By Robert Joseph for Meininger's Wine Business International

“We like the game...”

My young Chinese friend had just come up with one of the best responses to the question of food-and-wine-matching I've heard.

By Robert Joseph

The wine producers of Croatia, Slovenia, Lebanon and Portugal, to name but four countries, have all been making huge advances in wine quality. All have also valiantly tried to build export sales through ambitious generic public relations efforts.

by Graham Holter for Wine Intelligence

French wine sales aren’t what they were, at least in major destination countries like the UK – or indeed their own domestic market. Yet they continue to be the consumer’s favourite, according to research. The finding comes from bona fide consumer research, carried out by Wine Intelligence in eight leading markets, and aggregated to provide a global snapshot of the preferences of regular wine drinkers.

by Bob Campbell MW

New Zealand wine drinkers enthusiastically support their local wine industry. Perhaps they’re not as parochial as the French or Australians but New Zealand wine retailers report strong customer loyalty for the local product. “I don’t mind paying a bit more as long as it’s a New Zealand wine” is a common refrain, according to one Auckland retailer.

by Robert Joseph

If critics and consumers don’t enjoy a style of wine, should the industry rethink the way they’re speaking to consumers – or rethink the wine itself? Robert Joseph asks the question.

by Andrew Jefford

Champagne is France’s strangest wine. For proof, three paradoxes. One: France is the country which has given the world the notion of terroir. Yet the country’s most prestigious and expensive wine comes from its only single AOC monolith.

by Robert Joseph

There was once a New Yorker magazine cartoon in which a man having breakfast in an featureless hotel ‘buttery’ turns to a diner at another table to enquire "Excuse me, could you settle a bet: is this the Athens Hilton or the Vienna Hilton?". I must confess that I almost had a similar moment of dislocation at the end of May. Was I in the Hong Kong Convention Centre or the Excel Exhibition Centre in London?