Hugh Johnson is one of the wine worlds cuddly creatures. He may not be seen too much in the media these days, but he still delivers his hugely successful ‘Pocket Guide to Wine’ each and every year.

The ever popular paper version of the Pocket Guide now finds itself reformatted for the iPhone and WineOfTheWeek has been noodling with it over the past week.

Here’s what we think:

Firstly the app really is simply Hugh’s Pocket Guide to Wine formatted for a mobile device. I know this seems like a statement of the bleedin’ obvious but how a book translates to a mobile device lies in how well it utilises the technology and many fail miserably.

Set against this criteria HJ’sWG does some things really well and other things not so well.

Firstly the guide uses tried and tested search attributes to allow the user to get to the wines quickly.  You search by country, grape variety region and Hugh’s own ratings. It’s not the best implementation (for example it does not use the same quick search right hand alpha search bar that you find in iPhone contacts) but it’s much better than thumbing through the book.

You can also filter wines to include only wines identified by Hugh as his ‘favourites’. If you rely on Hugh as your guide then this will work for you rather nicely. However, ask Hugh what his favourite Chilean wines are and you get precisely zero recommendations. This is a real surprise given the great wines that Chile produces. The same applies to Argentina and many of the smaller countries.

These omissions make the app feel half complete.

This leads us, of course, to the weakness of the app and that’s the lack of content.

The publishers of the paper version are a company called Octopus (owned by publishing giant Hachette) and I fear that they’ve fallen into the trap of simply handing the book with a simple instruction to ‘make this into an app.”

And I’m afraid it simply does not translate. How about this for a poor example of content?. A description of Ridge Vineyards California:

“Founder and Wine Master Paul Draper continues to work his magic here. Supple and harmonious Montebello Cab Sauv from estate is superb. Also outstanding single v’yd Zin from Sonoma, Napa Valley, Sierra Foothills and Paso Robles. Most Zin has gd ageing potential. Outstanding Chard from wild yeast fermentation often overlooked.”

I’m willing to bet that Hugh hasn’t embraced ‘text’ speak and clearly brevity and abbreviations are necessary for a book Pocket Guide but placed on the app the content looks messy and incomplete.

In the above example there’s no listing of the wines from Ridge so I am none the wiser as to what I should be looking for and there is no link out to Ridge Vineyards own excellent website. Again, this app should be the jumping off point to finding out more but it chooses not to be.

Individual pages do give you a chance to add your own notes so the intrepid can effectively enter the content that Hugh has yet to get round to.

And, how about this as a typical example of the content in the ‘A-Z of wine speak’ section.

“Aglianico. Southern Italian. dark, deep and fashionable”

What am I learning from this description? And why doesn’t this term link to the wines of that grape variety available in the app? It seems that the tech team haven’t mapped the database fields very well.  If at all.

Hugh is no doubt under pressure to edit, shorten and restrict his recommendations to fit the pagination of a book format. In book publishing you have a limitation of space and this is more acute when you are trying to stuff so much encyclopedic information into a pocket guide.

In the digital world the same restrictions don’t exist so here’s a note to the publishers. The iPhone is the HitchHikers guide to the galaxy not Letts Notes. Perhaps next year, ask Hugh to create content with the app in mind as well as the book. Mr Johnson might be freed up to provide you with something that really makes the device sing.

At £4.99 we demand more than we’ve been given here.

Hugh Johnson also has huge bushy eyebrows.

WineOfTheWeek Rating 2 stars

Current iTunes Rating: 3 stars

View/Buy the app here: There are

Watch out Basil, the Argies are coming

Tourism chiefs have produced a curious list of national characteristics designed to help Britons avoid offending foreigners when they visit England for the 2012 Olympic games.

The list is a truly bizarre set of generalisations, many of which feel like they have been lifted directly from Fawlty Towers.

What has this got to do with wine? Well, how about this gem about our South American cousins:

Be careful how you pour wine for an Argentinian. The whole process involves a number of social taboos and unless you understand them you could insult someone. For example, pouring wine backwards into a glass indicates hostility.

Now, I have to say that I like a good pop at the Argentinians as much as the next man but this is a new one on me. And to be honest I have no idea what constitutes ‘pouring wine backwards into a glass’. It sounds like an act that the dwarf from Twin Peaks might perform in the Black Lodge.

The list was put together by VisitBritain with, what we hope (although we can’t be sure), is a certain dollop of irony.

Feast your prejudices on this!!!:

A smiling Japanese person is not necessarily happy.

Avoid winking at someone from Hong Kong.

Remember Arabs are not used to being told what to do.

Do not be alarmed if South Africans announce that they were held up by robots.

Don’t ask a Brazilian personal questions.

Avoid physical contact when first meeting someone from India.

When meeting Mexicans it is best not to discuss poverty, illegal aliens, earthquakes or their 1845-6 war with America.

Never call a Canadian an American.

Do not take offence if an Australian or a New Zealander makes a joke about “Poms”.

Please feel free to add your own national prejudices in the comments below.

It proved a difficult decision but I just couldn’t find a place for Wayne Rooney in my Berry Brothers Word Cup starting eleven. Forgive me Wayne but I’m still worried about your dodgy temperament and team discipline is vital for success.

