Vegan wines are us

I've been doing another round of updates to the Vegan Wine Guide, adding about a hundred more wines from such far flung places as:

• Marks and Spencer (UK supermarket own brand wines)
• Kumala (South Africa)
• Yalumba (Oxford Landing)
• Frey Vineyards (California)
• Wrights (of New Zealand)

I've also added a bunch more details to the individual wine listings, with some extra notes, winemaker's website, vegan information provided by the winemaker/distributor and a link to buy online from the winemaker if they offer it. Try the Clear Lake Rose for an example.

I recently added the ability to add your own reviews of the different wines and there have been a couple so far, along with the usual spammers trying their luck! Let me know what you think of the latest updates.

It were the chocolate buns wot did it

We enjoyed a fine afternoon at a vegan children's birthday party, only for me and Dylan to be struck by the dreaded lurgies after eating one too many chocolate bun. Or something. One day of fun, one day of pain, now we're mostly back to normal again. I'll go easy on the chocolate buns in the future....

Nuns in high heels teaching Tai Chi

Rose-Anne spent a pleasant weekend being taught Tai Chi and other interesting tricks by a bunch of nuns in high heels. They are clearly eminently qualified for such teaching duties after years of front line duties defending the altar wine. They also had sidelines in yoga, acupressure, aromatherapy and massage. A tough weekend clearly.

My wife was a Daily Star centrefold

A couple of weeks ago Rose-Anne fulfilled a life long ambition by becoming the centrefold in the Irish Daily Star, a newspaper of high repute. How proud am I? :)

In fact the whole family got our picture in the paper, along with Niall and Miriam and kids. Both Niall and I were interviewed on the joys of having a vegan family in Dublin, and a surprisingly fair and sympathetic piece made the centrefold of the paper on the Tuesday after World Vegetarian Day. Unfortunate for the PR machine that is the Irish Vegetarian Society, who were hoping for the publicity to come before the day....

Jasmine also had her picture, taken at World Vegetarian Day, in the Irish Independent on the Monday. After our TV interview on Nepal TV and my early morning TV appearance on TV3 last year, we're becoming right little media whores.

Pocket guide to Vegetarian Ireland

As the natural complement to the Pocket Guide to Vegan Wine I've made a Pocket Guide to Vegetarian Ireland. This is prints out on a single double-sided A4 page and lists vegetarian and vegan restaurants, cafes and accomodation in Ireland for travellers and residents alike. Whenever I travel I find my self trawling the web creating a list of places I might eat or stay, so this is my idea of what would be really handy if I was visiting Ireland. See if it is yours!

As well as vegetarian and vegan establishments, it also includes veg*n friendly places too - there aren't enough pure vegetarian places in Ireland to survive. We're not northern Calfornia here.

Of course, for the full story, the Vegetarian and Vegan Guide to Ireland online has a lot more detail, including reviews, ratings and additional places such as health food stores. Sometimes though you just can't print out the Interweb....

Pocket guide to vegan wine

For the recent World Vegetarian Day fair I put together a Pocket Guide to Vegan Wine. Print out onto 2 A4 pages (double sided), fold to A5 and you have an 8 page listing of vegan wines suitable for taking on those supermarket trips. It contains the majority of the wines listed on the online Vegan Wine Guide. Let me know if it's useful to you!