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MERCHANT PROFILE: GOLBORNE WINE & DELI

Graham Holter enjoys some time in a Notting Hill hot spot
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Italy tops global wine production table

OIV predicts a modest increase in world wine output in 2025
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Are you a champion of French wine?

Indies invited to enter VIN 2026’s annual awards
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Change of ownership for London Wine Fair

Hannah Tovey leads management buyout from Hemming Group
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LONDON SAYS HELLO TO STABLE WINES

The team from Goodbye Horses opens Islington indie
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The Vineking crashes with £800k debts

Erik Laan’s new company means Reigate branch is still trading
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Bright Ideas: Duncan Murray Wines

Duncan is enthused by how his concession at Eco-Village has been working out
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Indies suddenly look like better value

Consumers are giving up on buying wines direct from Europe due to the expense and…
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Delays get worse for wine shippers

A bad situation seems only to be getting worse, with no end in sight to…
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Vindependents set up own groupage firm

Member-owned business expects big savings in shipping costs
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The right vines in the right places

South American vignerons have a better understanding of their terroir
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OenoGroup opens London wine boutique

Fine wine investment group plans second store in New York City
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A hundred issues, a thousand thanks

We’ve reached a milestone, but not without help from some special people
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Critic’s Choice: DeFine Food & Wine, Sandiway

Matt Walls is wowed by a great wine range and an unbeatable brunch
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The data day life of David Dodd

Most decisions at Tivoli Wines in Cheltenham are based on analysis
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From the Marne to the Midlands

Champagne native Pierre Hourlier has made a career selling French wines from his base in…
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Bright Ideas: Salut, Manchester

Bob McDonald helps customers with everything they wanted to know about wine but were afraid…
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New faces at Vino Vero

Jaime and Holly Fernandez take over from Sam and Charlotte Brown in Leigh on Sea
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Let’s hear it for the co-operatives

David Williams argues that European wine co-ops are invariably forces for good
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Spaced out

Charles Wharton had just relocated Ellis Wharton Wines to a retail park warehouse when lockdown…
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English vintage report 2020

English wine producers are taking stock of a 2020 vintage ravaged by May frosts
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Container is home for Essex indie

Christine Longden and husband Lee opened The Twisted Cork in Tiptree last month
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Renegade of the Rhône

John Gauntley will be missed for his humour and enthusiasm as well as his style…
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Online sales beyond lockdown

Web sales will be a fact of life for indies well beyond Covid-19
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Recent Digital Editions

Issue 151 (October 2025)
Issue 150 (September 2025)
Issue 149 (August 2025)
Issue 148 (July 2025)
Issue 147 (June 2025)
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Our final (and biggest) issue of 2025 is landing n Our final (and biggest) issue of 2025 is landing now, with an early Christmas gift of a 2026 wall planner. Never miss Xinomavro Day again!

As always there is loads going on in this edition, but that goes without saying, because the independent trade is where the fun happens. We do our best to report on it all, and throw in a few cartoons and silly captions along the way.

We next publish in January but we'll keep the website up to date in the meantime.
Issue 151 of The Wine Merchant is here. What's i Issue 151 of The Wine Merchant is here. 

What's inside? Nasty scammers, majestic hawks, repurposed wine bottles, guilt pangs, bleeding cocoa nibs, Sting (the singer), stings (from bees), 10,000 wine louts, people who lie about chocolate, hedonistic vermouth, Torres v Walkers, hairdresser puns, Lennon and McCartney in the northern Rhône, sesquiterpene rotundone, Leicester City and a small cheese sandwich. 

See if you can spot them all!
So sorry to hear of the passing of Peter Hall, pio So sorry to hear of the passing of Peter Hall, pioneer of English sparkling wine, self-proclaimed hermit and a wonderful raconteur who was generous with his time. Anyone with a bottle of Breaky Bottom in their collection will be toasting the memory this week of a lovely man.

Report on the Wine Merchant website, where you can also read the Q&A we did with Peter in 2022. It was the best article we ran that year – and perhaps in any year. RIP.
We used to be the only wine magazine in the world We used to be the only wine magazine in the world to publish album reviews. Now we're the only one with a psychotherapy column.

Plus: a horrible quiz, a stupid cartoon, in-store opera, people covered in treacle, the black hole of wine retailing, disappointing Belgian cuisine, and David Perry's plums.

Open your copy now while it's still got that strangely intoxicating aroma.
The 149th edition of The Wine Merchant is out ther The 149th edition of The Wine Merchant is out there in the wild. A huge milestone. We enjoyed putting it together for you and yesterday we celebrated its publication by tasting so much vermouth that parts of our mouths are jammed into unfamiliar positions and we’re talking in Dutch accents. Other than that, all good thanks 🤜
Loads of new openings, relocations and expansions Loads of new openings, relocations and expansions to read about in the latest edition of The Wine Merchant. But no closures. 

As Kate Goodman of Reserve Wines tells us in her interview, it's "probably as hard as it's ever been" for indies to keep going. But that's exactly what they're doing – and store numbers continue to rise.

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