SO how much did you blow on your summer holiday? Wait, let me guess.
Was it so significantly more than you budgeted for that you daren’t open your credit card bill without sitting down with a large measure of Scotch?
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Thought so. That’s the thing about holidays. They cost a bomb.
Unless, of course, you happen to be Angela Rayner, the “by ’eck I’m so bloody normal, me” Deputy Prime Minister.
Down-to-earth Ange doesn’t worry so much about what her ’bobs will cost because, well, someone else is usually chipping in.
You might remember that excruciating video of her dancing behind the DJ booth at the swanky Hi Ibiza club that emerged recently.
It was accompanied by some equally toe-curling outpourings from Never-Kissed-A-Tory types, hyperventilating on Twitter/X about how brilliant it was that we have a senior member of the Government who loves to party.
“Go Ange, throw them shapes babe,” they trilled, patting themselves on the back that they’d voted in someone so with it.
’Avin’ it Ange hit back at any critics of her cheesy moves, declaring: “Yes, I’m working class. I like a dance.” As if dancing was an exclusively working-class activity.
Anyway, her “out out” night was paid for by someone else — her friend the DJ’s agent, to be precise — to the techno tune of £836.
We know this because she has just been forced to tell us by way of the MPs’ register of interests.
This is the same register where she declared another freebie holiday treat over New Year last year, this time a five-night stay at a plush £2million flat in New York, which she reckoned was only worth £1,250.
That apartment, complete with Jacuzzi and “breathtaking” views of the Empire State Building, was owned by . . . you guessed it, Labour’s favourite sugar daddy, Lord Waheed Alli (currently under investigation over his interests by the House of Lords sleaze watchdog).
Feisty Ange, the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne, who earns at least £91,346 a year plus a ministerial bump of £31,600, also used the apartment to entertain her fancy man at the time, then-Labour MP Sam Tarry.
Oh, and before you think it’s a bit off that an elected representative is accepting such lavish gifts from people who might want a favour in return, she insisted that Lord Alli — who has also donated £21,200 to her for “support” in her role as Labour’s deputy leader and “undertaking parliamentary duties” — hadn’t asked for anything.
Oh no, it was just a pal helping out a pal.
But it’s not just her “mates” that Spongerla loves blagging things from (and she’s also another one who likes her freebie clothes).
She doesn’t mind dipping into our pockets, too.
Remember when she bought herself a load of fancy Apple gear, including an iPad and some £249 AirPods and sent us, the taxpayer, the bill?
She even tried to put another pair of £139 AirPods on expenses until The Sun exposed it and she repaid the cash.
It was around this time she was on her soapbox blasting the Tories — she calls them “scum”, our Ange — for their “catalogue of waste”, insisting Labour would bring in “high standards for all public spending”.
Well, now we know about her high standards when it comes to filling her boots.
With the Ibiza freebie now under the microscope, Spongerla’s poncing is finally — and deservedly — centre stage.
In many ways, her gift gluttony is worse than Free Gear Keir’s because of who she has cast herself as in public life.
She would have us believe she is one of us, our representative on Planet Politician — a selfless, working-class woman of the people.
It is this image that she would like her £68,000-a-year taxpayer-funded vanity photographer to capture.
Now there are demands for her to pay back the £836 along with Sir Keir’s nonsensical list of freebies he’s paying back.
Frankly, I don’t care if she does or she doesn’t. The damage is done.
Spongerla has shown us that she, too, can be just as grasping a “public servant” as the rest of them.
Meanwhile, the list of Labour faces blagging football tickets continues.
This week it was the turn of the enigmatic Sue Gray — for it is she — to score another own goal for Labour after it emerged she took free tickets to Tottenham Hotspur games.
No wonder we plebs struggle to secure seats for the Prem — the stands are full of freeloading “socialists”.
I SAW a fantastic film this week – The Apprentice.
Charting the rise of ol’ big head himself, Donald J Trump, it is a superbly executed study of megalomania.
