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Shaw about Wine, Malmesbury (2026)

13/06/2026

📣 Happy National Rosé Day folks! 🍇 And for once the weather seems to be in perfect alignment with the Wine Day! 🌤️

5:30pm on a Saturday afternoon and, chores accomplished, how nice to sit in the garden contemplating bbq for dinner, with a glass of lovely rosé or - as I should more correctly say in this case - rosato…

The bottle I’ve chosen to mark today with is I think my *very favourite* rosé. One which I’ve put a couple of tastings for different audiences over the past few years, and it always goes down an absolute storm.

🍷La Calcinara Mun Rosato, Conero DOCG, Marche Italy
Lovely flinty, smoky notes combine with wild rose, orange and rosemary, and lots of juicy red fruits. Red cherry and plum, rhubarb too. It’s so fresh and appealing to sip. Bone dry with a beautiful texture (from lees-ageing, with lots of stirring) and a salty, wet stone minerality which lingers on the really long, savoury finish.

This is a really characterful rosé, with depth of flavour and lots of complexity and interest. Made from 100% Montepulciano, the red grape that makes the red wines the region is best known for.

So good to simply sip, it would also work really well with salads, grilled vegetables, lighter BBQs (think grilled tuna?), and would be fab with shellfish - say tagliatelle with big, juicy prawns fresh tomato, herbs and a touch of chilli! Yum, just delicious… I only wish I was by the coast in Italy with a bowl of that! 🦐🍝😋

29/05/2026

The London Wine Fair 2026 Pt 2:
So many Masterclasses and Regionally-focussed Sessions! Here’s a glimpse of a few…

1-3. ‘Hattingley Valley Blending Masterclass’
Head Winemaker Rob MacCulloch MW led an interactive blending session exploring how individual base wines shape sparkling wine style. It was up to us to assess our 5 ‘real life’ current Hattingley blend components, and use our trusty 100ml measuring cylinder to create, then refine, our blend. Such fun, I could’ve played like this for hours! (And as it turned out I wasn’t that far off their delicious Classic NV blend 😉)

4-6. ‘Vouvray: a Chenin for all Seasons’
Beverley Blanning MW led a tasting of 8 wines from sparkling to sweet, illustrating the diversity of style of Chenin Blanc from this famous Loire region.

7-10. ‘English Chardonnay: Cool Climate, Hot Category’
Susie Barrie MW and Peter Richards MW. Very lucky to get a seat at this premium masterclass where 2 of the best in the biz took us through ‘8 standout English Chardonnays redefining expectations’. A grape variety and subject matter of particular personal interest. Loved Simpsons ‘The Roman Road’.

11 & 12. ‘What’s Putting the Sparkle in English Wine’
Sam Caporn MW explored different winemaking styles in English fizz, from Charmat and Pétillant Naturel to Traditional Method. Everflyht’s newly launched Wylde, a multi-vintage charmat rosé, is so much more than you might expect from a tank method wine. Lovely stuff!

13 & 14. ‘Rive of Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG’
Sarah Abbott MW led a focus on single-site sparkling wines from the historic, UNESCO-protected heart of Prosecco Superiore DOCG, including a special Cartizze wine. Some stunning photos too, it’s sooo steep!

15. *The* best stools for a wine show! 🍾😆

I also managed to attend various other MW-led sessions including ‘Indigenous Greek Grape Varieties’, and ‘Rethinking Food-friendly Semillon’, to name a few. Just forgot to take pics! Oh and I bumped into Oz Clarke. As you do.

27/05/2026

LWF Pt 1: Last week was a big trip up to town for The London Wine Fair 2026. (Followed by a few days of ‘birthday things’ there too). A packed schedule of busy days and just-as-busy evenings. So many interesting Masterclasses and Regionally-focussed Sessions to attend, and so many people to catch up with!

Firstly, it was great to get to meet Boela Ge**er properly. An award-winning South African winemaker now making his mark at Southwest Mountain Vineyards in Virginia, Boela was such a help over zoom when I was tackling the WSET Diploma Research Assignment on Virginia Wines last year. So generous with his time (and patient with my questions!). It was a real pleasure to meet face-to-face, catch up and have a guided tasting through the wines that we’d talked so much about.

