Easter is almost upon us and many of us will be preparing traditional roast lamb.

Want a little Christmas spirit? From sparkling wines to cider, beer to gin, our wine columnist, Leslie Williams, has the perfect list to choose from.

The world of wine is a large place and columns like this I hope help distil it down to a manageable size.

We need to talk about sulphur. You might have noticed that most bottles say ‘contains sulphites’ somewhere on the label.

Here I go again, praising the wines of Spain.

I want to begin this week by offering my congratulations to Lynne Coyle MW, wine buyer at O’Briens wines.

The wine industry in Ireland used to be a bit of a boys’ club but times have changed.

What is the best-value wine in the world? The answer I give to this question may surprise you — sherry.

Italy is on my mind this week having recently watched the documentary Natural Resistance at the Grainstore in Ballymaloe about rebel “natural” wine makers in Italy.

The buzz word in the wine world is ‘natural’. While many of the best wines are made with minimal interference, producers of natural wines are more rigorous.

Aperitif wines are always useful for when guests drop in unexpectedly, and definitely have some inexpensive prosecco in the fridge (more on fizz next week).

SUMMER 2014 seems to be getting better and better to the extent that eating outside seems to have become the norm in our house.

AH SPAIN. Is there any wonder so many of us go there on holidays every year.

THERE are few wines more iconic than New Zealand’s Cloudy Bay which was founded in 1985 and whose intense pungent Sauvignon Blanc became a benchmark for the varietal in that country.

NEW ZEALAND represents less than 1% of the world’s wine production but has become hugely influential in the past 20 years thanks to their unique take on Sauvignon Blanc.