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Trump will privately hate it, not least because it shows him raping his own wife, Ivana, moments after humiliating her by coldly informing her he is no longer attracted to her.
(Ivana, who died in 2022, did once suggest he raped her, but he has denied it and never been charged with it or any rape.)
With the film released on October 18 in the UK – just weeks before the US election – Trump’s haters will hope it damages his bid to become president again. I doubt that.
The Don will brush it off in his trademark style: “A very bad film, maybe the worst film ever made, the guy who plays me is a loser”etc.
But while it may not hurt him, it should do wonders for the career of the brilliant actor who plays him, Sebastian Stan, pictured with Maria Bakalova as Ivana, whose portrayal of Trump’s ascendancy from hapless suburban landlord to maniacal Manhattan magnate is pitch perfect.
He deserves an Oscar nod at least.
And if that happens, I’ll bet a crisp ten dollar bill Trump will think it is actually for him.
I SEE crafty Oasis fans are hoping to sneak their drugs into the band’s Manchester Heaton Park summer shows by burying them in advance.
This probably sounded like a great ruse during a night chained to the mirror and the razor blade, but the tactic may not prove that clever on the day.
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All security guards need to do is look out for anyone wandering around staring at Google Maps with a puzzled look on their face . . . while holding a shovel.
I’M glad Spurs are kicking off at their fans for the homophobic chants at the Man United match last weekend.
It wasn’t just on the terraces that these oiks decided to indulge in one of the worst of the low-IQ behaviours – it was in the tram on the way to the ground, too.
I was travelling to the game with my teenage son and we’re used to lairy bantz on the short trip from Piccadilly to Old Trafford – we’ve even been known to join in (don’t tell his mum).
But these chants were another level – targeting mainly Arsenal players and managers from over the decades with taunts about being gay and/or a paedophile.
They were puerile, desperately unfunny and delivered with an excruciating kind of malice.
It’s at moments like these when you realise that, of course, gay football players stay in the closet.
The game is still too pathetically toxic to handle them.
HELPED an old boy with directions to a Japanese restaurant after Sunday’s Man Utd game.
He was born and bred in Manchester, but had moved to Oz and hadn’t been back for 50 years.
We joked there can’t have been many Japanese restaurants when he was last here.
But one thing has stayed the same – United were crap then as well.
The 74/75 season saw them grinding away in the Second Division, having fallen out of the top league for the first time in four decades.
BORIS JOHNSON finally releases his memoir about, er, how brilliant Boris Johnson is, next week.
Place your order now if you want to hear how he thinks he handled being Mayor of London and running the country during Covid.
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Boris is a funny bloke who, having swallowed both an English and a Latin dictionary, has a wonderful way with words.
So his epic 784-page beast of a book is narrated in his customary Billy Bunter banter.
But it won’t be for everyone, especially if, like me, you have no desire to revisit the misery of lockdown.
Most significantly, it is missing some of the juicier ingredients of BoJo’s life – perhaps because they don’t paint him in such a heroic light.
But this is the book I’d like to read – a warts ’n’ all account of how this legendary swordsman and father-of-eight conducts himself when the eyes of the world are not upon him (Boris Johnson Unsheathed?).
I can’t help but feel the newspaper that has been running extracts from his new tome would rather have had that, too.
On day four of its serialisation, Boris’s image once again adorned the front page.
And just above that was a headline which screamed: Here’s Why I Left My Wife For My Mistress.
Alas, despite the clear symmetry with their thrice-married author, it was for an unconnected story.
FAIR play to Baby Reindeer star Richard Gadd tootling about in a battered old Skoda.
He lives in North London, where I also live and drive around in my battered old Nissan.
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The reason my car is covered in dents and scrapes is probably the same reason Richard’s is – thanks to other careless drivers.
Every time I see a brand new car parked on my street, I wonder how long it will be before it gets damaged.