(Masterclass highlights to be continued on the next post.)

Virginia Wine

08/05/2026

📣 Happy World Moscato Day! 🥂

We’re off to the Piemonte region of NW Italy for this one, to a sparkling wine region on the often very steep rolling hills near the town of Asti. This may now be ringing some childhood bells for some of you…?!

Rather than the ‘spumante’ (fully sparkling) style, I decided to go for a Moscato d’Asti DOCG. This is the ‘frizzante’ (semi-sparkling) style of Asti, with slightly lower alcohol and higher sugar level.

🥂 Moscato d’Asti DOCG, La Caliera, Borgo Maragliano 2025
So very fragrant, this is full of orange blossom, honeysuckle and peach aromas, as well as Muscat’s typical ‘grapey’ perfume. Packed with peach and honeyed nectarine flavours, the palate is kept fresh with gentle bubbles. 🍊🍑🍯

Not my usual go-to wine style for sure, but approach this with an open mind and you might surprise yourself. It is not a dry wine, and it’s not trying to be sophisticated or serious. It’s sweet and delicate, gently effervescent, and a little bit sherbety. It’s fun and fresh, and intended to be drunk young. It’s also naturally light at only 5% ABV.

Last night it really made me hanker for a bowl of light, fluffy zabaglione, with some of those very thin, delicately crisp biscuits to scoop it up with. Now that would be delicious! 😋 It would be really good with trifle as well, or simply a thick slice of Panettone.

£8.25, from

wset

03/05/2026

It was a sell-out tasting (and a very busy night!) as we sipped our way through 7 wines to discover the best areas of Argentina at the end of last week.

I was aiming to show that when we look for more than simply ‘Mendoza’ on the bottle, and start to uncover the variety of terroirs within that large, high-altitude wine-producing region, we can discover the best of Argentina today. And also that there is more to Argentina than Malbec! Though I did actually sneak 3 into the line up, they were very different styles indeed: 1 very tasty rosé, 1 fruity yet fresh modern red interpretation, and a richer appassimento-style wine.

I threw in a few curveballs as well, such as a Grüner Veltliner and a really interesting orange wine using Torrontès (in a blend with Chardonnay and Viognier). Mission accomplished I think!

Thanks for coming along everyone, and making it such a fun, buzzy night! 😊🍷

(And goodness only knows what I was talking about in that last photo! Andean snowmelt perhaps?? 🙈😆)

27/04/2026

So I was on an online ‘wine hang-out’ with and a few other subscribers earlier this evening. It’s a ‘Show and Tell’ kinda thing, the subject this month being Austrian wines. We all choose one to bring along to sip during our chat, explaining our selection and comparing notes. It’s a rather nice way to spend an hour or so. 😊🍷

I knew that today I had to break open one of the bottles I’d bought after hosting a ’Try January’ Shaw about Wine Tasting at the beginning of the year - Zweigelt 2024 Christoph Bauer. It went down so well that night, and I absolutely love it.

The wine is from Weinviertel, north of Vienna in Niederösterreich, one of the driest areas in Austria. Vineyards are located on low slopes to the east of the Manhartsberg mountain, so lie in its rain shadow. That combined with the clay-silt soils means that the vines growing there produce very fresh, spicy wines.

Christoph Bauer has been managing his vineyards organically since 2015, so it’s an official ‘Bio Wine’. In fact his vineyards have sooo much really beneficial biodiversity: wild flowers, insects & bird-life. So important and so beautiful too.

🍷 Zweigelt 2024, Christoph Bauer
Dark inky purple in the glass, the nose is delicately floral and herbal, with fruity cherry and blueberry aromas, and beautiful spice notes.🍒🫐

Absolutely delicious to drink! It’s bright and fresh, with pure, juicy sour cherry, raspberry and blackberry flavours, a herbal character and the spicy black pepper finish so characteristic of this grape. Full of flavour with fine tannins.

It would be lovely at any time of year but, if you felt so inclined, you could quite happily chill it a little on warmer days like today. Get the BBQ on for some grilled meat and veg, or pair with goulash or mushroom and pasta dishes.

