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© John Farren

IWFS Berkshire Branch - Annual General Meeting. 2009

    Neville Hall, Waltham St Lawrence 

        The 2008/2009 Secretary's Report of the activities of the Branch is available in downloadable (PDF) form here for those who have not seen it and for others who would like see a review of the wide range of food and wine related activities which the were organised in the last year.


IWFS Berkshire - An Italian Experience 2008    

        A group of Berkshire members spent an October wine and food weekend in Veneto tasting some of the wonderful wines of the area including Valpolicella, Custoza, and Soave and the superb derivatives, Amarone and Recioto.

For full details visit here.

        As a result of this excellent visit the IWFS Berkshire Branch has set a new direction for IWFS by gaining agreement from the EAC Committee to present IWFS Award Certificates for exceptional Wine Presentations and Tastings. A report on the award winners and the presentations can be viewed here..


Sipping Snippets:

Expand your vinous knowledge

  Want to learn more about wine, grapes, wine growing countries and areas? In fact anything about wine and, for that matter, food. Wikipedia is a huge repository of information on line. If you would like to delve into it's countless articles on the subject, click here for easy access.

The Top 100 wines of 2008
     Want to know what the the top 100 wines of 2008 are? As far as the Wine Spectator is concerned anyway. Visit their website to see videos, the tasting notes (and the prices!)

     I can strongly recommend a visit to this website. The videos and tasting notes for the top 10 are excellent. Just click on the home page and then the top 100 for 2008. Close the page inviting you to become a subscriber to the magasine (unless you want to take up the offer of course) and click on the video or tasting note link for any of the top 10.
    I guess that the Editor in Chief still has an influence on the list with Chateaneuf du Pape taking two of the top eight places! But there does seem to a wider range of wines this year with a Colchagua Valley, Chile wine taking top spot. In the top ten there are two from the Medoc, a Douro, a barolo, a Sonoma County, and a Sauternes. What was quite pleasing was the range of wines in the $15-$20 range resting comfortably in the 40 - 50th spots. Surprisingly this year there was no mention of Paul Draper's Ridge or any SuperTuscans.
    For those who are not suffering the current finacial downturn they might like to buy a bottle or two of Chateau L'Evangile, Pomerol (of course its 2005!) which is priced at $260 a bottle - but it was the only wine in the top 100 with a score (Parker?) of 100. It still only ranked 21st place though!

(JF)