In crowded cities, owning a fancy new car is a mug’s game.
2K
Project Censored’s directors, Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth, have repeatedly asked what would happen if journalism disappeared. With 2023 in the rearview and 2024 presidential elections on the horizon, a look back at the state of local news across the United States gives additional pause to the “what if” question. For over a decade, The Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism has produced a yearly report on The State of Local News to track the spread of news deserts across the nation. The 2023 report is the most extensive to date, and its key findings are sobering.
Local newspapers are closing at a rate of at least two per week. Two hundred-four counties have no local print, digital, or broadcast news sources, and 1,562 counties have just one local news source, typically in the form of a weekly newspaper. Suburbs have taken a hard hit to their local news sources, both in affluent and working-class communities. Larger cities have lost out too—Boston, New York City, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Minneapolis/St. Paul show a combined loss of approximately 500 newspapers.
For the first time, the annual report has generated a “Watch List,” noting 228 counties with just one news outlet that are in danger of losing their remaining local news. Of those 228 counties, most are located in the rural South and Midwest with majority populations that are Black, Hispanic, or Native American. State of the Local News co-author, Sarah Stonebely, says that the US is “really is still a country of journalism haves and have-nots in a lot of ways [and] in a lot of rural and less affluent counties, there just isn’t any local journalism at all.”
The 2023 report summarizes that, since 2005, the United States has lost approximately 2,900 newspapers, including 130 confirmed closings or mergers in the past year alone. Many of the closures were weekly papers that acted as sole providers of local news for small and medium-sized communities.
As of the report’s publication, there are only 6,000 newspapers in the country—approximately 1,200 dailies and 4,790 weeklies. Also since 2005, 43,000 news reporters have lost their jobs, most of whom were employed by large metro and regional daily newspapers owned by one of the nation’s ten largest corporate chains. Today those corporate-owned dailies employ less than one-fifth of the number of reporters staffed in 2005. After years of buying up and merging newspapers, in 2023 many of those same large corporate chains either shut down newspapers or sold them off to other chains or owners.
Rebuild Local News asserts in no uncertain terms that the collapse of local news threatens the civic health of cities and towns across the nation. Consequences of the demise of local news include increased government waste and corruption, political polarization, and the spread of disinformation.
Uninformed citizens invariably lack knowledge about political candidates, voting in their areas, and civic engagement, contributing to less functional and responsive local government. Poorly informed voters rarely know about electoral imperatives such as campaign contributions that privilege elites, political lobbying tactics, and the sway of dark money among every branch of government. According to OpenSecrets, this information, especially when publicized by journalists committed to upholding the public’s right to know, is crucial to realizing a truly representative and accountable democracy.
For further perspective, Rebuild Local News cites that, in 1966, 70 percent of the voting public could name their mayor. By 2016, a mere 40 percent could do the same. Moreover, the decline of local news impacts public health as well as political savvy. A dearth of local news in communities means that disease prevention and tracking are more difficult. Citizens who have no or little knowledge about environmental pollutants and regulations, local workplace safety issues, and weather and climate emergencies are consequences of significantly diminished access to trustworthy local news.
Alternative and independent news sources would seem a likely solution to the local news crisis. And yet, reports the 2023 State of Local News, the existing network of approximately 550 digital-only news sites, 720 ethnic media organizations, and 215 public broadcasting stations is small, clustered around metro areas, and struggles with business and financial challenges that affect their growth and sustainability.
Grim outlooks aside, the 2023 report found seventeen bright spots in the local news landscape. The report featured a list of news outlets that have served their local audience for at least five years with journalism that holds the powerful to account, most notably their elected officials. These outlets share other features that add to their success, including being privately held and controlled, employing large reporting staffs relative to their locale, and devoting time and space to fostering local relationships and responding to the needs of their communities. Project Censored has long advocated for reinvesting in journalism as a public good, which includes cultivating public interest in the sort of journalism that democracy requires.
