There is definitely a little je ne sais quoi in the air…. Bastille Day followed by the Tour de France, topped off with the launch party of Mr & Mrs Smith’s Hotel Collection – France. I love cycling but I only took part in two of the events above, naturellement.

1. Bastille Day at Battersea Park proved France is anything but out of favour with Londoners as queues for the country’s gastronomic delights were consistently longer than my patience can handle!

2. The launch of Mr & Mrs Smith’s Hotel Collection – France, embraced an air of shabby chic that only West London and parts of Paris can get away with and still retain their cool edge as we hung out in Notting Hill’s quaint Travel Book Shop drinking Champagne Ruinart Brut NV and eating our body weight in cheese from the dangerously waist-expanding La Fromagerie. ………

The results are in! The wines selected to fly the Miss Bouquet World Wine Flag are ready to be revealed! Last month, when England was still in the World Cup and the St George’s cross was freckling the streets I got a group of football widows together for a night flying a flag of a different kind. The World Wine Flag. Red, white and rosé of course.

Why? Well I’ve sat through my fair share of formulaic wine trade seminars in my time, you know the ones with the dramatic sounding titles that lead you to believe that by attending this seminar you’ll walk away with the key to abundant wine sales at profitable margins for years to come. My most recent experience of this time wasting exercise was at the London International Wine Fair 2010 in May. The seminar was alluringly titled:

“Where is the UK wine category heading”

………

The other day I was invited to … drum roll please…. ‘the world’s first synchronised wine tasting!’ An event where wine, technology and a truly international palate would meet. The concept seemed simple – 90 wine specialists (journalists, bloggers, wine educators) from across the world would taste the same wines at the same time and be connected via video link to the winemakers*. Hosted by the Sud de France, one of France’s many generic bodies responsible for promoting produce from the area, I was invited to taste 5 wines** chosen as the standard bearers of the region at their London offices in Cavendish Square.

In the spirit of the high tech event that it was I had been asked to bring my laptop, naturellement, so I could ‘blog’ about what was happening in real time. On arrival though it was clear to see the genre of the event hadn’t registered in the minds of some, and despite the video link equipment around the room only 4 of us had the right tools to fully participate. A reflection of the wine trades inability to keep up with what is now the most basic of technologies? Perhaps. But what then does it say about wine journalism when 2 of the remaining invitées had to be supplied with notebooks! Seriously. ………