Decanter Wine Retailer Awards

Decanter, the well known UK based wine magazine, recently announced its winners of their annual Wine Retail Awards for 2015.

The awards aim to offer the UK wine drinker guidance on those wine retailers who, in the view of Decanter judges, show imagination, drive and evangelism across key categories ranging from high street supermarkets to specialist retailers.

Asda - best supermarket retailer. Decanter 2015 wine retailer awards. Photo courtesy of Decanter.

There were some new names on the winners podium this year with Asda winning best supermarket, usurping the multiple winning M&S who took second place.

The Wine Society was a worthy repeat winner of the National Retailer of the Year (we are big fans) with Oddbins coming second.

Other notables were Uncorked of London taking the award for Small Independent Retailer and the crowd funded and quite fabulous New Zealand Wine Cellar recently opened in Brixton winning the award for the best Specialist Retailer of Australian and New Zealand wines.

Congratulations to all the winners - we will look at a number of these in more detail in the near future.

#suddefrancetop100 - All eyes on the Languedoc-Roussillon this year

You may never have heard of the 'Languedoc-Roussillon' region in the South of France, or perhaps you don't care because you find French wines too confusing and you'd rather stick with your bottle of Aussie wine where you can tell what grapes it was made from. We kinda agree with you on that point.

However, France does have an awful lot to offer if you know where to look. Often seen as the place where the expensive wine comes from (think Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy) there are some fantastic everyday wines if you know where to look.

Launched recently, the Sud De France Top 100 is an excellent website that helps consumers successfully navigate through what is the largest wine producing region in the world, to find good quality, keenly priced wines that match their taste preferences.

The Top 100 were selected by a panel of judges comprising of wine writers, authors, buyers and somelliers and this winners can be browsed through on their website.

Two of our favourites were the Chateau Mignan Minervois, a red wine that went great with our BBQ with interesting smoky yet sweet black fruit flavours. We also felt the Paul Mas Viognier over delivered with lush tropical fruits for a wine sub £10.

Check out http://www.suddefrancetop100.co.uk