Because the Local News Initiative at Northwestern began with the goals of reinventing the relationship between news outlets and audiences and elevating enterprises that empower citizens, the Initiative also tracks news consumer behaviors to discern characteristics such as what audiences are willing to pay for and audience preferences for how they consume news.
Project Censored, referencing the work of media scholar Victor Pickard, posits alternatives to the corporatized market-based model of news consumption. Asserting that commercial journalism has never fulfilled all of a democratic society’s needs, Pickard’s ideas for local and public-owned news outlets align with Rebuild Local News’ proposal for public assistance in newsrooms. Acknowledging that many journalists (and citizens) would balk at the idea of the federal government funding their publication, Rebuild focuses on public policies that would preserve editorial independence.
The 2023 State of Local News also reports on a national initiative called Press Forward, a coalition of 22 funders that announced in September 2023 a new program of grants for local news outlets. Press Forward says it is ready to help implement new frameworks and policies aimed at expanding news and information access, strengthening the First Amendment, and protecting local journalists’ editorial independence.
Similar to Pickard’s vision for a policy program that “reduces monopoly power; installs public interest protections; removes commercial pressures; and builds out public infrastructure,” Press Forward promises to fund local newsrooms to close inequality and inequity gaps, scale production and dissemination, strengthen community-focused journalism, and expand access to trusted news sources. While this rings a positive note to the new year, it isn’t yet clear when these grants will be funded, or exactly to whom.
The more important takeaway from the State of Local News 2023 report reinforces the ultimate mission of Project Censored and the message of the State of the Free Press 2024: local, transparent, independent news is vital for informing the public and empowering citizens with the knowledge and agency necessary for civic engagement, for making well-informed decisions on issues affecting daily life, and for holding the powerful accountable. As pivotal US presidential elections loom ahead, the local news crisis will come into sharper focus, reminding us that we do not want a world without journalism.
David McWilliams likens the Irish economy to a jockey riding two horses (“Ireland may no longer be able to ride two horses”, Opinion, September 14).
I would invoke a slightly different metaphor — if you cannot ride two horses you shouldn’t be in the circus.
Brendan McGrath
Dublin, Ireland
WITH the price of a first-class stamp hitting £1.65 on Monday, sending a letter or card will cost a packet.
The hike means it’s important to find other ways to save on postage. 9
So follow these tips to the letter . . .
STAMP IT OUT: Beat Monday’s 30p rise on first-class stamps by bulk-buying today.
As long as the stamp doesn’t have a price on it, and just says the postage class, it will still be valid after the hike.
Buy from a post office or reputable retailer to avoid fakes.
SEND SECOND CLASS: The price of second-class stamps is staying at 85p.
It should take two to three days for a second-class letter to be delivered, compared with one day for first class.
So, by being a bit more organised, you can save 80p on sending each letter.
BOX CLEVER: If you have an item weighing more than 1kg, a parcel courier website, such as Parcel2Go or ParcelHero, might end up being cheaper than Royal Mail.
E-CARDS: You can send all the sentiment without any of the cost of a stamp with a free e-card.
Lots of companies do this. Check out friendsoftheearth.uk/take-action where you can send a card to a whole group of people, and it’s up to you if you want to make a donation, too.
There is also a good selection at worldwildlife.org.
PACK IT IN: Use the right packaging as postage costs are determined on size and weight. Pack things as small as possible, making the packaging as thin as you can.
Envelopes and plastic mailing bags are the cheapest — so if you can fit gifts you want to send to a friend into a bag, it could cost less to send.
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STASH your outdoor cushions and blankets in a 270-litre Keter box, down from £45 to £30 at Argos.
SAVE: £15
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SAVE 20 per cent on selected eye make-up at Superdrug, with the Morphe 2 Ready In 5 eyeshadow palette down from £7 to £5.60.
SAVE: £1.40
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ENJOY beef bourguignon and molten cookie dough from the new Gastropub deal at M&S, with dishes by chef Tom Kerridge.
