Sources tell me that Wine & Spirit magazine are not best pleased with the claim first aired by Business Day pundit Michael Fridjhon in that organ (and subsequently carried on the Grape website that specializes in recycled stories) that Wine (UK) magazine “folded.”

Decanter reported in December 2005 that a new magazine “Wine & Spirit” was being formed by “an amalgamation of Wine International and its sister publication Wine and Spirit International.” “Folding” seems to have improved the publication’s fortunes as UK commentator Jancis Robinson calls the new title “Britain’s second consumer wine magazine. Livelier than Decanter and organisers of the International Wine Challenge.”

What makes the situation doubly embarrassing for Wine & Spirit is that Fridjhon was a co-chair of the IWC last year and Drinks International lists him as a contributor to Wine & Spirit. But then they also list him as “chairman of the judges of the SA Wine Show” which must please Duimpie Bayly, chairman of the SA National Wine Show. The IWC is a competition much in the news recently after it gave multiple but wildly different awards to the same SA wine. Oops!