London Wine Fair: “Top 100″ economical wines, by The Wine Gang

May 17, 2011

A great pleasure to finally meet Joanna Simon, whose lovely book Discovering Wine – full of useful text and illustrations – counts as one of my wine loving inspirations. I did not realize that she is part of the Wine Gang, a crew of highly qualified tasters who for the past three years at this annual event in the great city of London, pick out 100 top wines out of almost 1,000…

Each year brings different themes for wines generally priced between £5-15 or thereabouts. This year features several categories: “Aromatics” and “Pinots” and “Rhone varietals” and “Natural, organic and biodynamic wines”… Tom Cannavan, whom I have known for several years and who has published some of my work, is also part of the Gang and publishes a terrific website and forum: The Wine Pages. As is Anthony Rose, Decanter and The Independent wine correspondent and author. Rose hosted a master class on New World Pinot Noir which I attended (and reported on) this past Saturday 14 May at Decanter’s Fine Wine Encounter.

So it was a real pleasure to go through some of these wines on the first day of this fair, 17 May 2010. I only did some whites today, but will also taste the reds tomorrow… Here a brief video: