After a patchy transition from 2022 to 2023 for me, I am planning a few new things for this year.
This platform, Substack is getting more and more features. It is looking more and more like a social media service without the control by erratic foreign billionaires.
The extended chat features are available on the Substack app for phones and tablets.
Instructions here:
As we become more interactive I’d like to have more members, so if you have friends who might like this newsletter please share it.
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Here is a little game that you might like to play with a few friends - or by yourself if your friends are having dry January.
The idea is you get three masked bottles of quality wine and a quiz book. Red, white or mixed. Guided questions for you to narrow down just what you are drinking. Fun, educational and social. Ideal as a gift.
Details here Note: a small commission comes my way if you buy after clicking this link.
Updating Pages on Vinodiversity
This is a never ending job for me. Sometimes wineries change their name. This happened recently when Three Willows Vineyard in Northern Tasmania changed their name to Meander Valley Vineyard. They feature on Vinodiversity as growers of the variety Baco Noir.
Other recent pages which have been updated can be found on this list.
I rely on feedback from readers to keep up to date with alternative varieties. So if you see a mistake or omission on the Vinodiversity website please let me know. At the moment I have a backlog of about 20 entries to process so I will be busy for some time.
Thursday Taste and Talk
These Zoom sessions enabled a few of us to keep in touch over the past difficult times. We will continue in 2023.
The basic idea is to have a round table discussion about a theme on Thursday afternoons at around 5pm.
So the next session will be scheduled at 5pm Thursday 19th of January.
The theme will be looking back at wine labels and naming. I will load part two of my article about the wine labels depicted in Dan Murphy’s book What Wine is That, published in 1973.
I’ll send the details for you to log in to the discussion early in the day of 17th January.