You’re sitting somewhere sunny with a beautiful view, having a lovely lunch, sipping a perfectly chilled glass of wine. As you chat to the people you love, you think:

“God, this wine is delicious. I’d love to have more of this back home.”

That’s the grape version of the holiday romance. And it’s all based off a lie.

Probably twice a month I have a conversation with a customer that goes something like this:

“Hi Duncan, maybe you can help me with this. A couple of years ago I went on holiday to [insert wine country]. Whilst I was there I tried this fantastic wine, I’ve got a photo of it on my phone, and I’ve been trying for the longest time to find it in the UK. Is there any chance you can help me?”

I’d love to be able to help people out in this situation. But often the answer is no. Normally either:

1. The wine isn’t made in enough volume. If a family run estate can sell its wine locally, why deal with the hassle of exporting.

2. UK based demand: There is either not enough demand in the UK (yet) for the that style of wine or another estate might meet an importers needs better.

But if I’m being honest, we’re focusing on the wrong thing here. because even if you did get that wine imported into the UK, even if you finally got the bottle back home, it wouldn’t taste anywhere near as good as you remember. Because it’s not the wine you fell in love with as much as it is the situation.

It’s not that you’re wrong about the wine. It’s that can get that feeling back without finding that specific wine. What you actually “feel for” was being adventurous, you were trying new food and new wines and it was exciting and lovely.

So the question is: if it’s not about hunting that one bottle, what do you do instead?

The real answer: you start searching for exciting wines. Part of what made that holiday bottle so special was that it was probably something you’d never tried before. You’re not going to get that same joy and romance from the same Campo Viejo Rioja you keep buying from Tesco because it’s on offer. You get that spark in wine the same way you get it with food, by trying something new and being blown away by your own adventurousness.

I have my own version of this as a wine merchant. When I go on my wine buying trips and I’ve been shown around dramatic vineyards, a state of the art winery, seduced with a beautifully cooked meal prepared using locally sourced ingredients, it’s almost impossible not to fall in love with the wines they serve you. So often after a good wine trip, I re-order samples and taste them, just to double check how I actually feel about them.

Especially in wine, it’s incredibly difficult to chase down a very specific wine. It is however much easier to become the person that is adventurous and tries new wines. And sure, you’ll suffer the odd set back of trying something new that isn’t quite your thing. But you’ll also find a lot more wines worth falling in love with.

Cheers

Duncan

P.S If you want to be the adventurous drinker without having to pay for the disappointing bottles, you should join the Wine Club.

It’s the bit everyone wishes they could do, but often for the wrong reasons. Sampling wines.

An increasingly important part of my job is sampling new wines. And I want to share some recent examples. Tasting wines has always been an important and fun part of the job. But as the Wine Club grows (we passed 500 members last week 🥳), I’m spending more time sampling with intention. It’s no longer a case of “I think this wine will do well in the shop”, it’s now a case of “I know 6 people that will love this, and they’d never find it by themselves”.

Here are three I’ve sampled recently and what we thought of them.

La Retro, Domaine Lafage, Roussillon France

What it is: La Retro is a new wine by Domaine Lafage, who I very highly rate. Their wines are excellent and we’ve used other wines from them before, so I had high expectations of this wine. Two things made this wine stand out to me. The first, it comes in a 1 litre bottle, not your standard 75cl. This is explained by the second point: this wine was created to be shared by many. It’s a light refreshing Grenache led wine, sitting at 12.5% ABV. It would be perfectly at home at a summer lunchtime barbecue, sitting in a bucket of ice.

What I thought: This wine was everything I expected. Grenache is a tricky grape, if not managed properly it leans towards high levels of alcohol and low acidity. So to get a wine this refreshing shows how good the winemaking is. With it sitting at 32 degrees at the time of writing, I honestly couldn’t think of a better red wine for this time of year.

Does it make the cut: Absolutely, I think this wine will kill it in the Wine Club. I’ve seen a growing number of customers enjoy these fun, “no food required”, almost session style wines. I do think the tannin loving Malbec, Cab Sauv and Shiraz drinkers would find it a bit too light. But the concept, style and story behind this wine are compelling. There is also a very strong chance this wine will come into the shop.

Negra Mole, Arvad, Algarve, Portugal

What it is: Negra Mole is one of the grapes used to make Madeira, but I’d never tried it as a non-fortified wine. This wine is aged in terracotta amphorae (made from local clay) for 8 months. Honestly, I wanted to try it and the bottle looked pretty.

What I thought: This wine was a bit weird and took a while to get behind. It is very, very pale, like old Nebbiolo pale. But unlike Nebbiolo, it is light in tannin and vibrant, loads of sour cherry and raspberry. It does have that slightly dusty characteristic that I associate with amphora aged wines.

Does it make the cut: Yes, but only for a handful of people. Firstly, this is a premium wine, retailing at about £25-£27, so realistically can only be used in the Cellar Case, our top offering. Furthermore, the style is niche: very light, amphora aged wines are not everyone’s bag. But I do have a handful of customers that it fits. They want premium reds but don’t love the big tannic structures of Bordeaux, Barolo or these other traditional fine wines. I’ve been giving these customers a lot of Pinot Noir in the past, so to have something very, very different to show them will be nice.

Chardonnay, Bartinney, Stellenbosch, South Africa

What it is: Unlike the other two wines, I didn’t pick this wine. An importer wanting to work with us dropped off a case of samples and this was part of it. However, this is a classic South African Chardonnay. Big flavour, generous amount of toasty, vanilla oak.

What I thought: Honestly, this was pretty bang average. I noted at the time: “it’s like someone took the volume knob on this wine and turned it down to 7. It had all the things I’d expected, just nowhere near as intensely as I’d hoped.”

Does it make the cut: This one did not. For the price (£25+) it just lacked the flavour intensity and length I expected. New world Chardonnay is a very hotly contested space on our shelves and in the wine club and I can easily think of a handful of wines that were better, for less. On trying more wines from this importer, I feel there might be a disconnect in taste between their importer and myself, none of them really landed for me.

The thing that’s important through all of this is the customer. Yes, I am the filter, the wines have to pass a certain level of quality and style with me to be considered. But when I’m trying these wines I’m not thinking “do I like them?” I’m thinking “which of my customers will love them?”

I found out earlier this week I’ve been shortlisted for Harpers Top 50 Sommeliers, and one of the questions they asked me was what makes a good sommelier. My answer was: I believe the best sommeliers know that understanding the customer is more important than wine knowledge. If you can’t talk with the customer in a way that is clear and understandable to them, you’ve lost them. You can teach wine knowledge, but that level of care and attentiveness is something you have or you don’t.

The Wine Club is about taking each customer on a journey to find their next favourite wine.

Cheers

Duncan

On Sunday just past we hosted 450 people at a sold out Summer Wine Fair, one of our biggest events of the year. With over 35 wines open, guests receive a booklet and a glass on arrival and are sent out to explore whatever they like.

Here is what people loved the most.

Battle of the Rosés.

2 months before the event, I had to settle a staff dispute. We have two rosé, same country, similar regions, same style, same price. Grace was sure we had to show the 2800 Cotes du Provence, It is after all our best selling wine ever! Reece however believed that everyone had tried the 2800 already and it was our duty to intro people to the Oscar Rosé from the Languedoc. Fair point, both of them. So in the end we decided on a show down, we’d include both wines and keep a tally of which people preferred.

I kept an eye on the tally for the first two sessions, and then forgot for the final session. When we went to check the tally at the end it was 89 / 90 in favour of the 2800. Great validation that in many ways, both staff were right.

The Best Sellers (In Order)

Este Branco, Vinho Verde, Portugal, £11.50: I am so glad this wine was so well received. This wine is bottled with a slight spritz, which makes it hard to serve by the glass. It goes flat quickly and loses all its charm once it does. To me, this is all the things a Vinho Verde should be, unbelievably refreshing, lowish alcohol, reasonably priced. It really is THE white wine of the summer.

The Ruse Malbec, Languedoc, France, £12: This wine has been on a journey with us. I selected it for one of the batches of our Wine Club and we put it in a lot of cases. Almost immediately the feedback came in: “I love this, can I order more”, “My new favourite wine”. Within weeks we’ve made space for it in the shop and it’s now creeping up the list to be one of our best sellers there too.

Moscato d’Asti, Piemonte, Italy, £13.00 for 37.5cl: I think this wine was so popular, because no one saw it coming, it blindsided people. Most people would have approached it with trepidation. A lightly sparkling, sweet, low alcohol wine, that tastes like grapes and orange. Whilst there are plenty of Moscato that are awful, this one is exceptional and I honestly think it is one of the best wines for a picnic.

Gamay, The Notes, Languedoc, France, £12.50: For this fair, we had a whole table of chilled reds, I spent a lot of time at this table. Partly to see how people felt about them, partly because Hannah was on this table and I wanted to make sure she was doing ok. This wine is basically adult Ribena, no tannin, pure fruit and insanely drinkable. I can see cases of this being drunk as a barbecue warms up.

Este Rosé, Vinho Verde, Portugal, £11.50: Take all the things that made the Este Branco great, and then turn it pink. Again, this is a wine I’d love to serve by the glass in the Bar, but can’t. So this event was a great opportunity to show both of these wines off. I think one of the reasons this wine made it into the top 5 was that most who bought, bought in cases.

Whilst from the customer perspective the event ran very similarly to the Christmas Wine Fair, the biggest change this time was the organisation. We’d planned the event so well, that half an hour before kick-off we were able to have a team debrief and then let everyone go and grab a coffee. Similarly, we had everything packed up and back in the shop about 1 hour after the event finished.

Whilst the fair was a commercial success on the day, I always tend to think of these events in a long term way. I know that in 3 months time someone will come into the shop asking for “That sweet sparkling wine I had at the Summer Wine Fair” or that someone who attended will enjoy our wine choices so much that they join The Wine Club.

Even though it’s meant to reach highs of 28C today, I’m already thinking about the Christmas Wine Fair.

Cheers
Duncan

P.S if you’re interested, you can register your interest in the Christmas Wine Fair here.

If you’re also a foodie with small children, you probably say this one quite a lot:

“Just try it, you might like it.”

I have a 6 year old that loves chicken nuggets but won’t go near roast chicken. I have a 4 year old that loves scrambled eggs, will tolerate a boiled egg, but flat out refuses a fried egg. Both of them love a margarita pizza from the supermarket, but if I go to the effort of making pizza at home, they don’t like it because it has “that funny cheese on it.”

It’s frustrating, and not just because I’m repeating myself. It’s because I know that if they actually got out of their own heads and gave it a fair go, they’d probably love it.

And that is exactly the conversation I find myself having about wine, all the time.

There is a classic wine joke about a lady who comes into a fancy restaurant, asks for a glass of Sancerre, and when the sommelier explains they don’t have any but offers a lovely Californian or New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc instead, she replies: “Ugh, I don’t drink Sauvignon Blanc.” The punchline, of course, is that Sancerre is Sauvignon Blanc. She’s been drinking it for years. She loves it. She just thought she didn’t like it.

