The private members club for wine lovers, 67 Pall Mall, has announced it is opening a new club in Melbourne, Australia.

67 Pall Mall has 5 clubs around the world, that started after the initial London club was set up. These include Verbier, Singapore, Beaune and Bordeaux. The new Melbourne club will open in mid 2025 and will take over a year to refurbish the property. With 21,500 sq. ft of floor space, this will be the world’s largest 67 Pall Mall site. The club will be spread across three floors, including open-air balconies offering members uninterrupted views of Melbourne cityscapes, Treasury Gardens and Melbourne Cricket Club. Membership for the London club is £2,500 per year with a £1,750 joining fee.
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A team from the University of Geneva in Switzerland has used AI to assess where seven wines from Bordeaux originated from. They are able to identify the winery that the wines came form with 100% accuracy.

The test involved analysing 73 wines using Gas chromatography to find individual compounds. The plan was to create a unique fingerprint for Bordeaux estates ranging from 1990 to 2007. An AI was then trained to look at the results of the Gas chromatography, a further 7 wines were then used to test the accuracy of the AI at predicting which estates the wines came from. The results were 100% accurate.

The goal was to identify a specific, invariable chemical signature for each estate. Co-author Stéphanie Marchand, a professor at the Institute of Vine and Wine Science at the University of Bordeaux, said ‘This allowed us to show that each estate does have its own chemical signature. We also observed that three wines were grouped together on the right and four on the left, which corresponds to the two banks of the Garonne on which these estates are located.’

While the program traced wines back to the correct châteaux with 99% accuracy, it struggled to distinguish vintages, reaching a 50% accuracy at best.

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Académie du Vin Library became the largest specialist wine publisher in the world with the purchase of Classic Wine Library this week.

Académie du Vin Library MD Hermione Ireland said: We are thrilled and honoured to be the new custodians for this series of books, an essential part of the wine publishing industry and its knowledge base.

Classic Wine Library was owned by Infinite Ideas and includes 33 titles by authors including Sarah Jane Evans MW, Richard Mayson and Elizabeth Gabay MW. Books include their 'The Wines Of...' series of more than 30 books featuring, among others, Australia, New Zealand, Northern Spain, Great Britain, Chablis and the Rhône.
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If you have ever had a bad headache after drinking red wine, it may not be just the alcohol. A new theory blames wines made from grapes that have been exposed to lots of sunlight.

Acetaldehyde is created when alcohol breaks down in the body and researchers know that high levels of acetaldehyde can cause facial flushing, headache and nausea. The body's defence is to produce an enzyme known as ALDH2 which breaks down the acetaldehyde, helping to limit the effects of over indulging in wine.

However, wines that are high in quercetin inhibit the ALDH2 enzyme from breaking down the harmful acetaldehyde, making the risk of headaches worse. Red wine was found to have much higher levels of quercetin than white wine, beer or even spirits.

Sun-exposed grape clusters exhibit quercetin levels that are 4 to 8 times higher than those in shaded clusters. Some grape varieties can also be higher in quercetin . Vitis vinifera red wines exhibited chemical levels ranging from 10.26 to 13.81 mg/L, and Italian Sangiovese wine showed levels as high as 19 mg/L. This variability further emphasizes the role of quercetin in contributing to red wine headaches and indicates that some red wines may be more problematic than others.
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Nutritional and calorie information will need to be made available to consumers from the 8th December 2023 when the EU’s Exception for Wine is lifted. Not only will nutrition info and calories need to be declared but also any ingredients used in the production.

This includes:

Fining agents: these may not be in the final wine but are used to clarify or clean the wine during winemaking. These can include egg whites, fish eggs (isinglass) and pea proteins which will now need to be identified.

Sugar: Chaptalization is the common practise of adding sugar in cooler climates.

Tartaric acid to increase acidity in warm areas.

Yeast used to inoculate the wine

Bacteria for malolactic conversion

Potassium Bicarbonate and Calcium Carbonate to de-acidify wines

SO2 as an anti oxidant and anti microbe.

Liqueur de tirage and d’expedition to sweeten and allow secondary fermentation in champagne production.

Yeast Nutrients such as diammonium phosphate to help yeast fermentation, especially secondary fermentation in sparkling wine production.

Enzymes: Some winemakers use enzymes to aid in processes such as the breakdown of pectins, which can help with juice extraction and clarification.
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Wine is nearly but not quite the UK’s favourite drink, but its at the expense of beer.

Since the 1960s, the consumption of beer in the UK has halved while wine has grown from almost nothing to be 33.7% of consumption compared to beer at 36.1%, according to the latest data from the WHO (World Health Organisation).

Whilst overall alcohol consumption in the UK has been dropping, the rise in the amount of wine consumed has been at the expense of beer. Spirits consumption has remained broadly flat since the 1980’s, even with the upswing in gin consumption and still only accounts for 24% of all alcohol consumed in the UK.

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