I think this is *the* best example of Zweigelt that I’ve tasted. An absolute masterclass in how to show oﬀ the variety to its best. 👏 Do try and get your mits on some!

Available through Shaw about Wine, contact for more details.

24/04/2026

📣 Happy International Viognier Day! 🥂

I’m very partial to Viognier. One of my absolute favourite wines, Viognier or not, is Condrieu from the northern Rhone. It’s the model for high-quality Viognier around the world, and in my experience a gorgeous apricot & citrus-aroma’d wine with a beautiful saline precision. Unfortunately it carries with it a price tag to match and the wine budget is deployed on other subjects at the moment!

So to mark today, last night I opened a bottle of ’s new vintage of ‘The Society’s French Viognier 2025’. Also from the North Rhone, and from high-altitude vineyards which help keep the wine fresh and interesting, while giving it fragrant honeysuckle, apricot and peach characters. Its naturally lower acid makes it easy to drink, and so if you fancy a change from the more acidic styles of white wine, do give a Viognier a go.

It was really rather nice with a crab and chilli linguine. Just the job for a Thursday evening. Even used my special Wine Society glass!

17/04/2026

📣 Happy World Malbec Day! 🍇🍷

Malbec may be known as the signature grape variety of Argentina, but it originates from SW France where it is also called Cot. It’s easily the most planted grape variety in Argentina. Warm, sunny growing conditions there give the full-bodied, high-alcohol Malbec wines with ripe blackberry and black plum flavours and soft tannins, which have been so popular with us Brits.

However, it’s necessary to look for a little more information on the label to move away from what can be a rather one-dimensional, fruit-forward style and discover the higher quality wines available. Higher altitudes, so cooler temperatures, and specific smaller vineyard areas can produce far more refined, distinctive styles of Malbec, with fresher fruit flavours and more herbal/floral aromas.

I’ll be including some lovely examples at my ‘Wine Tasting Argentina 🇦🇷’ evening on 30th April. Only a couple of tickets remaining now, so if you’d like to come along and discover more, check out the link in the Event post above👆🍷

20/03/2026

Wine tasting through Chile was a lot of fun last night, and I have to say the line up of 7 gorgeous wines went down a storm. Fantastic grapes, mostly from organic/biodynamic vineyards (and yes, with the alpaca ‘Weed Control Patrol’), followed by such skilled, careful, modern winemaking. Such quality, and yet such astounding value for money. They really demonstrated how the top wine producing families, with vineyards in the best cool climate areas are making seriously good wines which can compete on a global scale. To huge acclaim too, the most repeated phrase of the night being “Yep, it’s another multi-award-winner…”🥇🥇🥇

🍷Wine no. 7, the fabulous Matetic EQ Cool Climate Syrah 2018 has an incredible 77 awards and counting, including many Gold medals, 95/94 points from renowned wine critics as well as ‘Best Chilean Rhone Variety’ and ‘Best Syrah’. (Fuller wine tasting note in the post I wrote for ’Syrah Day’ recently👇)

🍷Hard to call, but the most popular wine of the night was probably the Corralillo Carmenère, also by Matetic. A new grape to most, this is just the kind of wine I look for - one which, when you take the first sip, stops you in your tracks and makes you really think about what’s in your glass. Intensely fragrant, with blackberry, mulberry and cherry fruit, herbaceous green pepper character, overlaid with spicy dark chocolate and roasted coffee notes. Winner of ‘Best Chilean Carmenère’, awarded 95 points by Decanter (plus many other accolades), it’s an absolutely brilliant example of the grape variety and a very classy wine indeed.

🥂Morandé’s very ‘grown up’ Vitis Unica Chardonnay was rightly popular too. Complex, weighty and round; ripe peach balanced by citrus freshness with toasted hazelnut and butterscotch notes. It’s seriously sophisticated, the very model of a classically elegant Chardonnay, and so a beautiful option for white Burgundy lovers (comme moi!), representing huge VFM too.

Looking forward to hopping over the Andes to Argentina for the next Shaw about Wine Tasting on 30th April. Link in bio for more info and tickets.👆

All wines available from Shaw about Wine. Contact for details.

17/03/2026

I will have a little surprise for some regular Shaw about Wine Tasters on Thursday… 🤔😊

Shaw about Wine

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