I think there’s a lot of wine out there people won’t go near. Maybe the colour puts them off, or they heard stories from other people about a certain grape variety, or they tried it once at the wrong time and wrote it off forever. And I have a lot of real-world proof, through The Wine Club and the shop, that if people gave some of these wines another shot, they’d love them.

Oak: I’d argue, strongly, that it’s not that you don’t like oak in white wine. It’s that you don’t like unbalanced oak. Artificially boosted, heavily oaked Chardonnay from Australia and California did a lot of damage to this style. It gave people the impression that oaked white wine means big, oily, melted-butter textures. But when it’s done right, oak isn’t any of that. It’s a hint of creaminess, a slightly pastry-like note that sits underneath the fruit rather than suffocating it. A few weeks ago I tried a sample that honestly tasted like apple pastry in liquid form. In recent years, winemakers have pulled back significantly on oak use. If you’re willing to revisit it, try an oaked Chenin Blanc from South Africa. It’s a gentler introduction than Chardonnay and will tell you how you truly feel about the oak itself. And one more thing: oaked white wine is almost always better with food. Try it with roast chicken or a baked camembert on date night.

Sweetness: Same story. I’d argue it’s not that you don’t like sweet wine. It’s that you don’t like unbalanced sweetness, drunk at the wrong moment. An off-dry Riesling alongside a Thai curry, where the residual sugar acts as a fire blanket against the heat. A glass of Sauternes with an apple tarte tatin, where the richness of the wine mirrors the richness of the dessert. Even an off-dry Prosecco to cut through a bowl of salty crisps. Sweetness in wine isn’t a flaw, it’s a tool. The problem is most people only ever encounter it used badly.

Colour: Deep rosé gets a bad reputation, and honestly, a lot of it has been earned. The biggest offenders tend to be either unbalanced sweetness like Zinfandel blush, or high alcohol paired with low acidity like some Spanish Rosado, a horrible combination that makes the wine feel heavy and flabby. But I’m not trying to convert you from pale Provence rosé to full-on Spanish Rosado in one leap. I’m just suggesting that if you tried something slightly deeper, a Greek rosé or a Portuguese rosado, you might be pleasantly surprised. There’s more going on in those wines than you’d expect.

Just like my kids with the fried egg, it’s easy to write something off before you’ve really given it a chance. But people change. Tastes change. And wines change too. The rules you put in place ten years ago don’t have to apply forever. The only way to find out is to try it.

So next time you’re out at a restaurant or in a wine shop and the recommendation isn’t something you’d normally pick, my advice to you is:

“Just try it. You might like it.”

Cheers

Duncan

P.S. This is exactly what The Wine Club is for. Every month, wines you wouldn't normally pick. Join here.

the best wine for steak,

the best pale rosé,

the best red wine under £15.

But there is an issue. Best is a relative term — best for what, and in comparison to what? It’s an excellent marketing word, but it carries a lot of assumptions underneath it.

To make the point, let’s think purely about the best country for wine, not even getting into the more nuanced argument of region or variety. Two obvious candidates: France and Italy.

France

For many, France would be a strong contender. It has the prestigious history, the romance of the Château, the sense that this is where wine really began for most of us. When I started working as a sommelier, my mentor was from Alsace and was convinced the best wine was French. My education started there and expanded outward. If the question is best in terms of price, France dominates the fine wine market — the three most expensive wines ever sold are all French. If the question is quality, France is still an incredibly strong contender; hundreds of regions across the world have spent decades trying to emulate Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy, and for good reason.

But ask whether France offers the best value for money and it starts to struggle. You can easily find better wine for less elsewhere. And if the question becomes best for a complete novice, France does pretty poorly — its insistence on leaving the grape variety off the label is a genuine barrier that’s hard to overlook.

Italy

Italy has a claim on quality too, with wines like Barolo, Amarone and Brunello di Montalcino sitting among the finest in the world. And inexpensive Italian wine tends to punch above its weight. But shift the question to best for white wine and Italy loses comfortably to countries like France and South Africa.

By the technical definition, Chile is the best country for wine. Its diverse range of altitude and latitude means it can potentially make any style of wine. But would that have been your go-to guess? Probably not.

The point is that no country wins. The answer changes depending on what you’re asking.

There’s a second problem with the idea of “best”. The word implies you’ve tried everything. I’ve been working in wine for two decades. I taste broadly, frequently, and no style, region or country is out of bounds for me. And there’s still an enormous amount I haven’t tried. My knowledge of the ultra-fine wine market has dropped since leaving the Michelin-starred scene — it’s simply not where my customers or I are focused. At the other end, my knowledge of supermarket wines is pretty thin. I mostly drink samples from potential importers or bottles we already stock.

You’ve had your own version of this, if you think about it. Remember that holiday where you had a wine that was amazing — local, unpretentious, and completely delicious? And then you got home and couldn’t find it anywhere? Your reference of best can only include wines that are available to you.

So “best” is always just a view from wherever that individual is standing, filtered through what they’ve had access to and what they happen to have tried.

Which brings us to the question worth asking instead. If best is always personal, then the only way to find what’s best for you is to keep moving. Stop thinking of best as a destination, but a direction.

The question that actually helps isn’t “what’s the best wine?” It’s: “given what I already love, what should I try next?”

This takes a huge amount of pressure off the wine, and to be honest, off yourself. If someone gives you a bottle and tells you it’s the best red wine ever made, you’re going to be either deeply sceptical or build it up so much it can’t possibly deliver. But if someone gives you a bottle and says “I know you love Champagne, so I’ve got you something similar but different to try” — that’s exciting, and it has room to surprise you.

If you were to join my wine club and tell me “I really like Rioja, where should I try next?”, that gives me a really good place to start. I can begin suggesting Portuguese reds, other Spanish styles, medium-bodied oaked reds from further afield.

And ultimately, find the best wine for you.

Cheers

Duncan

P.S The wine club exists precisely for the "I like X, what's next?" conversation. If you've been curious, now's a good time.

That’s a big claim. Stick with me.

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Wine is hardly the place for absolutes, and yet we create them all the time. I drink this. I don’t drink that. It’s understandable — wine is confusing, and rules help us navigate it. The easiest rule of all? ‘I don’t like that grape.’ Clean, simple, done.

But those rules can quietly close doors on wines you’d actually love.

I had a customer join our wine club recently. When he signed up, he told me his favourite style was GSM — Grenache, Shiraz, Mourvèdre — and that he absolutely did not want any ‘jammy Aussie Shiraz’. I built his first case carefully around his preferences, but I did include one Australian Shiraz. By design.

He was furious when it arrived.

Here’s the thing: it wasn’t a straightforward Aussie Shiraz. It was a Shiraz-Mataro blend — Mataro being another name for Mourvèdre. It was, in every meaningful sense, an Aussie GSM. I asked him to try it before writing it off. He loved it.

The variety hadn’t changed. His rule had just been applied too bluntly.

That’s what these nine wines are really about. They’re not specific bottles I sell — they’re styles you can find at any good independent wine merchant. And what makes them so useful is that all nine come from just three grape varieties: Chardonnay, Riesling, and Cabernet Franc. Three grapes, nine completely different wines, and — if you give them a chance — a completely different way of thinking about what you like.

Chardonnay

The ABC club — Anything But Chardonnay — has a lot of members. And honestly? It’s not hard to see how it started. A wave of heavily oaked, cheap, industrial Chardonnay swept through in the eighties and nineties, and plenty of people were put off for life. If that’s your only reference point, fair enough.

But if that’s all you think Chardonnay is, you couldn’t be more wrong.

I always say Chardonnay is like chicken. Chicken is endlessly versatile — roast it, poach it, fry it, marinate it, pair it with anything from a rich sauce to a fresh salad — and the result each time is a completely different experience. That’s Chardonnay. The grape itself is actually quite neutral; what transforms it is where it’s grown and how it’s made.

When I teach WSET courses, I use three broad styles to illustrate this:

Cool climate, unoaked — Think Chablis, English sparkling, or parts of Chile. Lean, mineral, citrus-driven. Nothing like what you’d expect from Chardonnay if your only experience is the oaky stuff.

Medium climate — Burgundy is the reference point. More texture and weight, but still restrained. The style that launched a thousand wine obsessions.

Hot climate, oaked — California and Australia. The Chardonnay the ABC club was reacting to — though done well, it can be extraordinary.

Three styles. Three completely different glasses. I genuinely believe there is a Chardonnay for everyone.

Riesling

Almost as misunderstood as Chardonnay, and with an extra layer of baggage: for decades, Germany exported its least interesting wines and kept the best for itself. Liebfraumilch. Blue Nun. A generation of British drinkers grew up thinking that’s what Riesling was. It isn’t.

What Riesling actually is — when it’s treated seriously — is one of the most expressive grapes on earth.

I’ve had Rieslings that felt like lightning in a bottle: zapping acidity, fresh lime juice, a saline tang that makes your mouth water. I’ve had others with real weight and complexity — mellow, layered, almost meditative. And then there’s great sweet Riesling, which deserves its own chapter entirely. The point is that within one grape, you can travel an enormous distance.

Here are the three styles worth exploring:

German Riesling with a touch of sweetness — A Kabinett or Spätlese is the place to start. A little residual sugar balanced by high acidity means it’s never cloying. Do yourself a favour: make a night of it, cook Thai food, or order sushi. The match is one of the great underrated pleasures in wine.

Alsatian Riesling — Cross the border and the style shifts completely. These are weightier, drier, with real texture. A completely different wine, technically the same grape.

Australian Riesling — This one I have personal history with. At 8am on the morning of my WSET Diploma exam, I was drinking Australian Riesling. Not to celebrate, not to calibrate my palate for acidity — because nothing has higher acidity. A great Clare Valley or Eden Valley Riesling with fish and chips is, in my view, one of life’s properly underrated combinations.

Cabernet Franc

Of the three grapes here, Cabernet Franc is the most adventurous — and also, in some ways, the most underestimated. Most people encounter it in passing, as a blending grape in Bordeaux, without ever realising it can stand brilliantly on its own.

What it offers, when it does, is extraordinary range.

Loire Cabernet Franc — Chinon, Bourgueil, Saumur. Fresh, savoury, with a distinctive leafy quality that puts some people off and enchants others. I’d recommend serving it lightly chilled — it transforms the wine, makes it lively and incredibly food-friendly.

New World, unoaked — Still fresh, still versatile, but with a bit more fruit-forward character. The best examples drink like an approachable Cabernet Sauvignon — familiar enough to feel comfortable, interesting enough to make you pay attention.

New World, oaked — Chile and Argentina are your destinations. The very best examples here are often passion projects: a winemaker who could be making something more commercial but chooses to lavish attention on Cab Franc because they love what it can do. That alone tells you something. These are wines built for a Sunday roast or a proper steak night.

What You’re Actually Learning

The aim here isn’t conversion. I won’t pretend I don’t have feelings about these grapes, but that’s not the point.

If you work through nine wines across these three varieties, two things will happen.

