OWC A Dorset Vineyard has won the best sparkling wine award in the prestigious International Wine and Spirits Competition (IWSC) 2025 Sparkling Wine Producer Trophy section. Langham wine a 34-hectare single estate vineyard in Crawthorne, Dorset is run by Tommy Grimshaw a 29 year old visionary wine maker. Langham also swept the board at the WineGB Awards (the UK wine industry awards) earlier in 2025, picking up a total of eight trophies (including Supreme Champion) and the first ever 99 point score for Langham’s Perpetual, a minimal intervention Blanc de Blancs wine made from the best parcels of Dorset Chardonnay grapes across multiple years. This award confirms the quality of English sparkling wine and it's appeal on the world stage.
OWC The Scottish National Party have claimed that the Labour party have 'betrayed Scotland's whisky industry' after figures revealed a £156 million plunge in alcohol duty on spirits, after a hike in duty rates in the October 2024 Budget. It observed that the total value of revenue collected from alcohol duty on spirits in the April to October 2025 period was £2.156 billion. Noting that this represented a decrease of £156m or 7% compared with the same period in 2024 - “before the Labour Party announced their tax hike”.
OWC Staying in Scotland, Scottish brewery Innis & Gunn has confirmed it will close its three taprooms and brewery, with around 100 people likely to lose their jobs. The firm has struggled financially, a familiar story, and has collapsed into administration. The Perth-based brewery was founded in 2003 and had expanded to export to 35 countries, becoming one of the most popular Scottish beer brands. Irish drinks company C&C Group swooped in to rescue the doomed brewery in a multi-million pound deal.
OWC Sinkholes seem to be appearing everywhere. One that opened up on a golf course in Greater Manchester revealed an abandoned wine cellar, believed to have been sealed for more that 100 years. The cellar is thought to have once belonged to Davyhulme Hall manor house, which was demolished in 1888. Staff at Davyhulme Park Golf Club in Trafford, Greater Manchester, found the brick cellar filled with empty glass bottles of different shapes and sizes under the course's 13th hole. The golf club is one of the oldest in the country. Steve Hopkins, deputy head green keeper made the discovery on his morning inspection and said: "I was basically the first person to go in there for over a hundred years." Davyhulme Park Golf Course can now boast they are the first golf club with a hole in 1888 recorded at their course.
OWC A new report for a wine think tank, Areni Global states that the fine wine sector has been operating on a series of false assumptions about how and why people engage with the category and become wine collectors. The days of fine wine buyers being over 50 are over. Increasingly wine merchants and auction houses are reporting the emergence of buyers aged 28-40, a pattern that is happening globally. Among the key findings was the widespread assumption that a love of fine wine is passed down through generations is not supported by the data. Pauline Vicard, co-founder and executive director of Areni Global stated that “Fine wine only becomes part of someone’s life once curiosity has been validated by a peer.”
OWC An article in foodandwine.com suggests that Merlot is regaining its standing with US consumers. Branding it as - the come back grape, winemakers are challenging perceptions through blind tastings and by planting Merlot on Napa’s best soils rather than treating it as secondary to Cabernet Sauvignon. In 2004, a single line of movie dialogue did what no harvest failure or market crash could: it nearly killed off demand. In Pomerol, Petrus, is planted entirely to Merlot on a plateau of blue clay. It has long been considered one of the most profound wines on earth: silky, layered, almost otherworldly in concentration. Perhaps the most telling signal that Merlot’s moment is arriving again comes from an unexpected direction. Even the Cabernet-centric estates of Bordeaux’s Left Bank — long standard-bearers for Cabernet Sauvignon — are now turning their attention to the grape.
OWC Sign of the times Diageo, the maker of Guinness has slashed its interim dividend by over 50% to 20 cents per share from 40.5 cents following weak US demand. Shares fell over 6% in London after the firm cut its sales guidance for the second time in four months, with projected 2–3% sales declines due to inflation and younger consumers drinking less.
OWC Since the war began, wineries in Ukraine have been bombed, occupied or abandoned. Supply chains have been affected and employees have fled or joined the fight against Russia. in one of Russia’s largest drone and missile attacks of the war, last summer, a drone ploughed into the distribution warehouse of Pilot’s Wines in Kyiv. causing devastation. Sparkling wine producer, Artwinery, had to relocate from the eastern city of Bakhmut, which now lies in ruin. At Koblevo winery in the Mykolaiv region, Russian paratroopers reportedly landed in the vineyard. At nearby Beykush winery, Russian troops are only about 8km away on a strip of land across the water, from where they routinely shell Ukrainian towns and villages. Support for Ukrainian wine is strong. Sales of Ukrainian Wine in the UK have increased in the four years since Russia launched its invasion. The Ukrainian Wine Company - sold 37,000 bottles in the UK last year, up 20 per cent from 2024. Novel wines a multi award winning supplier, lists excellent Ukrainian wine and supermarket chain Lidl is currently selling Ukrainian wine for under £10 a bottle.
OWC Another one bites the dust. Molson Coors said it would close Sharp's brewery the makers of Doom Bar in Rock, Cornwall and make 50 staff members redundant by the end of the year. Doom Bar has consistently won gold in the World Beer Awards and was named after a sandbank which lies in the entrance of the Camel estuary. The vice chair of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), Gillian Hough, said the global brewer was "decimating the UK's brewing industry and heritage by closing a wonderful site which produces award-winning beer". A spokesperson for Molson Coors said the firm had "taken every step we can to try and avoid this outcome, however, the site is no longer financially sustainable as part of our national production network."
OWC It seems the British tradition of buying a round is dead. Many pub landlords are confirming this. Sheer expense is slowly squeezing out our age-old custom of round-buying. A round of 4 is tops these days with many pub goers curbing their buying. A YouGov poll confirmed that nearly 50% of drinkers preferred to visit a pub and only buy a drink for themself.
