Latest On The Circular
New Member: Michele Padberg
Michele Padberg is a freelance writer, international wine judge, advanced sommelier, and member of the Association of Wine Educators.
With over 23 years of experience in the wine industry, she was part of the editorial board and a contributor on the e-book The New Normal in the Wine World, and has published work in the USA as well as Europe.
She crafts insightful lectures and hosts elite V...
Read More
New Member: Diana Thompson
Diana Thompson is based in Edinburgh and writes the wine column for The Sunday Post – Scotland’s most read Sunday paper as well as other local publications including Spotlight Magazine. She contributes to various digital food and drink online platforms such as Tom’s Food!
With over 30 years’ experience in the wine industry Diana has worked with various international companies and now runs Wine Ev...
Read More
New Member: Margot Mazur
Margot Mazur is a wine writer, educator, and sommelier who specializes in American wine and sustainability. With a passion for making wine accessible and engaging, Margot writes for publications like Wine Enthusiast and Travel and Leisure and runs "The Fizz," a newsletter featuring interviews with wine industry professionals across the United States, highlighting American wine and culture.
As a...
Read More
From the Chair: Cheap and expensive wine words
Are we all subconscious marketers? Meg Maker poses the question in her column this month.
Making fun of wine tasting notes is not a new sport; recall Thurber’s 1937 cartoon about the “naïve domestic Burgundy.” But academic research about wine tasting notes is much newer, and it’s being done not only by linguists but also by mathematicians, economists, statisticians, and AI modelers.
Such quant...
Read More
Chile or not Chile: the place of growth question
Liz Sagues, along with a bevy of other experienced communicators and sommeliers, participates in a fascinating tasting hosted by fellow CWW member Tim Atkin MW and Ventisquero winemaker Felipe Tosso, with a scientist also on hand, to explore whether Chilean terroir can in fact be tasted.
Is terroir tosh? That, essentially, was the question at 67 Pall Mall in London on 21st November. More specifi...
Read More
The tricentennial Bolgheri birthday bash
Sitting at a one-kilometer long Super Tuscan table, Filippo Magnani celebrates three decades of the daring DOC, which shook up the wine world for ever, and continues to set the highest of standards. He also gets in a sneak preview of the 2022 vintage.
On September 4, 2024, Bolgheri, the small yet iconic wine region on the Tuscan coast, commemorated a significant milestone: 30 years of the Bolgher...
Read More
New Member: Shelley Boettcher
Shelley Boettcher is a wine writer based in Canada and Italy. She holds her master’s degree in journalism and her advanced WSET certification, as well as her level 2 International Sommelier Guild certification.
Shelley has written three books about wine and her byline has appeared in magazines and newspapers around the world, including the New York Times, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail and Po...
Read More
From the Chair: Why keep writing about about wine?
Circle Chair Meg Maker ponders on what it means to be a 'wine writer' today, in an increasingly challenging professional environment.
The Circle is a guild of professionals who’ve earned the moniker ‘wine writer.’ That writing may appear in the form of article, blog, or book, or may be in service of podcast, broadcast, social post, lecture, or curriculum. (And yes, we do have photographers; they ...
Read More
Natural Trailblazers should stop us in our tracks
Valerie Kathawala is inspired by Natural Trailblazers, a recently-published book that profiles European winegrowers who are pioneering ways of reducing wine’s environmental impact. She argues that there are implicit lessons about how we wine journalists might rethink approaches to our own work.
‘What guides me is the idea of less,’ says Alsatian winegrower Yannick Meckert. “Less, less, less.”
M...
Read More
New Wine Writing Awards: Bumper crop of CWW winners
Wink Lorch reports back from the inaugural 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicators Awards, in which members took home a clutch of awards and nominations.
Friday September 6th at midday saw a glittering collection of wine communicators and trade gather at St John’s, Smith Square also known as the Sinfonia Smith Square, in Westminster, London. We were there for the inaugural gala awards ceremony fo...
Read More