For £15, get a main, a side, and a dessert or starter.
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BLOCK breezes with the luxury velvet draught excluder, above, £39.95 from Graham & Green.
Or stay warm with Dunelm’s version, for £16. Both available in a range of colours.
SAVE: £23.95
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KIT out a bedroom with a Lexington bedside table, four-drawer chest and two-door wardrobe for £210 at The Range. Items can be bought individually.
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GET bready to try the new 800g farmhouse batch loaf from Hovis, down from £1.65 to £1 for Tesco Clubcard holders.
SAVE: 65p
GOT an urge for a Victoria sponge?
A sandwich cake tin is down from £2 to £1.50 at Morrisons as part of its baking sale.
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JOIN thousands of readers taking part in The Sun Raffle.
Every month we’re giving away £100 to 250 lucky readers – whether you’re saving up or just in need of some extra cash, The Sun could have you covered.
Every Sun Savers code entered equals one Raffle ticket.
The more codes you enter, the more tickets you’ll earn and the more chance you will have of winning!
Warning: This post contains spoilers for It’s What’s Inside.
The concept of body-swapping in horror movies is nothing new. Just think about Christopher Landon’s Freaky, Joe Lynch’s Suitable Flesh, and, of course, Jordan Peele’s inimitable Get Out.
However, in those films, the swapping happens against one or both of the swappers’ wills. In writer-director Greg Jardin’s debut feature It’s What’s Inside, on the other hand, a group of college friends reunited for the night before the wedding of one of their own all make the conscious decision to mentally trade places amongst themselves—to disastrous results.
Following a buzzy premiere at Sundance, the low-budget, high-concept horror comedy is now streaming on Netflix (which purchased the genre-bender earlier this year for a cool $17 million, one of the biggest sales in the festival’s history). “Initially I was pitching it as The Big Chill meets Freaky Friday by way of Black Mirror,” Jardin told IndieWire of the inspiration behind his surprise breakout hit. “When I initially came up with the idea, I saw it as a straight-up sci-fi comedy. And then as I was really working through it…I thought, maybe I can lean into a darker vibe but still be funny.”
The movie opens with anxious lead Shelby (Brittany O’Grady) trying and failing to seduce her longtime—and clearly indifferent—boyfriend Cyrus (James Morosini) into a role-playing scenario involving a blonde wig. It’s a thinly-veiled display of Shelby’s insecurities surrounding Cyrus’ interest in women who don’t look anything like her, particularly their old college friend-turned-social media influencer Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey).
The struggling couple then heads to a pre-wedding party at the eclectic mansion of the late mother of the groom-to-be, their friend Reuben (Devon Terrell). There, they reunite with the rest of their college cohort, artsy party girl Brooke (Reina Hardesty), trust-fund baby Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood), spiritual seeker Maya (Nina Bloomgarden), and Nikki.
Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door and their estranged friend Forbes (David Thompson), who was expelled from college following an incident at a party involving his unstable younger sister, Beatrice (Madison Davenport), shows up. Forbes, who has spent the past eight years working in tech, offers the group a chance to test out his team’s latest invention, a “game” contained within a suitcase that allows everyone in the group to temporarily and randomly swap bodies.
The first time, nobody knows what they’re getting into. But the gang, despite Shelby’s initial reluctance, subsequently all make the choice to participate in a second and third round. Naturally, horrifying chaos quickly ensues.
While Jardin does a good job of making it pretty clear who’s in whose body throughout the movie, the existential thrills kick into high gear after Reuben and Brooke, who are inside the bodies of Dennis and Maya, fall from a crumbling balcony while in the throes of passion and are killed instantly. This leaves the rest of the group to decide how to handle the switch back now that two of their bodies are broken and unusable.