The first is that you’ll discover that a wine can have many faces. The same grape can look and act completely differently depending on where it was grown and how it was made. Once you see that, you can’t unsee it — and it opens up the entire wine world.

The second is more personal, and more useful: you’ll start to understand what you actually like. Not in terms of grape varieties, but in terms of style. How do you feel about oak? About sweetness? About high acidity versus weight and texture? These questions are far more powerful than ‘I like Sauvignon Blanc and nothing else’. They give you a way to navigate.

These nine wines won’t turn you into a wine expert. But they might just change how you drink.

Cheers

Duncan

P.S Every case we build for Wine Club members is chosen around their palate — not ours. If that sounds like something you want, you know where to find us.

Like my brain only knew a handful of words — I was surrounded by Masters of Wine and award-winning wine writers, staring at my tasting notes and thinking: I’m going to need to read a thesaurus on my lunch break.

While MW Richard Kershaw was constructing what I can only describe as a small, beautiful poem about an Italian Primitivo — referencing aromas I’d need Google to identify — I had scrawled a splattering of single words. Baked, Spice, Cherries - Underlined, as if that helped.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This week, I found myself doing something I’d never done before 2026: Judging wine. Not once, but across two major competitions back to back. Monday in North London for the Wine Merchant Top 100 — where 1,200 wines are tasted down to the best 100 available to independent merchants like me. Then Tuesday and Wednesday at the Kia Oval as part of the International Wine Challenge (IWC), one of the most prestigious wine competitions in the world.

Three competitions into this judging life, and each one has raised the stakes considerably.

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The Running Analogy Nobody Asked For

I don’t run. But bear with me, because this is the clearest way I can explain how these three events compare.

The People’s Choice Drink Award — where I started — was like joining your local coffee shop’s running group. A bit of structure, mostly enjoyment-led. Some people are genuinely serious, some are just having a good day out. A mix of enthuasiastic wine drinkers and industry judges.

The Wine Merchant Top 100 felt like Parkrun. More organised, more process-driven, but still familiar. Everything is blind tasted and runs through one lens: is this good enough to sell in my shop? Wines scored on a scale of 20. I felt at home.

The IWC is a marathon. A massive, well-oiled operation where the people around you are serious professionals at the absolute top of their craft. Wines scored on a scale of 100. Everything tasted blind. No winemaker, no price point — nothing. A wine worth a small fortune could leave the table without a medal if it simply wasn’t good enough that day.

It’s exhilarating. And, on day one at least, absolutely terrifying.

The Caveman in the Room

My panel at the IWC was made up of Masters of Wine / wine writers / sommeliers / buyers for supermarkets like Waitrose. Brilliant, experienced, quietly intimidating people.

Every time we went around the table sharing notes, I waited for the moment my take would be wildly off from everyone else’s. My notes were a sporadic scrawl of single words. Some of theirs were considered, precise, occasionally poetic — referencing fruits and spices and structural nuances I’d never thought to reach for. I know these people do write about wine for a living but I kept thinking: I’ve spent twenty-odd years in wine and I apparently know nothing.

But, my scores kept landing in the same place as theirs.

Not always exactly — there were wines some of us loved more than others — but broadly, we were reaching the same conclusions. I started to understand that the notes are the language, but the palate is the thing. And mine, was working well enough to show, I was meant to be in that room.

The fog really lifted on day two, thanks to Anne Krebiehl MW. She reframed the medal tiers in a way that immediately clicked:

Commended — a wine you’d be happy to be handed at a house party.

Bronze — a wine you’d pick up for a Wednesday night. Good, uncomplicated, does the job beautifully.

Silver — a wine you’d save for the weekend. You’d plan a meal around it.

Gold — a special occasion bottle. A birthday wine. Something you’d remember opening.

That’s it. That’s the whole framework. And the reason it clicked so immediately? It’s almost exactly how we categorise wine at The Wee Vinoteca. Different language, same instinct. I stopped second-guessing myself after that.

A Couple of Moments I Won’t Forget

On day two at the IWC, I got to meet Angela Mount — one of the judges responsible for giving The Wee Vinoteca the Wine Club of the Year award at the IWC industry awards earlier this year. I thanked her, somewhat awkwardly as I tend to do in these situations, and she told me that my award entry was so well written it made judging the category “not a close call at all.”

I had to work hard not to visibly dissolve.

Knowing that one of the other finalists was Laithwaites — a wine club operating at a completely different scale to a wee shop in Hitchin — made it even more surreal. That award already meant a lot. It means more now.

Then, over at the Wine Merchant Top 100, there was a quieter moment of pride. During a flight of Greek red wines, I picked out a wine I know well — not just by taste, but by the weight of the bottle in my hand. If you’ve ever wondered whether two decades of opening, pouring and obsessing over wine adds up to anything tangible, it does. Sometimes it lives in your fingertips.

A Welcome Challenge

Being invited to judge at events like these is, genuinely, a huge honour. It sharpens you in ways that are hard to replicate — tasting blind, with peers who will push back, in a room where there’s nowhere to hide behind familiarity or reputation.

I felt out of my depth. That’s the point. That’s always the point. The rooms that make you uncomfortable are the ones worth being in.

To finish, the finest tasting note of the week — possibly of my career.

A Pinot Grigio landed on the table. Neutral, light, technically correct, emotionally blank. The panel stared at it. Words were failing us, we needed 5 more words to describe this wine. Then Richard Kershaw MW looked up and said:

“White paint on white canvas.”

We submitted it.

Cheers

Duncan

And I had a fridge full of very interesting samples — new wines that were clamouring for a proper food pairing. I had a Carbonic Maceration Malbec that I’d been dying to try because I genuinely have no idea what it’s going to taste like. A Barbera d’Asti with enough acidity to cut through Lamb. A Rioja Crianza which whilst an obvious choice, it’s a new producer to me. The stage was set.

Then the big day came and I don’t know what happened. I stood at the fridge as the lamb was cooking and I just... wanted a big, cosy, familiar hug. In the end I went for a wine I’ve been drinking quite a bit of lately — a Douro Superior, since you’re asking. Familiar, reliable, exactly what I needed.

Now, to those of you who’ve been with me for a while, this might look like I’m not following my own advice. Shouldn’t I be exploring? Isn’t that the whole point? But here’s the thing — even the most adventurous wine drinkers want the comfort of an old favourite every so often. That’s not a contradiction. That’s just being human.

It got me thinking more seriously about the relationship between adventure and comfort, and what we’re actually trying to achieve when we talk about drinking more adventurously.

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The whole point is to find wines you love

Adventurous drinking isn’t an end in itself — it’s a means to an end. The goal is to discover wines that genuinely excite you, wines that earn a permanent spot in your rotation. If you’re always in full exploration mode, always reaching for something new and untested, you never get to enjoy the fruits of that exploration. You’ve done the work of finding brilliant wines you love, so occasionally you should actually drink them. There’s no badge of honour for drinking something unfamiliar every single time. The adventure serves the pleasure, not the other way around.

Mood matters more than most people admit

Wine, perhaps more than any other drink, is tied to how you’re feeling in the moment. Some evenings you want to be curious and engaged — reading the label, picking up new aromas, trying to work out what makes this wine tick. Other evenings, after a long week, after a big family gathering, after cooking for hours, you want something that asks nothing of you. Something that just is. Recognising what kind of evening it actually is, rather than what you thought it might be three days ago, is part of developing a real relationship with wine. Your mood isn’t an obstacle to good drinking — it’s one of the most important pieces of information you have.

Work with what you’ve actually got

There’s also a practical reality that doesn’t get talked about enough: you don’t always have the perfect adventurous option to hand. Maybe the interesting bottle you ordered hasn’t arrived yet. Maybe the wine shop was shut. Maybe you’ve got guests coming and this isn’t the night for serving something experimental to people who just want a glass of something nice. An adventurous approach to wine has to be sustainable in real life, not just in theory. Sometimes the most sensible thing — the most honest thing — is to reach for the bottle you know is going to deliver, and save the exploration for when the conditions are right.

The 80/20 approach

So here’s how I think about it. Being an adventurous wine drinker doesn’t mean forbidding yourself from drinking old favourites. It means that over time, the balance tips towards exploration rather than repetition. Think of it as roughly 80/20 — around eighty percent of what you drink pushes into new territory, and twenty percent is the comfort of something familiar and loved. That ratio will shift depending on the week, the season, the occasion. But if you hold that balance roughly in mind, you get the best of both worlds: a constantly expanding palate and the occasional warm reminder of why you fell in love with certain wines in the first place.

My Douro Superior with the Easter lamb? Perfect. No regrets whatsoever.

Cheers

Duncan

This is a question we’ve been asking a lot this month. At the beginning of the month a new Alcohol Duty came into the UK, and at the same time, many UK importers increased their prices. At this time of the year we typically review our small, seasonal range and start making changes for Summer. But this year, we’ve been looking at each wine even closer, scrutinising whether it still delivers the value for money it once did.

It brings us to the question: in 2026, how much do you have to pay for a good bottle of wine?

Now, before we go further, I need to clarify. This is the opinion of someone who not only works in wine, but is a massive foodie. For me, spending money on food and drink is a good way to spend money. On the weekend just past I did a 30 minute round trip to pick up some fresh croissants from a great bakery and it was 100% worth it. To some, spending this sort of money on wine might seem mental, but I also imagine if you’re reading this, you are foodies like me.

When setting up the Wee Vinoteca, we took a different approach to our wine range. I started off by asking: “what’s going to be best for the customer?” This led us to two decisions that have not only defined the business, but been responsible for its success:

Less but better: I cannot talk enough about this — better choice beats bigger choice.

Formulaic: if we were going to have a well-curated range, it had to follow a system. We couldn’t just buy whatever we wanted.

So we divide our wines into four different price brackets and for each bracket we make sure we cover a range of styles, from light-bodied to full-bodied. That way, no matter how much you want to spend or what style of wine you’re after, we will have a wine for you. It’s a great way to encourage exploration and keep the range balanced.

As it stands, the brackets are:

£10 - £14: Everyday Wines — weekday winners, typically means looking at lesser known regions and varieties.

£14 - £18: Friday Night Wines — a wine you can get excited about, a wine to share with friends and a nice meal.

£18 - £30: Special Occasion Wines — looking for a really good Bordeaux for a Sunday roast or a Rioja you can gift? This is where we list great examples of classic wines, bottles where you plan the food around the wine, not the other way around.

£30+: Wines You Love — I firmly believe you shouldn’t spend more than £30 on a bottle unless you know you like that style or variety. For example, I’ll happily spend over £30 on Chardonnay, because I love it. Chianti, less so — I’d rather go for something else.

Which brings us to the question: where is the sweet spot?

For me, it lives in the Friday Night Wines section and, if I was to be more specific, it’s £16.50. How can I be so sure? Well, as I said, I’ve been tasting a lot of wines recently, working out what is good enough to come into the shop and good enough for the wine club. A staggering amount of these wines, including the wines I’m most excited about, all land on the shelves at £16.50.

