Spittoons are perhaps not what you put on your wish list for Christmas but they are very useful (well, essential) in many wine tastings. The French company Oenocom, who produces a clever, time-glass-shaped spittoon called Oenosablier, has just launched a new, smaller spittoon. It is smaller and lighter than their flagship Oenosablier, just 1 litre and made in Bordeaux...

Well that was fun! For the last hour I have been sitting in an internet cafe chatting to Tim of Winecast . Hope he can cut out the background chatter from the gaggle of Polish girls. The chat, delayed from last weekend, touched on wine writing, its style and evolution ...

... more to see if I had actually completed the task here on Spittoon. I'm sure all but a couple ... listed on Spittoon. A great many wines do not make it for one reason or another to this website ... includes a link to a relevant wine here on Spittoon with the plan to up-date as the archives are trawled...

Just a quick post to tell you to look elsewhere, specifically here , on Andrew Barrow's Spittoon site, for a review of a lovely evening of wine, food, photography and blogging (well, I think we talked about it anyway).Andrew has very graciously used my photos from that evening on his site, a particular honour as his site is the my main reference for the best wine photography.Nice to meet...

As this month’s theme for Wine Blogging Wednesday (hosted by Andrew at Spittoon ) is Italian reds...

Neil Pendock takes another peak into the SA Shiraz spittoon. His verdict? Still bubbling...

Jack and Joanne have the WBW round-up posted over on Fork and Bottle! Looks like around 43 participants this time, and a ton of wines to read about, as many people tasted two or more Friuli wines for this WBW. Head on over to Fork and Bottle to see what everyone tasted this month, and watch out for the next WBW announcement which will be coming from Spittoon...

Seeing as there are 8 people viewing the older Threshers Voucher pages on Spittoon as I type I thought a quick post of the new money off voucher was in order. I wasn't going to bother seeing as its been printed in various national newspapers and other websites and the focus of Spittoon has changed a little over the year... but here you go... Download the 2008 40% Threshers Voucher here...

The newest edition of WBW has been announced, and this one will take some explaining! (Or perhaps not so much explaining.) Our host for the month is the Wine Scribbler from across the pond, at Spittoon . Andrew has asked us to pick any Italian red wine. This is not the challenge. The challenge ... , and preferably contain punctuation. All the details (or lack thereof) can be found here on Spittoon...

Pity they didn't manage to set an active link to spittoon but here is the article on blogging written by Ross Bentley for Caterer and Hotelkeeper . It's a good article as it happens... Search Tags: wine  food & drink  wine tasting  caterer and hotelkeeper...