‘It’s probably not going to make me a millionaire,’ said Shabani as the barman charged our glasses for the third time before we decamped to another Mayfair stockist. ‘In fact it’s going to take three years to break even,’ he added. Douglas Blyde hears a tail of Konik’s Vodka.

When invited to the wine tasting that Laithwaites put on recently, at Altitude 360, I was hardly going to turn down the opportunity, some excellent wines and a stunning venue at the top of one of the south bank’s tallest buildings. I just had to go.

Because of his website’s dim catchphrase, ‘It’s just booze – drink it!’ I anticipate Washington State winemaker Charles Smith might seem loutish. Rather than produce and promote anaesthetics, I believe his resolute coolness is actually his way of disarming drinkers paralysed by European jargon and pretensions…

Tim Adams has the kind of face that looks like it should be located due south of a hat with corks dangling from it. It’s an Australian face, to be frank. It’s a face that speaks of working outside in the fresh air and doing an honest day’s toil for an honest day’s pay. And his ears stick out a bit, as if the tops are normally compressed by comedy headgear. Tim is a winemaker from the Clare Valley. His wines win medals and hearts. At the end of our lunch tasting a range of his products I’m ready to invest my small savings in a cellar full of his wines, they are that delicious.

How’s this for something beautiful. The Little Beauty range of wines from New Zealand have a special offer for Foodepedia readers – an initial discount of 15% on their first order. First though we went to Claridges to have a tasting of these new wines from the the new world

When invited to an event, celebrating 700 years of Armagnac production, I thought how bizarre – well who wouldn’t when the theme was pairing Armagnac with Indian cuisine from the Moghul region in the north west of India? It was absolutely an invitation I wasn’t going to turn down and I was glad I didn’t.

I have to say that whenever absinthe is mentioned my mind goes straight to the little green fairy, played by Kylie Minogue at the start of Moulin Rouge and imagine that many other do the same. That little sequence in many ways summed up the reputation that Absinthe attained in the early part of the 20th century.

Granny probably would cough up her KP Nuts at some of the prices, but believe me these fine sherries are well worth coughing up the cash for.

Fine beverage merchants and importers, Bibendum have taken over the exclusive UK distribution of cult South Eastern Australian brewery, Coopers.

AOC Languedoc in Southern France forms the largest wine-making region in the Mediterranean. In the past it has been suggested that the region is a hotchpotch of terroirs and crus, made up, as it is, of 29 different named wines. We sampled two Languedoc wines recently and here are our thoughts.