Here are just a few examples:

Oscar Rosé — a wine that has all the right things to dethrone our best selling wine, the 2800 Côtes de Provence. It’s pretty, pink and perfect.

Zorzal Cabernet Franc — we included this in our most recent Wine Club batch and people fell hard for it. Could be one of my wines of the summer.

Jardim de Granito — an outstanding wine from the Dão. I had this over the weekend with steak cooked on the barbecue and it was exceptional.

And it’s not just my palate telling me this. The numbers agree.

In wine, many of the costs in a bottle are fixed — duty, packaging, logistics. So there is a sort of bell curve when it comes to getting the best value for your pennies:

£7.50 wine — £0.97 worth of wine — 9%

£10 wine — £1.96 worth of wine — 20%

£16.50 wine — £4.74 worth of wine — 29%

£20 wine — £6.22 worth of wine — 31%

£30 wine — £10.88 worth of wine — 36%

At £7.50, only 9% of what you’re paying is actually wine. At £16.50, that jumps to nearly 30%. Spend £30 and you’re at 36% — better, yes, but you’ve paid nearly twice as much to get there.

Where does this leave us? There are great wines at £10, and for the reasons I’ve shown above, I don’t tend to buy or explore much below that. There are also great wines at £30, especially if you know what you like and fancy a treat. But if you want to explore, to try something new, and you want the best possible chance of that wine being great —

Buy a £16.50 wine.

Cheers

Duncan

A few weeks ago I posted a video about who our wine club probably isn’t for. It was slightly tongue in cheek, but the point was genuine. If you only buy wines with gold medals, if you only trust the big critics, or if you believe the only wines worth drinking come from the classic regions, like Burgundy — we’re probably not the right fit.

This did not go down well in certain corners of the internet.

I’ve left the grammar as I found it, just to paint the full picture.

There was also considerable upset that I’d apparently taken shots at Burgundy.

So let me set the record straight.

On Burgundy

Burgundy is excellent. I love it, the Chardonnay in particular. Some of the greatest wines ever made come from this small patch of land, and I say that without any hesitation.

But here’s something I’ve come to believe after a decade of working in wine: every region has a superpower, and that superpower is also its weakness.

Burgundy’s superpower is producing premium, age-worthy, iconic wines. If you want a special occasion bottle, a serious gift, something to open in twenty years — Burgundy is hard to beat.

Its weakness is value. If you’re looking for an outstanding Chardonnay or Pinot Noir to open on a Wednesday, I’d argue strongly that your money works harder almost anywhere else. The name on the label carries a price tag that the wine doesn’t always justify.

That’s not a shot at Burgundy. It’s just an honest assessment of what it’s brilliant at — and what it isn’t.

On “high margin plonk”

This one made me smile, because it’s almost precisely backwards.

Premium regions come with premium pricing baked in. The soft branding of Burgundy, Champagne or Rioja means you’re paying for the name before you’ve even looked at the wine. For the general consumer, that familiarity feels like safety. For an experienced buyer, it’s actually where the bad value hides.

When I go looking in lesser-known regions, I’m not taking a punt on unknown producers, I’m looking for the producers that have all the talent, but didn’t have the financial backing to set up in premium regions. I’m using 20 years of tasting experience to find wines that over-deliver on price — wines that would cost twice as much with a famous postcode on the label. That’s not a high margin on plonk. That’s the opposite.

On being early

This is the part I find most exciting, and I think it’s the strongest argument for exploration over familiarity.

Think about Whispering Angel before rosé became fashionable. Chocolate Block before South Africa had its moment. Chateau Musar before Lebanon was on anyone’s radar. The people who found those wines early got to enjoy them at their best, before demand drove prices up and production scaled to meet it.

That’s what I’m trying to do for our members. Not chase what’s already famous. Find what’s about to be.

On classic regions staying classic

Wine isn’t static. The regions that built their reputations did so on a style that, in many cases, no longer exists.

I love Bordeaux. But recent vintages of Right Bank Bordeaux are regularly pushing 15% ABV — that’s not the elegant, food-friendly style that made the region famous. I feel the same about Côtes du Rhône, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and others. Climate is changing what ends up in the bottle, whether the label acknowledges it or not.

Meanwhile, regions that nobody talked about twenty years ago are making the best wines available right now — not wines built on a legacy, but wines built for today.

English sparkling wine is the obvious example. A generation ago it was a punchline. Today most big Champagne house own vines in the UK. What’s the English sparkling wine of the next decade? I have some ideas. And our members will taste them first.

I knew from the beginning that this approach wouldn’t be for everyone. Frankly, given the level of personalisation we offer, it can’t be. But our model was built on listening to people who were bored — bored of receiving the same safe wines, bored of being disappointed by famous names that didn’t deliver.

The comments above tell one story. Here’s another:

Out of all the things said online, only one upset me. The one saying our customer have no idea what they want. After a wee bit of thought, I was able to come up with a response that I feel truly sums up what I’m aiming for with the wine club:

Cheers

Duncan

The Casual Sommelier

At all.

Last Wednesday I hosted a Pinot Noir Blind Tasting Masterclass at the shop. The idea was simple enough — a slightly geeky, ultimately light-hearted evening where, after a reference wine to tune everyone’s palates, five mystery Pinots would be served blind. Guests had a brief tasting note for each wine, and I was happy to field questions without giving the game away.

The five wines were:

• Lismore Pinot Noir, Greyton, South Africa — £45

• Gevrey Chambertin, Domaine des Astrelles — £80

• Reserve Pinot Noir, Yering Station, Yarra Valley, Australia — £70

• MCM88 Russian River Pinot Noir, Senses, California — £90

• Mazys-Chambertin Grand Cru, Domaine Pierre Naigeon — £211

A range of styles. A range of prices. And, I assumed, a clear difference in quality that would reveal itself over the course of the evening.

That was the plan.

Before I go any further, I want to say something important: blind tasting is bloody difficult. Being able to identify wines blind takes real skill and serious practice, especially when every wine in the lineup is the same variety. I would have struggled to get them all right myself. But this wasn’t a room full of beginners. We had guests who had been devoted Pinot Noir drinkers for years, several who had completed WSET Level 3, one working through the WSET Diploma, and a former hospitality professional. If anyone could crack this, it was this group.

As the tasting began, I was quietly confident the evening would unfold the way I’d imagined. The Californian was noticeably high in alcohol. The South African was the lightest in the lineup. And the Grand Cru — well, Grand Cru Burgundy has a way of making itself known, doesn’t it? Structured, complex, authoritative. These things tend to announce themselves.

Except it didn’t.

As the group worked their way through the wines, the waters started to muddy.

“This wine is too dark to be the Burgundy — it must be the Californian.”

It wasn’t.

“This one feels a bit jammy. I think it’s the Aussie.”

It wasn’t.

And then, the one that really stuck with me:

“This wine is excellent. It’s got to be the Grand Cru.”

It wasn’t.

Slowly, over the course of much debate, we started to get there. The Californian revealed itself through a faintly port-like character. The Australian was eventually identified through its fruit-forward style. The Gevrey Chambertin came next, after heated discussion and no clear consensus — I eventually just told them.

Which left two wines unidentified. The cheapest in the lineup and the most expensive.

On one side: a Grand Cru Burgundy from Mazys-Chambertin — one of the most celebrated villages in one of the most revered wine regions in the world, made by a producer with a name that commands serious respect. On the other: a Pinot Noir from Greyton, South Africa. A country most people — wrongly — associate with everyday drinking wines. A region that isn’t even considered one of South Africa’s premium areas. A variety that isn’t even one of the country’s most celebrated.

I asked the room the only question left to ask.

“Which of you think wine number one is the Grand Cru? The £211 bottle?”

Eight hands out of ten went up.

They were wrong.

Wine number one was the Lismore, the £45 South African Pinot Noir. The room erupted — a brilliant mix of disbelief, laughter, and just a touch of embarrassment. The Grand Cru was 4.5 times the price of the wine the majority of the room had just told me was the best in the glass.

Now. Most sommeliers might find this a problem. A £211 wine failing to distinguish itself from a £45 one? Awkward, perhaps.

For me, it couldn’t have gone better.

Here’s the first thing it proved: good wine does not have to cost a fortune. The majority of what we stock in the shop sits between £16 and £30. We carry only a handful of wines above £60 and just one above £100. That’s not an accident — it’s a philosophy. And watching the cheapest bottle in a lineup of very serious wines get mistaken, repeatedly, for the most expensive? That’s not just a fun story. That’s proof.

The second thing — and I’ll be transparent about this — is that the Lismore is the only wine in that lineup I actually stock. The other four were ordered in specifically for the event. The wine that the room gravitated toward, the one they were convinced was the Grand Cru, is the one I chose to put on my shelves. The same week, I also found out I’ve been shortlisted in two categories at the Drinks Buyer Awards as part of London Wine Fair. I’m not one to brag, but I’ll connect those dots for you.

So what do we take from all of this?

The big lesson here is that paying more doesn’t automatically mean drinking better. At a certain point, you’re not paying for quality. You’re paying for rarity, for prestige, for a name designed to impress the person across the table. That’s fine, if that’s what you want. But it’s worth knowing that’s what you’re buying.

The deeper lesson, though, is about exploration. The best version of a wine you love isn’t always waiting for you in the classic region with the famous name and the eye-watering price tag. Sometimes it’s sitting quietly in a part of the world you’d never thought to look — a corner of South Africa you’ve never heard of, in a style you didn’t expect, at a price that seems almost too good to be true.

It’s just waiting to be found.

Cheers

Duncan

Take a second with that. You probably have an answer — or at least a feeling about it. Maybe it’s a cold beer (fair enough, but wrong newsletter). Maybe it’s something bold and spicy to match the dish. Maybe it’s something cold and slightly sweet to cool the whole thing down. The point is, your answer and my answer are probably different. And here’s the thing — we’re both right.

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Let me explain why, and why that should make your life considerably easier.

Why spice and wine is more complicated than it looks

When you’re eating something spicy, the chilli heat activates specific receptors on your tongue. High-alcohol wine does the same thing. So when you combine the two, you’re not just having spicy food with wine — you’re essentially doubling down on that heat sensation. The chilli and the alcohol are hitting the same parts of your tongue at the same time, and the result is that the dish feels significantly hotter than it would with a glass of water.

Don’t take my word for it — try it yourself. Grab some spicy crisps and chew them on one side of your mouth, then take a sip of a high-alcohol red. You’ll feel exactly what I mean.

So what do you do with that information? Well, there are two completely valid directions you can take it.

Contrasting vs. complementary — and why both are correct

The first approach is a contrasting pairing. You use the wine to balance the dish — something lower in alcohol, perhaps with a little residual sugar, that gently moderates the chilli heat rather than amplifying it. Think German Riesling, or a Vouvray demi-sec. The wine acts almost like a counterweight, giving your palate somewhere cool and calm to rest between mouthfuls.

