JournalLive - North East Taste - Alastair Gilmour's wine column

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Beer list? In restaurants? It's the future! Jan 13 2012

SITTING down at your restaurant table, you take in the resplendent surroundings. This is a high- class venue but then, you’re celebrating a special occasion and it’s nothing but the best tonight. Read

Non-drinker just loves a pub Apr 15 2011

PUBS and music go hand-in-hand. Beer, wine and spirits provide the backing, although it’s a few years since a fog of cigarette smoke helped create an atmosphere.Read

Newcastle real ale festival matures with age Apr 08 2011

ACCORDING to a study, the average Briton believes that youth ends at 35 and old age begins at 58. Oh, dear. In between – all 23 years – is your middle age.Read

Warmly satisfying after a cold, wet beginning Apr 01 2011

DRINKING beer can warm the cockles of the hardest heart. It’s one of life’s great pleasures. But there’s no getting away from it, brewing beer is usually a cold business; it’s invariably wet around the feet and it’s not exactly a spectator activity.Read

Hawkshead Brewery has come a long way Mar 25 2011

THEY say that giving a journalist a brewery to run is like handing Dracula a blood bank.Read

Daffodils and real ales in the Lake District Mar 18 2011

TAKE the worthy words of Wordsworth and wander lonely as a cloud. This is the time of year to head for the Lake District – the early days of spring when the poet’s oft-quoted daffodils are “fluttering and dancing in the breeze”, the fells are tourist-light and the pubs are as welcoming as ever.Read

A real excuse to party for Camra's 40th birthday Mar 11 2011

IT ISN’T true that Nobody Loves a Fairy When She’s 40. It may be an old music hall favourite (do I hear “Two-Ton” Tessie O’Shea?) but we beg to differ about the sentiment. “Fairies” at 40 are all too easy to dismiss.Read

Soaps in the dock over alcohol use in storys Mar 04 2011

WHAT we watch on television is the latest area to come under the watchful eye of the drinks industry.Read

Brandling Villa festival goes with a banger Feb 25 2011

A SIGN in a Newcastle cafe window offers: “Jumbo sosige and chips £2”. A bargain, if only for its glimpse into the elasticity of language. They know what they mean, we know what they mean, and passers-by get to smile a little on a grey February day, so everybody wins.Read

Insight into collecting beer memorabilia Feb 18 2011

ELBOW meets vintage beer bottle, vintage beer bottle meets concrete floor, vintage beer bottle demonstrates how many pieces of glass went into its composition.Read

Back to basics to create the very best real ales Feb 11 2011

A SIDE-effect of being a thrifty, prudent Scot is that it lends an insight into the world of diversification. We get adept at recycling, regenerating and restoring, even salvaging “re-” words from the dictionary to dust off and to find another use for. Nothing is wasted.Read

Stouts set out to sea Feb 04 2011

AVAST ye landlubbers, shiver your timbers and splice the mainbrace. Batten down the hatches, cut and run, – the most arduous journey a brewery drayman has made for 200 years is about to begin.Read

Pubs bemoan ‘price betrayal’ Jan 28 2011

SIXTY years ago, a young cartoonist scribbled in pencil on a cigarette packet. David Law’s sketch on the box of 10 Player’s Navy Cut – “made from the finest tobacco found rich and cool in smoking” – was of a tousle-haired teenager.Read

Town Wall pub meats all our expectations... Jan 21 2011

WE ALL live by guidelines, laws and codes of conduct. We take advice, follow convention and develop criteria.Read

Fancy a schooner? Jan 14 2011

THERE are few words in the English language more pleasing to the ear than the four-letter “pint”.Read

Things are hotting up already for our region Jan 07 2011

CALL it challenging, demanding or formidable, the year ahead is going to be tough. The 2011 that’s unfolding will certainly have its troughs, but for many North East pubs, microbrewers and producers it’s simply another gauntlet to be picked up.Read

Takeover helped Jennings avoid being sunk by floods Dec 24 2010

WHEN Midlands-based Marston’s bought Jennings Brewery five years ago, there were protests in the streets of Cockermouth.Read

Tis the season to make the most of our winter warmers Dec 17 2010

IT’S back. Snow might threaten to bring the region to a standstill once more, but one North East brewer is banking on a mild start to 2011.Read

British beers score a hit with Russians Dec 10 2010

THEY may have secured the World Cup in 2018, but what will visitors to Russia find to drink when they get there? A friend of ours came back from Moscow armed with some interesting observations.Read

Matching the beers with your food taste Dec 03 2010

IT’S a bit of a tradition in the Gilmour household that all talk of the nine-letter C-word is banned before December dawns. Call it mean, call it miserable, call it ... Christmas, but it’s a cast-iron rule.Read

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