SIBA South West Beer Competition – The Forge Brewery has won the Champion Beer of the show for the 2nd year in succession – with a different beer this year, beating 260 other beers. Full results available here. You may remember I wrote an article on it’s remarkable achievement of winning last year, plus winning [...]

Which wine is healthy and best for you? With all the sensationalist, misleading headlines about wine and beer causing cancer, this is a very popular question at the moment. There are two parts to the answer – firstly which wine has actual health benefits, and secondly which wine has the least negative effects! In my usual waffling [...]

One glass of wine or one pint of beer a day can cause cancer – that is the headline on the news today, and is the biggest load of crap I’ve heard in a long time. Again the media are using sensationalist headlines to grab attention, at the expense of real informative journalism. Before you read [...]

Buy gourmet meats online? Order gourmet sausages, steaks, burgers online for home delivery? YES –  that is exactly what people are now doing from companies like www.westingourmet.co.uk  I put it down to a combination of factors – the credit crunch, the success of TV programmes like Come Dine With Me and Masterchef, and even the [...]

There are two parts to this page. Firstly explaining the con the supermarkets use to sell inferior wine, and secondly a breakdown of the actual costs of a bottle of wine where you can see who is actually making all the money, and why you really shouldn’t buy £5 wine! We can all begrudge the [...]

The UK press have reported that counterfeit wine has been discovered for sale in numerous off licenses in the South East. The wine is labelled as “Jacob’s Creek” and is believed to be imported from China. It’s apparently being offered for sale for £2 per bottle to these off licenses – so they clearly knew [...]

Well, what a massively disappointing budget for the pub trade, brewers and pubgoers alike in the UK. George Osbourne upheld the excise duty escalator (as put in place by the former Labour government) which will have disastrous effects on the industry and actually bring in less revenue for the treasury! It is estimated 10,000 jobs will [...]

Well it has hit the headlines again today – the UK Government’s underhand headline grabber which will have absolutely no benefits on all the things they claim to be aiming to improve! 6 different Medical bodies have slammed the plans for a completely useless minimum pricing structure, and have withdrawn their support for the Government [...]

Not an easy headline to understand so here’s the explanation. Congratulations to Dave Lang of the Forge Brewery in Hartland, for his recent success at the Society for Independent Brewer’s 2011 UK Champion Beer Awards. The winners of the regional heats were all submitted in their relevant categories through to the national final. The Forge Brewery Lighthouse [...]

Carlo’s Restaurant - technically Italian cuisine – is undoubtedly the best seafood and steak restaurant in Llandudno, and probably all of North Wales. Carlo only buys the best produce – wild seabass (not farmed), Conwy mussels, Anglesey king scallops – not the little tiddly ones you will pay through the nose for in London! Their Gamberoni [...]