Gambero Rosso Top Italian Wines Roadshow (SG)
You may have heard of Gambero Rosso, and their recently-held Top Italian Wines road show. Gambero Rosso is an Italian food & wine magazine; Mr X calls it the Decanter of Italy. Relevantly, they write about wines, they review wines, and they dish out wine awards. And, Gambero Rosso is literally “red prawn”, thus their logo. […]
And up goes the alcohol tax!
After stagnated at same rate for a decade, the latest Singapore budget will raise alcohol tax by a whopping 25%. Within minutes, many social media active alcoholics expressed their outrage before setting out to dry taps and bottles. Expecting additional 125 million dollars in tax revenue to derive from this adjustment, is this driven by number […]
Mark the date – Gambero Rosso in Singapore on 12th March 2014
Developing wine market and our ever stronger interest in Italian wines, these factors have attracted Gambero Rosso back to Singapore for the third time. Known as the Gambero Rosso Top Italian Wines road show, the event continues to have a remarkable walk around tasting featuring 200 wines and two guided tasting sessions.
Wine by volume – how is Singapore drinking?
After taking two weeks break for Chinese New Year, it is time for me to get back in business. During this period, I took some time to look through the alcohol tax figures released in late January by the custom authority. Now this makes a good trivia question, do you know how much volume we […]
Fast track to becoming a Wine Expert
Lean. Thin. Acidic. Astringent. Bitter. No, not your mother-in-law. And not me, either. These are the notes that recently appeared in a wine critic’s notebook. It requires pondering — can a bottle wine resemble, to such an astonishing degree, someone you personally know and, heavens forbid, have to live with? Let’s face it — if […]
Is direct to consumers the way forward?
If there is a way to bring wines straight from fields to door with a snap of the finger, I will be exhilarated. But in reality, wines go through many hands and vehicles before they sit in stores waiting to be picked up. Dollars and cents along the way compounded into the final price tag […]
Meet Wine Xin 2014
Happy new year and welcome back to Wine Xin, more vibrant and bolder than ever before. It had been a nut-cracking, hair-pulling week as we burnt midnight oil and struggled through late nights to upgrade the entire layout. After countless hours, this site is nicely done up and ready to go but we will still be […]
Rounding up Wine Xin for 2013
It feels like yesterday when Chek invited me to a year-end tasting at Praelum. The image of how our tasting notes dwindled from enthusiastic lengthy paragraphs to short hand scribbles remains as impressionable as ever. Now looking at my watch ticking away the remaining seconds and minutes of 2013, it is time to sum up my […]
Closure with old world wines from Wine Fiesta
Crowd. Small talks. Getting in and out the way. Recalling all these as part of the Wine Fiesta experience, it is time I pen my closure to this year’s episode. Almost thirty producers and close to hundred of labels, my old world hunt was less than ideal. Finding balance was a challenge, with a few […]
Singapore Wine Fiesta – Across the new world
Gees… What crews did Straits Wine hire? Merry-men of Santa Claus right before Christmas? It took one night, and the Wine Fiesta layout was shuffled. First of the many wineries present was ARA with their highly expressive wines from Marlborough. I mentioned the flank was missing, now I stood corrected.