No sooner had I pressed 'publish' on my last blog than I noticed a mention for the Botani Moscatel from Jorge Ordoñez & Co on the Purple Pages section of  Jancis Robinson's web site (unfortunately you need to be a member of the Purple Pages section to read the report - but I thought it worth mentioning here)

Her colleague Julia Harding MW is cleary as enraptured with the wine as we all were on tasting it this morning.

And it also reminded me that I forgot to mention earlier the Malaga sweet wine from the same producer as the Botani.

The No. 1 Special from Jorge Ordonez is 100% Muscat; rich, unctuous, grapey - but lovely purity and balance. They are working with Kracher of Austria now, and this clearly shows in the sweet  wine. Excellent value sticky (very true description!0 and I think good value at £15-16 a half.

Clearly there are some good things happening in Spain. But as another tasting later in the day of some over-priced Ribera wines showed, it is definitely a case of looking carefully and sorting the wheat from the chaff - something you can be sure we do very diligently at Surf4Wine!

Last week David Thomas from Caviste and I met up with a few regular customers to taste Cathy Marshall's latest releases from South Africa.

We've been fans of Cathy's wines here on Surf4Wine for a few years now - she is a super-talented winemaker and her wines always offer outstanding value. We first came across Cathy's winemaking talents via the wines of Ridgeback, and then discovered she ws making her own wines, then under the Barefoot Wine Cellar label.

That then became BWC, and finally, in recent years, Cathy has decided to just use her own name, Catherine Marshall, as her label - very sensible when you have such great wines to shout about!

We started with the Catherine Marshall Sauvignon Blanc 2008 - deliciously limey, fresh and with a crisp, minerally finish. Great Summer drinking.

Then onto the Pinot Noir 2007 - savoury, cherry flavours and red berry fruits. Restrained oak and nice minerality. Fruit is from a selection of cool climate vineyards and the elegance really shines through.

Some excellent venison partnered the Syrah Mourvedre 2005 - spice and black pepper combine with ripe plums. Not an 'in-your-face' New World wine; much more restrained and elegant. very food friendly - especially with Venison!

Then, onto two vintages of the Catherine Marshall Syrah. The 2002 was brought along by a Caviste customer to compare to the current 2004 offering - and an intriguing comparison it provided. The wines clearly age very well, and anyone tucking away a few bottles of the current vintage will be very well rewarded. More savoury minerality - which seems to be a hallmark of Cathy's red wines plus a smoky, cedary component too.

In an increasingly value-conscious world these wines really are very well made, and incredible value - and only available via independent retailers like Caviste, and online via Surf4Wine.

Last but by no means least is Cathy's unique dessert wine, Myriad. A fortified Pinot Noir, with a just a little Merlot, it combines richness with elegance without being overly sweet. Perfect partner for creamy cheese or good dark chocolate.

Having supper with Cathy, and sharing her wines, is like sitting down with an old friend - everyone immediately feels very at ease and conversation and wine flow very happily.

It's May already, and 2009 is slipping by so fast, it feels as though someone's pushed the 'fast forward' button. Who knew just a few months ago that Barack Obama would make history in the White House? That we'd put the words 'swine' and 'flu' together in the same sentence? That the biggest hits on YouTube would be an unassuming woman from Scotland? And that one of the biggest flops on YouTube would be a grinning Scotsman?!

Change is happening all around us. And it's happening right here at Surf4Wine too. If you've been thinking that we've been a bit quiet recently, it's because we've been working hard behind the scenes. To make change that's worth waiting for.

Surf4Wine is now working with Hampshire-based independent wine merchant Caviste.

For those of you not familiar with Caviste, this award-winning independent wine merchant now has three retail outlets throughout Hampshire (in Overton, Stockbridge and at Newlyns Farm Shop near Odiham), showcasing the best that the small production wineries of the world have to offer, from everyday drinking choices to fine wines. Founded in 2003 by Roseworthy-trained winemaker, David Thomas, Caviste not only specialises in the artisan wines of the Barossa Valley, (including Spinifex, Massena, Rusden, Diggers Bluff, Hobbs and Schwarz Wine Company), but also some of the finest single-domain Burgundy and top-notch Claret. And it doesn't stop there as there is also an intriguing and tempting selection from Italy, Spain, Portugal and some of the best small wineries of South Africa. Plus fabulous sherries, rich and lucious pudding wines, vintage Armagnac and local beers.

Objectives and wines that fit very well with Surf4Wine's mission to bring winemaker and wine drinker closer together to explore the world's best wines!

Watch this space for more information...

Our techy team, AKA Kelvin our in-house resident web genius, has been busily putting the finishing touches to our new podcasting system over the last couple of weeks.

I'm pleased to say that this has now gone live - please do take a look - we think it's pretty neat!

It is place where we can take you to let you see and listen to all our audio and video, whether they are me on the radio or interviews with winemakers, or virtual wine tastings by video.

You can play them right there, or down load them in whatever is your preferred format - even into iTunes and onto your favourite mobile device or iPod.

Look out for more videos and audio to come very soon...

I signed up for Twitter today, so I can Twitter about wine, life and the Universe (i.e. Blog) when not in office, or in front of my laptop. (This style of updates has been described as "micro-blogging").

S4WBlog will be carrying an RSS feed of my Twitter posts so you can go there to read what I've been Twittering about, or you can add the RSS feed to your own preferred RSS Viewer/Reader (What is an RSS viewer/reader?).

Anyway, this idea gets its first proper outing Monday 8th October when I'm off to the Wines of South Africa Mega-tasting in London. Monday and Tuesday are for the Trade, (i.e. us!), then the general public next two days.

But as most of you who know me will testify, I never stop Twittering about wine, one way of another, so you're sure to get lots of WineTwitters here!