The second approach is a complementary pairing. You lean into it. You match the boldness and intensity of the dish with something equally bold — a Shiraz, for instance, all dark fruit and pepper. You’re not trying to soften the experience; you’re committing to it fully.

So which one is right?

Both. Genuinely, both can work beautifully. Generally speaking, contrasting pairings are safer and more likely to be enjoyed by many. Complementary pairings can be exceptional, but have less broad appeal. The point is there is no such thing as a perfect pairing — there is only what works for you, tonight, with the food in front of you and the people around the table.

Personal preference isn’t a footnote — it’s the whole point

Sticking with the curry for a moment: I personally lean toward the contrasting approach. I enjoy spice, but I don’t feel the need to punish myself with a tingling tongue for the rest of the evening. A slightly off-dry Riesling alongside a Thai red curry is a beautiful thing.

But chilli heat is one of the most subjective things there is. We all know someone who breaks into a sweat at the mere suggestion of chilli in a dish, and we all know that one person who could apparently eat a tablespoon of wasabi paste and ask for more. Your individual relationship with heat will heavily dictate which style of pairing you’d actually enjoy — and no wine writer, sommelier, or algorithm can tell you otherwise.

My other favourite example of this is Christmas Day turkey. Because of the way the dish is built — the richness of the meat, the variety of accompaniments, the general chaos of the table — you can make an equally compelling case for a full-bodied white wine or a light-bodied red. Both work on paper. Whether either works for your Christmas largely depends on how you and the people you’re eating with feel about red versus white in the first place. That’s not a weakness in the pairing logic. That’s just real life.

The moving target problem

There’s another layer to all of this that doesn’t get talked about enough: even if you somehow managed to land on what felt like your personal perfect pairing, it wouldn’t stay that way forever.

Wine changes. New vintages arrive each year, and they bring new expressions of the same bottle you thought you knew. Climate change is gradually shifting the style of entire regions — wines from certain parts of France, Spain, and Italy are measurably different today than they were twenty years ago. And then there’s the most significant variable of all: you.

Your palate evolves. What you loved at twenty-five may leave you cold at forty. Recently I opened a bottle of a Bordeaux I had held in very high regard — a wine I’d loved ten years ago when I worked in Michelin-starred restaurants. I won’t name it out of respect, but when I sat down with a glass, it was average at best. Competent, clean, and entirely uninspiring.

Had the wine changed? Had I changed? Probably a bit of both, if I’m honest.

The point is that wine is not a fixed thing, and neither are you. Chasing the perfect pairing assumes a kind of permanence that simply doesn’t exist — in the bottle or in the person drinking it.

So what do you actually do with all of this?

If there’s no perfect pairing, you might be wondering what the point of any of this is. Why bother thinking about what to open at all?

Here’s the reframe: the absence of a perfect pairing isn’t a problem. It’s an invitation.

It means you can’t get it wrong. It means the Shiraz with the curry isn’t a mistake — it’s a choice. It means the white Burgundy with the roast beef isn’t a faux pas — it’s an experiment. And if it doesn’t quite work, that’s useful information. You’ve learned something about your own palate that no wine course or tasting note could have told you.

The only things you actually need are a little bit of knowledge about how flavours interact — enough to give you a starting point — and the courage to try things you wouldn’t normally reach for. Stop chasing the perfect pairing. It doesn’t exist, and honestly, it sounds exhausting. Instead, chase the unexpected one. The Moscato d’Asti with the seafood curry. The light Portuguese red with the Christmas turkey. Those moments are better than perfect — they’re surprising, and that is far more memorable.

Cheers

Duncan

Last week I went to a big industry tasting with the team—one of our biggest importers was showcasing their portfolio. In that room: 900+ wines. Some were new releases I’d never tried. Some were old favourites I’d tasted dozens of times. And some were wines I’d tried once or twice and promptly written off.

This day is a big deal—it’s the best way for me to find the gems for the Wine Club and shop. But I have limited time and only so many sips before palate fatigue sets in and everything tastes the same. The trickiest part isn’t tasting. It’s working out what to taste and what NOT to taste.

This year, I took a slightly different approach, and it gave me some pretty awesome results. Along with tasting lots of new wines, I made a point to revisit wines I’d written off in the past. Let me give you an example.

The Georgian Wine That Got Better (Or Did I?)

There was a Georgian wine producer there, and I’d tried their wines a few years ago. They were just fine—nothing special. My overriding memory was that the wines were slightly out of balance: too much alcohol, not enough flavour to back it up.

This time around, tasting a different vintage, it was excellent. Balanced, interesting, and good value for money. A slam dunk for the Wine Club.

Either the most recent vintage had been kinder—giving them grapes with less sugar and therefore lower alcohol—or they’d just found a way to manage it better in the winery.

I had a similar experience with a Greek wine. I’d tried it the year before at Oenoramma, the Greek wine fair in Athens, but thought it wasn’t that interesting compared to the other wines I tried on that trip.

Here’s the thing though: the wines I’d tasted either side of it at Oenoramma were exceptional wines that retailed at double the price. When I tried this Greek wine again in a different context—without that unfair comparison—it showed itself as a great wine for the price.

Sometimes a wine isn’t bad. It’s just standing next to something extraordinary.

Why Wines Change

I’ve been talking to you for months about the importance of exploring, trying new things. I’ve even framed it through the lens of: wines are constantly changing, so you shouldn’t expect the wine you love now to be the same in a few years. You’d best keep exploring.

But this tasting reminded me of the other side of that coin: you should occasionally revisit wines to see if they’ve got better.

So what’s driving these changes?

Probably the biggest factor is weather and climate.

Weather is what happened that specific year. If it’s a hot year in Bordeaux, winemakers will use and celebrate Cabernet Sauvignon more because it loves the heat. But Merlot can get a bit too alcoholic in extreme warmth.

Climate is the change over several years. Looking at Bordeaux again, it’s gradually getting hotter. Merlot is consistently getting too alcoholic, so wineries are reducing the amount of Merlot they use or even moving to new varieties altogether.

A wine you tried in a cool vintage might taste completely different in a warm vintage. Same producer, same vineyard, different weather—different wine.

Winemaker evolution

Learning how to make good wine takes time. You need to understand how your grapes respond in the vineyard and in the winery. As time goes on, winemakers gain a better understanding of fermentation temperatures, pruning methods, oak regimes—all the small decisions that add up to better wine.

Maybe they’ve adjusted their approach. Maybe a new winemaker has come in who values balance over boldness, or wants to move away from American oak to French oak.

Small producers especially are constantly tweaking, experimenting, improving. The wine you tried three years ago might not reflect what they’re making today.

What’s Worth Revisiting?

Revisit with purpose

At this tasting, there were hundreds of wines I could have revisited, but that wasn’t realistic. I had to be strategic.

I revisited wines I wished were better than I remembered.

Unusual Georgian wines? If they were better, they’d be great for the Wine Club and shop. Worth revisiting.

Basic producer of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc? Even if it was better, it’s unlikely to be something I’d stock. Not worth revisiting.

Make your revisits matter. There’s no need to punish yourself repeatedly with wines you know you’ll never enjoy.

Brands vs. estates

There’s an important distinction here. Wine brands—think Barefoot, Yellowtail, even many Champagne houses—are actively trying to keep their wines consistent. They don’t operate like estate wineries. They blend across vintages, adjust with additives, and aim for the same taste profile year after year.

If you’ve tried something of theirs and didn’t like it, it’s unlikely to change dramatically.

I’m really talking about wines from estates: family-run businesses, small producers, winemakers who are working with what each vintage gives them. These are the wines worth revisiting.

Let time pass

Recently I got a sample of a Bordeaux I really wanted to stock. I tried it and it wasn’t that exciting for the price. I had two bottles, so I tried the second one a few weeks later. It was exactly the same.

Give wines time to actually change. Wait a few years so the vintage has moved on. Wait for the producer to evolve their winemaking. Wait for your palate to develop.

A few weeks isn’t enough. A few years might be.

Second Chances

Exploration is about being open to new experiences. I’ve largely focused on building confidence in people to try new wines—new regions, new varieties, new producers.

But exploration can also be about revisiting a new version of a known wine and looking for a different experience. It’s about accepting the variance of wine and learning to work with it.

That Georgian wine I’d dismissed? It will be in our Wine Club. That Greek wine I’d overlooked? Possibly coming to the shop shelves this summer.

Two wines I’d written off. Two wines that turned out to be exactly what I was looking for.

Wine isn’t static. Neither are you. Give wines—and yourself—second chances.

Just make sure you give them enough time to actually change first.

I paused. Beans, sausage, bacon, eggs, fried bread—the whole lot. This was definitely unusual pairing territory.

Clearly my expression merited more information.

“I’ve had a pretty crappy week, and I just want to cook my favourite meal tonight and have a nice glass of wine with it.”

Now, not only am I a big fan of breakfast for dinner, but I’m a bigger fan of wine pairing for everyday meals. This was a challenge I was happy to take on.

For me, the best option here has to be a sparkling red wine from Italy. Serve it chilled, and it will cut through all the richness, the bubbles will refresh your palate between bites, and honestly, it’s just a lot of fun. Breakfast for dinner deserves wine that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

I’ve given my fair share of pairing wines to fancy Michelin-starred meals and important Christmas feasts. But I also get a lot of requests for everyday pairings—wines for comfort food, recommendations for curry, what actually works with Friday night takeaway.

Now typically, someone like me would give you specific examples and tell you what you “must try” with each dish. But that’s pretty limiting and goes against my overriding belief that wine should be explored.

So instead, let’s take a step back. I’ll give you the principles behind these pairings, then a few directions you can explore on your own.

What to Consider with Spicy Food

Alcohol highlights the sensation of chilli heat, making the dish feel spicier than it actually is. This isn’t good or bad—just something to consider. It really depends on how you feel about spice. If you’re the sort of person who likes to feel the burn, you can lean into it.

The safer approach: Contrast

Generally speaking, a contrasting pairing works better and safer here—balancing the spice with lower alcohol, juicy characteristics, or even sweeter wines.

White wines: Albariños and Viogniers are great examples. Torrontés is an aromatic variety that works well, though it tends to lean towards higher alcohol, so look for lower ABV versions if you can find them.

Red wines: Beaujolais, Barbera, even Valpolicellas work nicely—light, fruity, refreshing.

The truly underrated option: Rosé. Almost always lower in alcohol, refreshing (served chilled), and normally with juicy red fruit. Perfect for spice.

The riskier approach: Complement

Complementary pairings can work, but they’re riskier and more subjective. Here you highlight the spice with varieties like Shiraz or Garnacha that lean towards bigger ABV and spicy characteristics. When it works, it’s brilliant. When it doesn’t, it amplifies the burn. Know your heat tolerance before trying this.

What to Consider with Comfort Food

Largely speaking, comfort food has a couple of overriding similarities: a good amount of salt, plus creaminess or oiliness. This means any wine you drink will feel softer and less flavoursome—the salt and fat smooth everything out.

But it’s also worth considering your mental state when you’re craving comfort food. It’s low effort, maximum rewards. You don’t want a challenging wine when you’re eating comfort food—you want something easy and approachable.