Berry Brothers and Rudd – the darling of the wine web – have created a fantasy football game especially for the World Cup. But this is fantasy football with a difference – you can only choose players from wine growing countries. So your team consists of players from Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, England (just!), Germany, South Africa, Spain, Portugal, Uruguay, and France.

It’s free to enter and the winners prize is a £1700 mixed case (is that a Penfolds Grange I see before me?) with regular prizes for winners of each round.

Once again Berry’s deliver the best the web has to offer when it comes to wine online.

My own preparations have been disrupted with the withdrawal of Rio Ferdinand and I’ve had to draft in Glen Johnson as a makeshift centre back. Here’s my team in full:

There's only one way to beat them...

There are some images in life so disturbing that, even though you may avert your eyes from the source, the imprint remains burned into your retina before sweeping up the capillaries into your very nightmares. I’m thinking of the visuals of war, famine, animal cruelty, clowns on bicycles and Anthony Perkins dressed as his dead mother at the end of Psycho. 

And then there is this image of Diego Maradona and Carlos Tevez. I can’t recall a time when I’ve seen something as equally comical as it is grotesque. And thoroughly, thoroughly sinister.

The Maradona circus is in town as Argentina take on Scotland at Hampden and the air hangs fat with all the controversy that surrounds the greatest footballer of any generation. Most amusing has been the press coverage given to Terry Butcher over his assertion that he would refuse to shake Maradona’s hand if offered it. 

Still smarting from the 20 year old “Hand of God” wound, Butcher (one of the least talented ballplayers England has ever seen) still regards Maradona as a cheat. Butcher is one of those little Englanders (albeit a quite tall one) who believes that England will win any tournament they enter on sheer will power alone. 

A practitioner of the old “up and at ‘em” game, Butcher goes to bed in Captain Mannering pyjamas with a signed photo of John Le Mesurier by his bed light. Terry forgets that England were as poor in 1986 as they have been at any tournament since 1966 (with the exception of 1990, but that aberration was purely down to the John Barnes Rap). 

He also forgets that in the very same game that Maradona caressed the ball with his hand, he also scored the greatest goal in the history of the game. Where were you when that one was hitting the onion bag, eh Terry? And just in case you’ve forgotten…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rW-lK9F6TU]

So, if Diego were to offer the hand of friendship what better way to do it than with a bottle of Argentina’s finest contribution to wine – the full throttle Malbec.

Malbec is the grape of many names – known as Auxerrois in Cahors, Cot in the Loire and Malbeck in Argentina,

Our growing interest in South American Wines over the past 20 years provided an opportunity for the Argentinean manifestation of this variety to establish itself in the UK but it also has an interesting past in mainland Europe too.

It used to be a main constituent in the famous Bordeaux blends but fell victim to the vicious 1956 French frost from which it never recovered. Nervous growers replaced it with more fashionable and more durable grapes. C’est la vie.

Exported to Argentina the grape is widely grown and is established there in a stronger way than say Carmenere is in Chile (another European Export rarely grown in its homeland). The grapes tend to produces deep coloured wines with generous black fruit characteristics, balanced acidity and smooth tannins.  It’s also good fortune that the wine is the perfect match for Argentina’s abundant supply of thick, succulent red steak. 

My Malbec of choice is the Salentein Reserve Malbec, which I stumbled upon through a recommendation from Tom Cannavan at WinePages. Tom had just been on a trip to Argentina when I spoke to him last year and recommended the wine which, by the grace of the pricing gods, was on offer at Tesco. I got myself a case and it’s been a favourite since.  

Is Malbec the Terry Butcher of wine? Nope. The grape may be full on but it has balance, can display finesse when asked to and plays well abroad.

Butcher on the other hand is a donkey. Or should that be ass?

Drinking and health – you pays your money and you takes your choice. This week, we’re all gonna die.

Heavy metals in wine could pose potential health problems to regular drinkers, claims a scientific report published today.

RAWK!!! Drink, Drink and be Damned!

The report, which appeared in the online journal Chemistry Central, claims that a daily 250ml glass of red wine could expose wine drinkers to hazardous levels of metal ions linked to Parkinson’s disease and cancer. 

According to the study, wines from Portugal, Hungary, France and Austria are among those to have dangerous levels of metal ions. Argentinian, Brazilian and Italian wines registered very small levels of the so-called ‘heavy metals’. 

Using a formula developed in the US to estimate health risks, boffins at Kingston University in London analysed the wines against a Target Health Quotient (THQ). A THQ of one is considered safe. Looking at a range of elements including vanadium, manganese, chromium, zinc, copper, nickel and lead, the researchers found that THQ levels in red wine were around 110. 

Professor Declan Naughton, co-author of the report, called for consumers to be made aware of the risks. 

‘Levels of metal ions should appear on wine labels,’ he said, ‘along with the introduction of further steps to remove key hazardous metal ions during wine production.’ 

Naughton, who told decanter.com he still enjoyed drinking red wine, stressed he was calling for a ‘regulatory push’ – not an end to wine drinking. 

He said he could only speculate as to how metal ions get into wine, but that soil types, vineyard sprays and yeasts were the likely culprits. The study added that ‘processing and packaging may add to the metal’. 

Although it contains some of the highest levels of metal ions, wine is not alone is posing a risk. Apple juice and stout was also found to have a THQ above one. 

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has tried to reassure consumers, saying it has yet to review the findings in full. A spokesperson for the FSA said the scientists’ methods were ‘not widely used in Europe’.