and ambition, starting something and seeing it through to the end - more Gordon Comstock than Mick Jagger.

At this point, the quality of the wine seems almost irrelevant - its function is as a spur to becoming focused again, to having a goal and making it a reality, to having a dream, yes, but one that can be achieved and is not inevitably destined to be a vague hope.

So, let's start by saying that Grenache from the Languedoc is something of an overblown, blowsy sort of grape generally - fun, but not exactly classy, it usually provides good fruit with aromas of plums, prunes and dark berries.

Purpley-red in the glass, Steve's Grenache shows intense fruit aromas of prunes, liquorice and blueberry and elderberry along with a touch of lavender soap.

On the palate, it is soft and perfumed, almost too perfumey for me, with more dark berry fruit and a baked character.

The texture is almost slippery and there is some softening grip on the finish.

Opinion on this was somewhat divided over dinner - the old-schoolers were somewhat underwhelmed (mainly, I think, at the lack of texture), whilst the modernists appreciated it for the fruit.

I feel similarly ambivalent myself - it is a good wine, superb for a first attempt, but unashamedly fruit-driven in style.

And whilst there's no shame in that, I would like to see a little more in the way of texture.

However, that's probably rather like telling a rookie F1 driver trailing at the lower end of the pack "It would be good if you could go just a bit faster".

In both cases, just the mere act of being there is no mean feat.

And how often is it that you get to drink the wine of someone you know and whose music you can listen to (and by the way, Cliff, AC/DC et al do not count) ?

Steve's Grenache is available in limited (and diminishing) quantities from Steve's Cherry Hinton Road branch of Cambridge Wine Merchants for £12 per bottle.

Links

Cambridge Wine Merchants - http://www.cambridgewine.com/
Steve Hovington on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/steve.hovington1
Chateau Viranel - http://www.chateau-viranel.com/
B-Movie (official site) - www.b-movie.co.uk
The Grape Escape on amazon - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grape-Escape-Steve-Hovington/dp/1848765975

Steve's Grenache - and The Grape Escape‏

Many men of a certain age approaching their mid-life crisis often start thinking of ridiculously powerful sports cars and pretty young girls.

But for Steve Hovington - briefly a synth pop star in the 80s with B-Movie and now manager of the Cherry Hinton Road branch of Cambridge Wine Merchants - things were a little different.

Instead of a trip to a Porsche dealership, he went to the south of France to the Languedoc and arranged to have use of four rows of vines for a season from Chateau Viranel and to make one single barrel of his own wine, with the assistance of the estate's winemaker Nicolas Bergasse.

The overall plan was to sell the wine at a later date after writing a book about the experience, but it turned out that it took rather longer to write the book than to make the wine and so now Steve is only just releasing his 2007 "Steve's Grenache" to co-incide with the launch of his book, The Grape Escape.

I stopped by the launch party last week to catch up with Steve, meet Nicolas and try a couple of the wines.

First I tried Nicolas' Chateau Viranel Viognier - with lots of varietal peach and apricot on the nose and palate and good rounded acidity it was very well made and enjoyable. It has the fruit and instant appeal of a warm-climate wine, but is also sensible and food-friendly enough to maintain interest beyond first impressions.

Nicolas explained to me that his family has been involved in farming in this part of the world for over 500 years and that they started making wine more as something to have with family meals rather than as a purely commercial venture.

I rather suspect that it was this "art for art's sake" approach that appealed to the creative musician in Steve, but in any case he made several trips over to the vineyard during his year's tenure to prune and tend the vines himself, arrange picking and work on the blend with Nicolas.

And so we moved onto "Steve's Grenache", a blend of local Syrah, Grenache and Mouvedre varieties.

With lots of ripe plummy fruit, good balanced acidity, a soft texture and long finish, it is a very impressive wine - especially for a first attempt.

Like the Viognier, it has plenty of warm up-front appeal, but is also restrained, sensible and noticeably "European" in style.

The one barrel Steve has made equates to around 300 bottles, so supplies of the wine are fairly limited. It is available either from Cambridge Wine Merchants on Cherry Hinton Road or via the B-Movie website, in both cases for £12.

Steve's book, The Grape Escape, is available from Heffers in Cambridge, the B-Movie website and on amazon.

Links

Cambridge Wine Merchants - http://www.cambridgewine.com/

Steve Hovington on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/steve.hovington1

Chateau Viranel - http://www.chateau-viranel.com/

B-Movie (official site) - www.b-movie.co.uk

The Grape Escape on amazon - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grape-Escape-Steve-Hovington/dp/1848765975