For me, that leans towards light-bodied red wines and smooth white wines.

Red wines: Easy-going reds like Merlot, Rioja, or a good GSM blend are as good with comfort food as they are on their own. Smooth, friendly, unchallenging.

White wines: Chenin Blanc, white Rioja, or—if it’s your thing—an oaked Chardonnay are hard to beat when you’re looking for a hug in a glass.

The key: nothing too tannic, nothing too sharp. Just smooth, comforting wine for comforting food.

What to Consider with Barbecuing

Cook methods matter. Barbecuing adds complexity through charring and smoke. One of the big principles in food and wine pairing is matching flavour intensity. So simply by cooking the same dish on a barbecue, we need to increase the flavour of the wine to match.

You’re adding bitter, complex flavours from the char, often with sweeter and flavoursome sauces and rubs to balance that out. The protein might be the same, but the flavour profile is completely different.

Like with spicy food, you can play it safer and go for a contrasting pairing, or lean into the richness and go for a complementary pairing.

Contrast: Bright and refreshing

Fresh white wines like Sauvignon Blanc and Albariño can be vibrant enough to cut through smoke and fat. They refresh your palate between bites and work especially well in hot weather or with lighter BBQ fare.

Complement: Bold and rich

Or you can lean into the big, bold flavour with Shiraz, Malbec, or even Zinfandel. These match the intensity of char and smoke, stand up to strong marinades, and work brilliantly with hearty BBQ.

The Universal Principle

All of these share two things in common:

Match flavour intensity

Spicy food has intense flavours, so you need wine that can handle it (or contrast it). Comfort food is rich but not complex, so you need smooth, easy-going wines. BBQ’s char and smoke add intensity, so you need bigger wines than you’d expect for the same protein cooked differently.

You can either lean in or lean away

Contrast: Fresh, bright wines that cut through and refresh. Complement: Bold, rich wines that match the intensity.

That’s a great framework for exploring wine pairings. It’s not about memorizing “Albariño with Thai curry”—it’s about understanding intensity and deciding whether to contrast or complement. Then you can explore from there.

When All Else Fails: Bubbles

One final piece of advice: if you’re stuck, reach for bubbles. Sparkling wine pairs with pretty much everything, including a full English breakfast.

The bubbles cut through fat, the acidity refreshes your palate, and there’s something joyful about sparkling wine that works with casual food. Cava with pizza, Prosecco with takeaway curry, that sparkling red with your comfort food—it all works.

Modern Day Wine Pairing

Traditional wine pairing used to be about sommeliers in suits dictating which vintage of Bordeaux you must have with your three-Michelin-star meal. It was rigid and stuffy and relished the confusion it created.

But modern wine pairing is about fun and exploration. We’re cooking more exciting meals at home now—sometimes fancy, sometimes just for the joy of it. And wine pairing needs to work here too.

The way to do that isn’t to remember 100 rules about what one wine pairs with that one dish. It’s about having the principles and courage to have some fun and explore.

Cheers

Duncan

P.S Last week I welcomed my 600th subscriber—thank you to everyone who's been part of this journey. If you know someone who'd love to learn how to explore wine more confidently, please share.

Share The Casual Sommelier

I froze. A mix of confusion and fear washed over me.

“What the fuck? Are we smelling the same wine?” I thought to myself.

We were sitting around a table at The People’s Choice Wine Awards, where I’d been invited as a professional judge. In front of us: a flight of supermarket wines, score sheets, and a group of judges with wildly different palates and experience levels.

This was my first time judging a competition like this, and I was nervous. These wines weren’t my usual territory—between Wine Club samples and new vintages for the shop, supermarket wines aren’t really my stomping ground.

But there was one wine that really threw me. All the other judges at the table were saying it was the best wine in that category. I just didn’t agree at all. To me, it was unbalanced and, if I’m honest, pretty boring.

The other judges were nodding enthusiastically. “Lovely balance,” one said. “Great fruit,” said another. I looked down at my sheet. I’d written “unbalanced” and “a wee bit boring.”

As we handed in the judging sheets for that round, it dawned on me: that wine is probably going to win its category. And if I were a regular consumer who bought that wine based on its gold medal, I’d be pretty disappointed.

Not because it’s a bad wine—it clearly impressed most of the judges. But because it wasn’t MY kind of wine. And that’s the problem with scoring systems in a nutshell.

The Promise of Certainty

Wine is overwhelming. Thousands of producers, hundreds of regions, countless vintages. You’re standing in a shop, paralysed by choice.

Then you see it: 95 Points - Wine Spectator. Or a gold medal sticker. Relief washes over you. Someone credible has done the work. This wine is objectively good. Decision made.

This is what scoring systems promise: certainty in an uncertain world.

For wine retailers and producers, these systems are gold. A high score can move thousands of bottles. A gold medal justifies a price point.

But here’s the problem: these systems aren’t designed to help you find wine YOU like. They’re designed to create confidence in purchasing—which isn’t the same thing.

The Robert Parker Problem

The clearest example is Robert Parker. Parker was a wine critic who rose to the level of basically a wine god. He was a big fan of bold, extracted wines—”fruit bombs.” A positive review from him could double the price of your wine overnight.

Then enters Michel Rolland, a “flying winemaker” who works with wineries around the world. He had a very special and lucrative talent: making exactly the sort of wines that Robert Parker liked. Michel could essentially guarantee your wine would receive a positive review from Parker.

Parker wasn’t intentionally biased. He had a style and rated wines he liked accordingly. But here’s the problem: if you prefer fresh, light, elegant wines—the opposite of Parker’s taste—his 95-point scores would lead you to wines you’d hate.

One man’s palate shaped an entire industry. Winemakers around the world started making “Parker wines” to score well, not wines true to their region or style.

That’s what happens when we treat scores as objective truth instead of personal opinion.

The Medal Problem

Gold, silver, and bronze medals have the same issue. At the People’s Choice Awards, I noticed one category was missing from how I normally rate wines: price. I could assess flavours and balance, but not value for money.

And different competitions have different standards. Some are rigorous, others are pay-to-enter. A gold medal from one competition might be a silver at another. Even within the same competition, put the same wine in front of different panels and you’ll get different scores.

All of this variability reveals the truth: these aren’t objective measurements. They’re subjective opinions, packaged to look like facts.

What Scores Actually Tell You (and What They Don’t)

What a 95-point score DOES tell you:

• The wine is technically well-made

• It impressed an expert palate

• Other people might love it

What it DOESN’T tell you:

• Whether it matches YOUR taste

• Whether it’s worth the price TO YOU

• Whether you’ll enjoy it more than an 85-point wine

That last point is crucial. I’ve had customers who loved “82-point wines” and hated “96-point wines” because the scores measured critic preference, not personal enjoyment.

So What Should You Do Instead?

In short, be your own wine judge. Whilst my experience as a wine judge was daunting, it was also excellent fun. Why on earth would you want to defer that enjoyment, that adventure to someone else? Go out there and try a broad range of wines, take notes, and work out what you like.

Know your own palate

When you find a wine you like, try wines that are similar but slightly different—same region, different producer; same grape, different region. After trying 10-15 wines this way, you’ll start seeing patterns. I’ve talked about this before in “Forget the Producer.”

You might realise that you love Shiraz from Australia, but not Syrah from France. Or that anything made in Puglia is going to be too much for you. But you’ll then be able to give these gold medal wines some of your own context.

Find a guide whose palate you trust

Instead of relying on a distant critic’s score, find a local wine merchant, sommelier, or wine bar owner whose recommendations consistently work for you.

The advantage: they know YOU. They can ask questions, remember what you liked last time, tailor suggestions to your taste. A critic scores for thousands of readers. A good merchant recommends for you specifically.

This is what I do with our Wine Club. When I’m picking wines, I’m not searching for the highest scores. I’m looking for wines that are most aligned with that customer’s palate and preferences.

Use scores as one data point, not the decision

Look, I’m not saying ignore awards completely. When The Wee Vinoteca won Wine Club of the Year at the IWC Awards, I absolutely shouted about it. Awards matter.

But they’re not a cheat sheet for your personal taste. If you’re choosing between two wines at the same price and one has a gold medal, that’s useful information. It suggests quality.

But it shouldn’t be the only factor. Ask yourself: Is this the style I enjoy? Does this fit the occasion? Have I liked this producer before?

Scores are one piece of information. Your preferences and past experience are equally important—often more important.

Trust Your Palate

There’s no way The People’s Choice Wine Awards, The IWC, or any wine authority can create an award system that’s helpful for you and your palate. Only you can do that.

But isn’t that the best news? You can explore, rank, and rate your wines and create your own system—whether that’s scores and medals or, in my case, shapes. I’m going to be honest: it will take a bit longer. But the detour will be well worth it and full of fun on the way.

Cheers

Duncan

P.S Paid Subscribers, keep scoring. I need your input for the next article.

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“Actually, sir...”

I paused for dramatic effect, as if I was thinking it over. To be honest, I knew straight away what I wanted to do.

“If you’re willing to trust me, it will blow your mind.”

This was my promise to a customer as a young sommelier at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Edinburgh. He’d ordered one of our most popular dishes of the season: a fillet of Scottish salmon served with crispy potatoes and a creamy, herbaceous sauce. If you’d ordered this dish as part of our tasting menu, the matched wine would have been a weighty white wine like an Australian Pinot Gris or even an Alsatian Riesling. And that was a wildly popular pairing.

In this instance though, when his salmon came out, I served him an Australian Pinot Noir. It had been sitting in a bucket with water and a handful of ice cubes to bring the temperature down a few degrees. It wasn’t cold—it was cool. And for this customer, that little rule-breaker of a wine was perfect.

When I placed the glass in front of him, he looked skeptical. “Red wine? With salmon?”

“Just try it,” I said.

He took a sip. Then another. His eyebrows lifted.

“I thought you weren’t allowed to have red wine with fish,” he said after the course.

“The only real rule in food and wine pairing is to drink what you like, with whatever you want,” I replied.

This free-form thinking was clearly welcome to him, slightly controversial for the fine-dining surroundings, and an important—if not pivotal—moment for me on the true joys of food and wine pairing.

Why the Rules Exist

Let’s look at where some of these rules actually came from:

Red with meat, white with fish: This came from texture matching—heavy food pairs with heavy wine. Tannins in red wine also help break down complex proteins in meat, and the salt in meat makes red wine taste softer and less tannic. Meanwhile, delicate white fish with tannic reds creates a metallic taste (more on that later). The rule made sense... most of the time.

Red wine with cheese: This is one of the most popular pairing rules, yet the reason has nothing to do with pairing—it’s purely logistics. In classic French restaurants of the past, you’d have a fish course, meat course, then cheese course. Guests would order red for the meat, have some leftover, and simply continue drinking it with cheese. The pairing stuck, even though white wine’s acidity actually cuts through cheese’s richness better than red.

