Tim Atkin's wine column loses weight

Sunday newspaper The Observer has scaled down its weekly wine column written by Tum Atkin MW for the past 17 years from 900 words to just 2 wine recommendations and tasting notes of 40 words each. Tim Atkin will still appear in the Observer Food Monthly, the paper's colour supplement.

Its a growing trend with The Times bringing their wine column in-house in 2009 and The Independent on Sunday cutting their column the previous year. A Facebook site called Save the Wine Column has been launched by wine journalist Rebecca Gibb with over 700 members and growing.

But its not all doom and gloom for wine writers with weekly wine columns still continuing in the UK's 4 major daily broadsheets The Financial Times, Telegraph, Independent and Times.