Wine education and Portuguese GLORY!

To the City, to Guildhall. To see some of my cleverest young people collect their scholarships from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust. Kate – now who would've thought a girl grew up in the Falklands could win the Burgundy prize! But she knows what goes with penguin.

And when I started decades ago buying from this young Chablis chap called Michel I never thought that one day my girl Jen who corrects (or according to her … rewrites) my letters would collect his 'Michel Laroche' Trophy. With that goes a weekend in Chablis with Michel, which worries me a little.

Also young Sam Hodgson from our shop in Solihull won the Champagne Academy Scholarship … and our newest buyer Helen McEvoy graduated too.

We are not a large Company so actually that's an wonderful tally. Thanks young people for all that swotting. Your old boss wouldn't even scrape a 'pass'.

But … there are other ways to glory …

To Belgrave Square, the Portuguese Embassy. For dinner with Antonio SantanaCarlos, the Ambassador (not a bad house and has a fantastic chef!) And didn't I just choke on my partridge when they gave me their Retailer of the Year award?

All the credit was due to Anne Forrest our buyer and our big new Portuguese offer I worked hard on. Read about it and order some. Then I can look the Ambassador in the eye again. After too much wine I went and told him that whilst Portuguese wines, in my view, were the best and best value around today.... they had one big problem; the Portuguese are just too flipping shy and self-effacing. They need to be pushier. He wasn't impressed and of course they won't change.

So I; Mr Pushy must do it for them; read my (Anne and Jen's) Portuguese piece and BUY PORTUGUESE!!!!