I could list more—Champagne with oysters (salinity and bubbles), Sancerre with goat cheese (classic regional pairing)—but that would be defeating the point. Because I’d argue you don’t need to learn all the classic pairings. Over time, these guidelines have become commandments, and I feel that’s doing more harm than good.

The Very Short “Don’t Do This” List

There are actually only 2.5 wine pairing things you genuinely shouldn’t do. It’s a very short list:

1. White fish + tannic reds

Why it fails: White fish (cod, bass, haddock) with tannic red wines (Cabernet Sauvignon, Barolo, Shiraz) creates a truly horrible metallic taste. It’s like brushing your teeth and then drinking orange juice—separately they’re fine, together they’re a nightmare.

This single problematic pairing created the entire “white wine with fish” rule.

The exception: Meatier fish (tuna, salmon, swordfish) are brilliant with low-tannin reds.

2. Artichokes + pretty much anything

Why it fails: Artichokes are high in cynarin, which makes pretty much all wines taste weird. I’m yet to find a pairing that works with them.

My honest advice: just avoid artichokes. They aren’t even that good.

2.5 Big reds + spicy food

Why it’s a “half”: Some people love the burn. But if your wine is high in tannin and alcohol, it will noticeably increase the chili heat. For many, this overpowers the dish.

Alternative: Off-dry whites or low-tannin reds work better with spice.

And that’s it. Three genuinely problematic pairings. Everything else? Fair game.

What Actually Matters

So if there are only three things you shouldn’t do, what SHOULD guide your pairing choices?

Forget the rules. Focus on what actually matters:

Your personal preference is king

If you don’t enjoy drinking red wine, no amount of sommelier mind tricks are going to make you enjoy a hearty red with a steak.

No matter what you serve me, it’s unlikely to turn Pinotage (a variety I have an active dislike for) into something I love.

Wine pairing is very much a subjective art form—what works for you may not work for me. I’ve had customers who love Malbec with salmon. I wouldn’t choose it, but they enjoy it, and that’s the only measure that matters.

Mood and context

When I asked my paid subscribers about pairing, this came up repeatedly: they pick wine for mood more than for food. Whilst many of them are aware of some of the “rules” around food and wine pairing, often mood wins out.

I’ve talked about this previously—wine has seasons. During summer, a rosé with steak is beautiful: light, refreshing, perfect for the weather. In winter, that same steak might call for a hearty red. Roast chicken can be great with red or white depending on how you feel.

The “perfect” pairing changes based on weather, mood, energy level, and occasion. What works on a Tuesday night won’t necessarily work for Saturday’s dinner party.

People and place

Even I—someone who owns a shop full of wine—am limited by what’s actually available. You can buy adventurously and have a diverse range of wines in your fridge, or go to a restaurant with a bible of a wine list, but ultimately you can only pick from what they have.

The people you’re enjoying your meal with matter too. I love oaked Chardonnay, but I have a friend who doesn’t, so when we meet up, Chardonnay is off the table. Their enjoyment matters more than my “perfect” pairing.

Where to Start Breaking Rules

Breaking rules with food pairing is peak wine exploration. If you’re looking for a few places to start, here are my recommendations:

Red wine with meaty fish: Straight off the deep end. Grilled tuna steak with Pinot Noir, or salmon with chilled Beaujolais. The key is choosing low-tannin reds and fish that’s rich enough to handle them. The “white with fish” rule doesn’t account for how grilling or richness changes the equation.

Rosé (not pale) with white meat: A flavoursome rosé with pork belly would be a thing of beauty. The fruit complements the meat, the acidity cuts the fat, and it’s unexpected in the best way. This breaks the “rosé is just summer drinking” rule.

When in doubt: fizz: Many of you have been sleeping on the best pairing wine for a while. Try fizz with anything fried, crispy, creamy, oily—just anything delicious. Champagne with fried chicken? Perfect. English Sparkling Wine with fish and chips? Brilliant. The bubbles cut through fat and refresh your palate.

Rules as Guiding Stars, Not Laws

These classic pairings aren’t useless—they exist for good reasons. Red with meat, white with fish—these patterns work more often than not. They’re useful starting points, especially when you’re uncertain.

But over time, they’ve been taken from general advice to dogmatic law. And that’s a problem.

The moment you treat pairing rules as unbreakable, you stop exploring. You miss the Pinot Noir that would be perfect with your salmon. You skip the Rosé that would elevate your steak. You default to safe when you could be adventurous.

Use the classic pairings as guiding stars—reference points for navigation, not your final destination. Understand why they work (tannin with fat, acidity with richness, weight with weight), then apply those principles creatively.

That Pinot Noir with salmon I served years ago? It worked because I understood the principle (meaty fish can handle light reds) and broke the rule intelligently (chilled the wine, chose a low-tannin style).

You can do the same.

Next time you’re planning a meal, try the “wrong” wine intentionally. See what happens. Trust your palate over textbook rules. Create your own pairings.

That’s not breaking rules for the sake of it. That’s exploration in action.

Cheers

Duncan

P.S Paid subscribers - keep scrolling, I need your help.

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Sorry for the radio silence. The biggest, busiest and most successful Christmas got in the way. Good news: I’m back now.

The waiter hands me the wine list. Eight pages, leather-bound, full of producers I don’t recognise. I’ve been in the wine business for over two decades, and even I feel a flicker of panic.

My dining companion looks at me expectantly. “You’re the wine expert—you choose.”

Even with all my experience, I recognise most of the important wine terms, can build a taste profile of wines in my head, can spot good value. And still, when I’m out of my comfort zone, it’s easy to ditch exploration and opt for the safe bets.

If I feel this way, imagine how everyone else feels.

At home, pairing is easy mode. You control the food, you know your wines, you can ask for advice before buying. You can even have backup bottles. But at restaurants? You’re flying blind with an audience watching.

At a restaurant, the rules change. You can’t always plan in advance (well, I check menus online, but I’m a nerd). You can’t control what others order. The wine list might have changed since you looked. And then you’re handed a menu full of dishes you might not recognize—what’s a pithivier? what does kohlrabi taste like?—followed by a wine list of unfamiliar producers and regions.

Time pressure. Social pressure. Financial pressure. No wonder most people default to Rioja.

But here’s the irony: restaurants are actually the BEST places to explore wine. Someone else has curated the selection. Experts are available to help. You can try wines by the glass without committing to a bottle. The constraints that make restaurants feel intimidating are the same things that make them perfect for discovery.

So how do you move from anxious avoider to confident explorer?

I asked my paid subscribers about their restaurant wine experiences. The responses showed both smart strategies and common anxieties.

One subscriber has developed a solid approach:

“I tend to go middle of the price list from Italy, Portugal, or Spain (£35-£40) in casual to mid-tier restaurants. If it’s a ‘special occasion’ restaurant and there’s a sommelier on hand, I chat with them about what I like and our food choice and see what they suggest—rarely disappointed (keeping to under £120 a bottle if I can).”

But the same person also revealed where confidence breaks down:

“When in an Asian restaurant, selecting a wine to properly work with the spice... a lager feels easier but I prefer wine.”

“When I’m with a group who want me to choose, and I know others could probably make a better choice (especially in work situations).”

This is telling. Even someone with a clear strategy still faces moments of uncertainty. Spice throws them off. Social pressure creates doubt. The “wild” wine situation can undermine even the most confident wine drinker.

So how do you build the kind of confidence that works in every situation, not just some?

The difference? Confidence and strategy. Here’s what actually works:

Explore by the Glass

One of the problems with exploring at home is commitment—once you open a bottle, you’re stuck with it. At restaurants, that constraint disappears.

You can go small (125ml glasses mean any mistake is short-lived). You can pair to each course. You can experiment without committing to a bottle. Glass of fizz on arrival, Greek Assyrtiko with your seafood starter, Chilean Cabernet Franc with your steak, Botrytis Sémillon with your cheese course. All this exploration without the risk.

A good restaurant will use their by-the-glass selection to showcase interesting options, not just safe, boring choices. They want you to discover something new, not just order what you’d buy at Tesco.

And here’s my ultimate tip: if you’re unsure about a glass option, ask for a small taste first. I’ve never seen a restaurant refuse this. It’s a tiny pour, takes them ten seconds, and it eliminates your risk entirely. Worst case, you say “not quite what I’m looking for” and try something else. Best case, you’ve just found your new favourite wine.

Ask the Expert

If there’s a sommelier or knowledgeable staff (not everywhere has this, but good restaurants do), use them. These people live to help you discover new wines. It’s literally what they’re there for.

The best format: “I usually drink [A, B, C] and I’m looking for a bottle around [£X]. What would you recommend to pair with our menu?”

This gives them:

• Your taste preferences (so they don’t suggest something you’ll hate)

• Your budget (no awkwardness)

• Permission to suggest something new

They’ll almost always find something better than you would have chosen yourself. I’ve seen customers discover entire regions they didn’t know existed because they asked for help instead of defaulting to Malbec.

One customer told me she asked a sommelier for “something interesting under £40 to pair with duck.” He suggested a Xinomavro from Greece—a grape she’d never heard of, from a country she’d never associated with wine. It was perfect. Dark, herbaceous, structured enough for the duck. She’s now explored half a dozen Greek wines because of one conversation with an expert.

That discovery wouldn’t have happened if she’d played it safe.

How Much to Spend

Price psychology at restaurants is weird. Most people avoid the house wine (fear of looking cheap) and the most expensive wines (obvious reasons). They cluster around second-cheapest bottles and mid-range options.

Here’s my advice:

House wine: Sometimes genuinely good (especially at wine-focused places), but often mediocre at casual chains. If the restaurant takes wine seriously, their house wine will reflect that. If they don’t, it won’t. Look at the rest of the list for clues.

Mid-range (£30-£50): This is often where interesting stuff lives. Not so cheap it’s generic, not so expensive you’re paying for prestige. This is the sweet spot for discovery at restaurants.

Top-shelf (£80+): Only worth it if you’re confident you like that style, the company will appreciate it, and it pairs well with the food. Otherwise, save expensive experimentation for home where restaurant markup doesn’t apply.

The second-cheapest phenomenon is real—restaurants know people do this, so that slot isn’t always the best value. Look at the mid-range and ask yourself: “Would I be excited to try this?” If yes, that’s your answer.

A Special Mention for Wine Bars

Full disclosure: I own a wine bar, so I’m biased. But wine bars genuinely are built for exploration.

Unlike restaurants (where wine is secondary to food), wine bars put wine first. The lists are more adventurous. The staff are obsessive about wine. Many offer wine flights—mini-tastings that turn experimentation into an activity rather than a risk.

If you want to build confidence in “wild” wine situations, wine bars are your training ground. Lower stakes, expert help, dozens of options by the glass. You can try three different styles in one sitting, figure out what you like, and leave with actual knowledge instead of just a nice buzz.

At The Wee Vinoteca, I purposely design flights to push people slightly outside their comfort zone. If someone says they only drink Sauvignon Blanc, I’ll build a flight with an Albariño, a Vermentino, and maybe a Grüner Veltliner—all similar enough that they’ll probably like them, different enough that they’re discovering new regions.

