Villa Maria 50th Anniversary Gala Dinner – Fairmont Peace Hotel Dragon Phoenix Restaurant, May 23

The Wandering Palate Shanghai correspondent toasts Sir George Fistonich and Villa Maria, New Zealand, 50th Anniversary in style. Read More >

“Chateau Sucker – Why Rudy Kurniawan Was Arrested for Wine Fraud” New York Magazine

Wine socialists will hardly feel any sympathy for the embarrassment of wealthy individuals obsessing with old and rare bottles of wine and being duped wholesale by a fraudulent pretender. However, there is some excellent intrigue in this article and the whole story, or debacle, has to be the perfect script for the ‘next’ wine movie; a worthy apologue full of dark irony and humour blacker than cabernet sauvignon. Ideally my first choice for directing the film would have been Stanley Kubrick (RIP), but perhaps it would be Woody Allen who would best portray the absurdity and peculiarities of New York/American avidity and heteromorphic social climbing. Read More >

The Wandering Palate alleviates the Rosé dry argument!

As the adage goes, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

I have been trying to lead a horse to water, so to speak, for years now – that is convincing importers there is a market for Rosé here in Singapore. Read More >

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Sauvignon Blanc Saved: Geoff Weaver Wines, Lenswood

There is a Tsunami of Sauvignon Blanc in the Australian marketplace, and an awful lot of what is available gives the grape a bad name. Thin, weedy wines, where vague fruit and harsh acid bifurcate on entry, leaving the fruit wandering about aimlessly, while the acid separately hits the middle of the chest like a liquid heart attack. Read More >

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The Rise of the English – the New Frontier of Wines and the Wine Pantry in London

Our Wandering Sommelier, Shalom Chin, investigates the English wine following the trail from the Wine Pantry at Borough Market and out into the field in Kent and Sussex. And he’s impressed with what he sees – read on… Read More >

Wine Archaeology amongst the Supermarket Shelves

It’s not often that you will find the Wandering Palate lurking around the (Singapore) supermarket wine shelves, but sometimes out of curiosity I have a poke around to see what’s being stocked, invariably 90 percent of it completely pedestrian. Read More >

Comfortably Numb

It’s been one of those lost days, not a difficult day or writer’s block, but just one of those days… we everything seems futile. The problem is I stupidly started watching the CNN coverage of the Republican Primary’s, and it cauterised my brain. Read More >

Sugarloaf Ridge New Releases

Julian Colville, proprietor of Sugarloaf Ridge rushed through Singapore recently, on-route to the Cool-Climate Conference in Tasmania. Yes, their vineyard is in Tasmania but career commitments have taken the family to Amsterdam for the present. Read More >

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Bring out your dead

I have the dreaded flu. Actually, this is my second dose of it this month! Having just recovered from a mild bout, this one is lingering for over a week now, since a trip to Hong Kong, where I suspect a friend unintentionally passed on the said infliction. As flu’s go, I have had worse, although we males tend to be pathetic patients, and frankly – I’m dying. Read More >

Wine Evangelist

When leading American wine writer, author and philosophical commentator, Matt Kramer, visited Singapore last year the first thing he asked me was to bring him up to speed on the dynamics of the market and given his time constraints, he would like to meet the one person who is influencing the market here most, “The gatekeeper to the evolution of wines styles and trends, the evangelist of the wine culture, the inspirer of thirst.” Read More >