Manchester-based brewer Beer Nouveau compiled a list of 83 British breweries that closed in 2022 in the wake of Covid and soaring costs. The list comprised only those who’d gone public about their closure and didn’t include Beer Nouveau itself, which revealed in October that it was calling time. Among the (relatively) big independents to go were Kelham Island, Twisted Wheel and…

Ten years ago, the prospect of putting wine in a can was little more than an unthinkable, undrinkable one. So how did canned wine come to be a mainstay on our supermarket shelves? And as of this month, replace the majority of mini wine bottles in Waitrose? Henry Connell, co-founder of canned wine company The Uncommon offers his take.  Across the pond, Americans have been embracing the…

One of the pleasures of running a bricks-and-mortar shop is the interaction with customers who are, for the most part, pleasant, engaged and enthusiastic about wine. You’re probably expecting a sardonic punchline, but no, it’s true.  These interactions can begin in many ways, but it’s increasingly common for them to be about matching a wine with what they’re going to eat. I hesitate to…

A pre-Christmas football World Cup offers an unprecedented sales opportunity, says David Louis, sales & marketing director of Field Sales Solutions The 2022 World Cup will be like no other for the off-trade. The month-long tournament, ending on December 18, creates an overlap with Christmas that means the usual in-store football promotions will compete with annual festive marketing activity.  World Cup promotions,…

As we find ourselves in one of the most challenging economic environments in recent history, there will be many trying to plan what the impact will be. In a world where the most common words in the media are ‘U-turn’ and ‘unprecedented’, it is no surprise that ‘uncertainty’ is inevitable. We know from the 2008/09 financial crisis that consumers will be choosing fewer occasions in…

Jeff Evans back with his bimonthly beer review. CLOUDWATER SOCAL, 4.8%  Manchester’s Cloudwater Brew has relaunched its core range of canned beers. It features three existing brands and two new creations, one called Fuzzy, which is a hazy pale ale, and this one, SoCal, its bright and shiny cousin.  At a time when haze is all the rage, new crystal-clear American pale ales are…

“It’s a naïve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.”  The devastating caption to James Thurber’s satirical 1937 cartoon of a host presenting a wine to his dinner guests has never been bettered as a lampoon of winespeak. It is a reminder that people have been critiquing, or at least scoffing at, tasting notes for as long as wine worth writing…