Ben's Adventures in Wine Making

I can't remember when exactly I opened this bottle (it was before Christmas), but it was a wine that both Claire and I rejected for bein...

Distinctly odd but (depending on who you ask) not unpleasant. If the person you ask, however, is my wife, she will tell you just quite how u...

Strawberry wine, it turns out, is not one to lie down in the cellar for years before sampling. This wine was so near to undrinkable that I p...

This wine has not improved with keeping. Claire could not think of anything good to say about it beyond that it was not undrinkable. I decid...

This bottle was opened to test a hypothesis. The last bottle we had of this vintage was rejected by Claire on her first sip with a great de...

I decided to open a bottle of Ya Ya Pear, mostly because Claire was out on Saturday night, waiting for samples of Covid 19 to arrive in her ...

Well, this bottle hasn't improved with age. I poured us both a glass on a Thursday night and noticed that its clarity left something to ...

Much worse! After being relatively pleased with the previous bottle, this one has reverted to its bitter and overly-floral self. I can't...

This really is a poor vintage of Rose Petal Wine. There is an overall bitterness to it and its best quality is its colour - a bronzy-pink. B...

Claire opened this bottle because I had finished the whisky in a whisky-mac and she also wanted something to drink. Her first sip rapidly tu...

It has taken us until early November to drink the first bottle from this batch of strawberry wine. This is because I stored all the bottles ...

Well, that is another bottle down the sink. Only three left to go. This was my comedy wine for the Kelso holiday and saved until the last ...

It has been a long time since we opened a bottle of Julia's ancient wines. When this one was being made, I was sitting my Law Society Fi...

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Zucchini Wine lost the Wine Party. Out of sixteen bottles it came sixteenth and received an average score of 0.17...

This bottle did not even reach an average score of 1 at my Wine Party. It got 0.48, and my specific instructions were to rate each bottle 1-...

We are into the bottom three wines for the Wine Party. This came fourteenth of sixteen, with an average score of 1.25 out of 5. It really wa...

Our final bottle of Mango Wine (phew!) was opened for my Alphabet Wine Party. It was in the bottom four (of sixteen) bottles and there was a...

I have a rule. I will not write up a bottle of wine until it is empty. I am breaking that rule. In front of me is a bottle of Zucchini Wine ...

Claire spent the weekend in Oxford playing Ravel's String Quartet. Obviously I was going to have a bottle of wine whilst she was away, b...

I took this bottle to Dorset with me as my 'Comedy Wine'. Rather than pouring eight glasses, one for everyone, I poured one glass in...