Try the festive wine quiz

11:20am Friday 28th December 2007

Oxfordshire wine writer SARAH McCLEERY invites you to test your wine knowledge in her special festive quiz. From The Oxford Times

	Dos and don'ts of Champagne
	11:30am Thu 20 Dec 07
	A GP acquaintance of mine has a lady patient who is 92 years old. This lady lives in her own home, looks after herself with little outside help and has a houseful of great-grandchildren to visit every Sunday. According to my friend, she is more active and in better health than many of her 70-something patients. From The Oxford Times

	Warming reds for winter
	10:08am Thu 29 Nov 07
	I have a friend who, as regular as clockwork, puts away all her summer clothes on the last day of September and replaces them with warm woollens and rainproof jackets. Regardless of the weather, she swaps back again on May 1 as though chilly, damp days are no longer a possibility. From The Oxford Times

Why wait? Drink it now.

4:21pm Friday 23rd November 2007

It's the season for corporate wine tastings. On the whole they are great fun, but the curse of the mobile phone has begun to play an interesting role in these events. It goes something like this: one of the happy crowd will approach me at half-time and ask whether I know anything about a particular bottle of wine they have got at home and if this weekend is the time they should be drinking it. It's a perfectly valid question and one that I get asked a lot. From The Oxford Times

	A taste of success
	2:15pm Thu 15 Nov 07
	Christmas Tasting has been and gone and what a triumph it was! Our first tasting in 2006 had barely two dozen members in attendance and only 12 months later we were happy to welcome almost four times that number through the doors. From The Oxford Times

	Is it so wrong to be a bon-viveur?
	1:44pm Thu 8 Nov 07
	It has been an interesting week. It began with my first (and no doubt last) live television appearance on the BBC's Sunday morning debate programme, The Big Questions. I wasn't too unhappy about being identified for my bon-viveur lifestyle and their hope that I would speak enthusiastically about the joys of unlimited wine-drinking. Presenter Nicky Campbell, using Government-speak, was able to pick me out as something of a hazard' given my tendency to exceed the Government's recommendation (for a woman) of no more than one and a half bottles of wine a week. From The Oxford Times

	Bordeaux moving with the times
	3:00pm Thu 1 Nov 07
	I HAVE just been listening to a rather daft wine feature on the radio. It was irritating on several counts. From The Oxford Times

	Drinking a toast to south Africa
	2:04pm Thu 25 Oct 07
	As I write, I'm only too aware that by the time this article goes to print England will either have achieved the incredible and won their second rugby World Cup Final in succession or South Africa will have been crowned champions. From The Oxford Times

	Fine wine for the vegetarian drinker
	3:33pm Thu 18 Oct 07
	I was in Southern Spain on a wine visit last week. It was memorable for all sorts of reasons. Not least the kindly management at one vineyard who had invited us to an 8.30am breakfast at which they served up (among other things) some delightful spicy pork dishes, jamón, anchovies on red peppers and a 14.5 per cent bottle of chunky red monastrell. I tell you not a word of a lie when I say that my digestive system is still in recovery and I am on a strict low-fat (and less alcohol) diet for the foreseeable future. From The Oxford Times

	Argentina is really good
	4:20pm Thu 11 Oct 07
	September marks the restart of the wine tasting season and following the dry summer', it generally can't come soon enough. Not all tastings though generate much enthusiasm. You have to drink a lot of frog juice to strike liquid gold. From The Oxford Times

	Time for game and those hearty reds
	2:31pm Thu 4 Oct 07
	IN my tiny university bed-sit I possessed a very aged, precariously-positioned, two-ring Baby Belling oven. It was tiny. It couldn't have been more than 50cm wide and it was barely possible to roast half a chicken in the modestly proportioned oven. From The Oxford Times

Bordeaux moving with the times

3:00pm Monday 1st October 2007

I HAVE just been listening to a rather daft wine feature on the radio. It was irritating on several counts. From The Oxford Times

	Marrying cheese with wine
	11:14am Thu 27 Sep 07
	There's an ongoing dispute in our house and it resolves around cheese. More precisely, we can't agree at what point we should be eating it. Hubbie, who has a personal preference to finish his meal on a savoury note, likes it right at the very end. I, on the other hand, hanker to soak up my main course wine with a chunk of cheese before launching into a decadent sweet finale. From The Oxford Times

	Set up a wine-tasting club
	3:14pm Thu 20 Sep 07
	My village has a book club. Sadly, it is so popular that it has a waiting list and the members are all too healthy, committed and young to give me any hope that a space may be imminently available. I think they meet every six weeks or so - not more regularly because they're all too busy to have any hope of finishing a book in less time. From The Oxford Times

	The perfect time to open a bottle
	12:49pm Thu 13 Sep 07
	My parents-in-law are, to all intents and purposes, teetotallers. So I was more than a bit surprised when Brian's mother popped her head round her conservatory door last weekend asking, "How long does champagne normally last for?" From The Oxford Times

	Celebrating the sunshine state
	3:22pm Thu 6 Sep 07
	In the spring of this year, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, declared September Californian Wine Month. The proclamation is an enthusiastic statement of support for his state's wine-making heritage and industry: "This month is a time to celebrate . . . whether you're a winemaker or a responsible connoisseur, I extend my best wishes for a wonderful, month-long celebration of California's wine heritage." From The Oxford Times

	It's time for Hungarian wines
	10:01am Fri 31 Aug 07
	I know I'm lazy sometimes but with every course I ever undertook there always seemed to be one part of the programme that just seemed like far too much work. Better to make sure you knew all the other stuff really, really well and pray like mad that the area of dread didn't come up in a key question. From The Oxford Times

	Alarms ring for Oz wines
	2:12pm Thu 23 Aug 07
	The success of Australian wines is well documented. They have had a key role in turning us from a nation of beer drinkers into wine drinkers, pushing French wines off their perch, and taking the mystery out of what was in the bottle by helpfully putting the grape variety on the label and providing bemused consumers with informative labels. From The Oxford Times

	Raising a glass to global concerns
	2:09pm Thu 16 Aug 07
	The sun may be shining now (or at least, it is as I write this) but the dreadful July weather has left us all a bit shell-shocked. I am no scientist and what links there may be between the recent torrential downpours and global warming, it is not for me to comment. What I will say is that I've certainly been thinking that bit harder about the environmental impact of my actions. I've been making a conscious effort to cut down on the number of journeys I make in my car; I'm recycling more and there's not a piece of electrical equipment that's left on stand-by. Small measures these may be, but it's a start. From The Oxford Times

	Etiquette rule for wine and friends
	2:50pm Thu 9 Aug 07
	I HAVE never had a problem with estate agents. Not that is until this week, when I had invited one in to have a look at the house. From The Oxford Times

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