A poorly performing category in previous SWAs, this year sparkling rosé managed to provide a string of good examples across all the price points

Over 1,500 wines can be boiled down to this: the hallowed Sommelier Wine Awards Gold List for 2011...

The Sommelier Wine Awards doesn’t give out trophies per category because we’re worried that tasters will feel under pressure to dispense extra awards in categories where they may not believe the wines are up to it. Instead, in keeping with the whole ethos of the competition, we leave the judgement up to the sommeliers…

As one would expect, this was the most satisfying of the sparkling flights, with higher prices, yes, but also better value for money

Quality was hard to find in this most competitive of segments, as indeed was value for money

In the second of our three-part series on the basics of food and wine-matching, Hakkasan’s wine buyer Christine Parkinson tells us how to go about pairing wines with meat