That’s what wine bars do well: guided exploration.

Three Quick Tips for Restaurant Exploration

I’m a big fan of the Stoic view: we can only influence what’s in our control. When you go to a new restaurant, you can’t control the menu or the wine list. But that’s the whole point of exploring—embracing the unknown.

So next time you’re handed a restaurant wine list:

Try the local wine. If you’re in a region known for wine, lean into it. Italian restaurant? Go Italian. Spanish place? Try Albariño or Garnacha. Regional restaurants often have relationships with importers who bring in wines you won’t find elsewhere.

Go for the staff pick. If there’s a “sommelier’s choice” or staff recommendation on the list, trust it. They chose it for a reason—usually because it’s interesting, good value, or both.

Try the matched pairing. Many restaurants offer wine pairings with tasting menus. Yes, it’s more expensive, but you get to try multiple wines you’d never choose yourself. It’s education disguised as dinner. You might discover a grape variety you’d never have ordered, paired in a way you’d never have thought of.

The restaurant wine list isn’t a test you can fail. It’s an opportunity you can seize.

Stop defaulting to safe choices. Ask for help. Try something by the glass. Take the small risk. The worst case is you spend £8 on a glass you don’t love and you learn something about your palate. The best case is you discover a wine that opens up an entire region you’d never explored before.

That’s not just good wine pairing. That’s exploration in action.

Cheers

Duncan

P.S Paid Subscribers, keep reading, I need you’re help on next weeks article.

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As I looked around, a seasoned ski instructor came gliding down the mountain, perfectly carving just the faintest of lines in the slopes. He somehow managed to go from flying down the slope to a perfect, peaceful stop right in front of me. With a smile, his next words gave me the confidence to get up and fail better:

“If you’re not falling over, you’re not trying hard enough.”

Wine works exactly the same way. If you’re never disappointed by a bottle, you’re not exploring—you’re repeating. You’re staying on the bunny slope, drinking the same safe wines forever. And just like skiing, the only way to discover what you truly love is to risk a few falls along the way.

The real problem is that the fear of buying a bad bottle keeps us stuck. It keeps you buying a very small set of the exact same wines.

The first factor is obvious: the financial sting. If you spend £15–£20 on a bottle and it’s not your thing, once it’s open, that’s wasted money. Often the answer is to “experiment” with really cheap bottles, which does make sense, but is unlikely to lead to any real revelations. It’s pretty difficult logistically to save it and give it to someone else, not to mention a bit of a difficult conversation to have when gifting it. Which brings us to the second issue: the social embarrassment.

The thought of serving a bad wine to a friend or ordering a dud in a restaurant is too much for most people. Despite wine being this big, complex thing involving hundreds of different languages, varieties, and other variables—including personal preferences—when we get it wrong, we often feel that we should have known better.

This creates an adventurer’s paradox: you can’t discover great wines without occasionally finding not-great wines. But the fear of the “not-great” stops exploration before it starts.

What we need is to think about the whole process differently. So if bad bottles are an education, how can we best learn from them?

The first thing a bad bottle teaches you is articulation. You need to be able to pinpoint what you don’t like. Is it too alcoholic? Too tannic? Too sharp? Or is it a flavour thing? This is the toughest bit, but working it out will make you much more confident in the future. You’ll go from “I didn’t like it” to “It was too heavy and sweet for me—I prefer wines with more structure and acidity.” That specificity is power.

As you try more wines, pattern recognition kicks in. You start to see themes in what works and what doesn’t. If you’ve tried a couple of different Viogniers and none of them hit the mark, that’s your sign that Viognier isn’t your thing. That’s not failure—that’s clarity. You’re building a mental map of your palate, one bottle at a time. Some wines will fall into the “love it” category, some into “not for me,” and both are equally valuable data points.

And here’s the thing about progress: you’re probably only ten “bad” bottles away from being dangerously informed about the styles you like. When you start exploring, your first disappointing bottle will feel like a disaster. By the fifth, you’ll say to yourself, “It’s just not my style,” and move on. By the tenth, you’ll be fearless.

If it helps, think of your progression in three steps:

Step 1: Fearful (where everyone starts and most people stay). Here we only buy wines we know. If that exact wine is unavailable, we panic. Wine shopping is stressful.

Step 2: Cautious explorer. I’m going to be honest—progress can feel slow here. We occasionally try new wines, the disappointment of a bad choice stings, but something is building. Confidence is accumulating with each attempt.

Step 3: Confident adventurer. Regularly trying new wines, friends and family know you as the “wine person.” You’ll rarely find wines you don’t like, and when you do, it’s data, not disappointment.

Think of it this way: your next £150 spent on wine can either be an adventure—your own personal wine course where you (possibly with friends) make an effort to try new things and become more confident—or ten bottles of the same unexciting, safe supermarket wine you’ve been drinking for years.

Which sounds like the better investment?

Of course, there are ways to fail better and make the sting of exploration hurt less:

Wine tastings: For the price of a good bottle, you can often taste six different wines. Even better, there’s usually a wine expert on hand to help with the articulation part. When I host events, I purposely include a broad range of wines to help people find their style.

Try the same wine differently: Let’s say you open a bottle of wine after work on a Friday night and it’s just not working for you. Try that wine with some nibbles—maybe crisps—and save some to try again on Saturday. We (the people) are by far the most variable factor in the mix, and I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve tried a “disappointing” wine the next day to find it’s lovely.

Find a guide: Across the UK, there are hundreds of wine geeks waiting to help people find new wines they’ll love. They’ll be able to reduce your risk of failure dramatically. You won’t find these wine geeks stacking shelves in Tesco—you’ll find them in your local independent wine shop. Visit them.

Whether it’s wine, food, or even a new hobby, failure is the price of entry. To get to the really good parts of it, we need to take calculated risks, go on adventures, and come back with great stories about what we’ve learnt.

You cannot find the secret, underrated, great-value wines hiding all over the world without first learning what you like and dislike. The £12 bottle that you bought, really disliked, and had to pour down the sink is a tiny price to pay if you become confident and informed about wine from the things you learn from it.

The next time you’re standing in a wine shop, paralysed by the fear of choosing wrong, ask yourself: What’s the actual worst that happens? You spend £15 on a wine you don’t love, you learn something about your palate, and next time you make a better choice.

That’s not failure. That’s how you get braver.

Cheers

Duncan

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For making a “good” cup of tea for my wife in the morning, things need to be just right. Same brand of teabags. Same kettle—to the point where when the last one broke, we bought an exact replacement. Same mug, depending on the time of day. Same milk, same water, same timing.

Despite all of this, sometimes you make a cup of tea and it’s just fine. Sometimes it’s not even a good cup. The goal of your morning cup of tea is consistency—eliminating variables. This is because our morning cup of tea is about comfort and predictability.

But every so often, I make Hannah a cup of tea, and when she takes that first sip, her shoulders sink, she smiles, and she lets me know I’ve made a “lovely cup of tea.”

So what did I do differently this time? The honest answer is: nothing.

What changed wasn’t the tea—it was Hannah. Maybe she was more relaxed. Maybe the house was quiet. Maybe she’d just finished something stressful and the tea was a moment of relief. The tea didn’t change; the context did. And that’s the secret: the best cup of tea isn’t about the tea getting better, it’s about the moment being right.

This is where wine drinkers get it backwards. We understand this with tea—that context shapes enjoyment more than the liquid itself. But with wine? We chase the liquid, not the moment. We try to recreate magic by finding the same bottle, when we should be creating new magic with different bottles.

Because here’s the thing: wine is not tea.

Wine is capable of many impressive things, but maintaining a consistent style isn’t one of them. Wine changes constantly, and that’s not a flaw—it’s what makes wine interesting.

The wine itself changes: Vintage variation means last year’s harvest tastes different from this year’s. Even bottles from the same case can vary slightly. And wine evolves in the bottle—what you bought last year won’t taste the same this year. It gains complexity, shifts character, and eventually fades.

You change: Just like that cup of tea, wine tastes different depending on your mood, what you ate before, who you’re with, even how tired you are. Your palate isn’t a constant. It’s shaped by context, emotion, and circumstance.

The context changes: That magical Tuscan wine on a terrace overlooking vineyards? Try it at home on a Tuesday, and it won’t hit the same. It’s not the wine—it’s that you’re not in Tuscany anymore.

Tea’s consistency is a feature. Wine’s variability is also a feature, not a bug.

I spend a lot of time trying to help customers who are chasing “that bottle”—the one from holiday or that special meal at the Michelin-starred restaurant. But here’s the truth, and the sommelier community will potentially chase me down with waiters’ friends for this: the wine wasn’t as special as you remember it. The occasion was.

The joy of a good bottle is almost always in the company. You’re remembering the memory, not just the wine. That terrace in Provence. That celebration dinner. That perfect evening when everything aligned. The wine was there, sure, but so was the context, the mood, the people, the moment.

And this is the trap: we try to make wine behave like tea. We try to find consistency in something that is fundamentally variable. We try to recreate a moment by recreating the liquid, when the liquid was never the magic in the first place.

We should instead embrace wine’s nature.

Seek Similar, Not Same

If you’ve had an excellent trip to the South of France and found THE wine, don’t spend your time trying to find that exact bottle. Instead, use it as a template to explore other wines from the region.

If you loved a Syrah-Grenache blend from Languedoc, try other Languedoc reds. Then try Côtes du Rhône. Then Spanish Garnacha blends. You’ll find dozens of wines that capture what you loved about the original—and some might be even better.

Yes, there might be a producer who makes such good wine in such limited quantities that they sell it all at the winery. But there are also wine importers whose whole job is built around finding the best wines of the region and importing them into the UK. Start exploring, and I’m very sure you’ll find wines just as good.

Return to Favourites, But Expect Evolution

Just because it might not be exactly as it was the first time is no reason not to return to an old favourite. There can be something nice and comforting about revisiting a firm favourite.

This time, instead of expecting it to be as good as the first time, embrace and even look forward to how it’s different. It’s really unlikely the wine is going to go from excellent to awful. And sometimes—just sometimes—it can be even better than you remember.

Make New Perfect Moments

Honestly, this is my favourite option. The original wine was special because of the moment it was enjoyed in, so just create new memories. The joy is in discovery, not in re-creation.

I must finish by saying this isn’t anti-consistency. Like tea drinkers, I love my morning coffee, made a specific way—if I’m honest, in a specific cup. Champagne houses deliberately blend for consistency, and I love that about them. I enjoy revisiting old favourites. Some everyday wines are designed to be reliable, and there’s nothing wrong with having your own “house wine” for Tuesday nights.

But if you treat ALL wine like tea—seeking only consistency and safety—you’re missing what makes wine special.

Tea is about comfort. Wine is about adventure. And that’s wonderful news, because it means wine won’t stay the same whether you explore or not. You might as well embrace it.

Stop chasing that one perfect bottle from that one perfect moment. Start creating new perfect moments with new bottles. That’s the actual game.

Cheers

Duncan

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