Unable to agree on what they should do, the survivors split into factions and plot various ways to double-cross each other to get what they want. However, it turns out they were all being scammed from the start, as Beatrice was the one inside Forbes’ body all along. We learn that Beatrice stole Forbes’ body and his machine in order to get revenge for that long-ago party, which ended in Forbes and Dennis getting in a physical altercation over Dennis hooking up with a then-high-school-aged Beatrice while he was dating Nikki and ultimately landed Beatrice in a mental hospital.
By the end of the movie, only Shelby and Cyrus are back inside their own bodies, with Cyrus left to take the fall for Reuben and Brooke’s deaths (while in the bodies of Dennis and Maya) as Dennis called the cops while still inside Cyrus’ body and claimed to have pushed them. Meanwhile, Maya is trapped in Brooke’s body, Nikki in Reuben’s, Dennis in Forbes’, and Beatrice—who transferred all of Dennis’ trust-fund money into her own offshore account—in Nikki’s.
We see Beatrice (as Nikki) driving off into the sunset with the suitcase in tow before we get a flashback to her (then in Forbes’ body) explaining the addictive nature of the machine. “Every new body you go into gives you a new piece of the human condition,” she says. “And then, after a while, you just want to constantly switch.”
It was great to see the extent of the connections between arts and science described in Peter Aspden’s piece “The Two Cultures illuminated” (Visual Arts, Life & Arts, September 28).
The piece rightly starts with CP Snow’s famous 1959 Rede Lecture at Cambridge, “The Two Cultures”. This posited a split between the worlds of science and the humanities in the British educational system, which, in Snow’s view, had overemphasised the humanities (especially Latin and Greek) at the expense of scientific and engineering education.
It is important to note, as Aspden correctly points out, that “the humanities” in Snow’s piece refers to writing and makes no reference to other forms of art. Also important to note is that the two-cultures battle — advocating unity or split — has a long history. Snow was a latecomer to the discussion. In fact, this split was at the very core of the founding of several universities.
There is another framing, a more positive one. This was the hugely successful collaboration between art and science, which took place in October 1966, in the enormous space of the 69th Regiment Armory building in New York.
The 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering performance brought together 10 artists (led by Robert Rauschenberg) and 30 engineers (led by Billy Klüver from Bell Labs) to create avant-garde theatre and dance.
The two teams worked for 10 months to develop technical equipment and systems that were used as an integral part of the artists’ performances. Their collaboration produced many firsts. These included the use of closed-circuit television and television projection on stage; a fibre-optics camera that showed the audience objects in a performer’s pocket; an infrared television camera that was able to record action in total darkness; a Doppler sonar device that translated movements into sound while wireless FM transmitters and amplifiers allowed speech; and a system where body sounds could be broadcast through loudspeakers.
This was a meeting of minds that went to the root of what makes for a meaningful art-science connection — first understand how the other side thinks. Process is more important than outcome. In art-science discussions we tend to focus on outcomes; finished pieces of art and what can be placed in an exhibit, rather than the thinking that went into them.
Where are today’s Bell Labs? One must wonder what other company would give 30 engineers leave of absence for a year to purse this kind
of activity.
Professor Julio M Ottino
McCormick School of Engineering, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, US
FORGET glugging glasses of house white – when it comes to plonk, the latest craze is all about posing with poultry.
Nicknamed “The Chicken Wine” online owing to its bird-themed branding, the £8 French tipple La Vieille Ferme has become the latest cult bottle for Gen Z boozers.
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The clucking great pink has gone down a storm on social media, with celebrity fans including singer Charli XCX, who declared it the official “Brat” booze.
And it’s not the only quirky vino to go viral.
Here, drinks expert Helena Nicklin gives her verdict on the latest social media all-stars, giving each a score out of five.
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THIS famous, fowl-themed French pink plonk with the chicken on the label is now so popular on TikTok that discounter Aldi has brought out its own not-so-subtle tribute bottle (Le Petit Poulet, £6.49).
The original poultry plonk, though, is still perfectly judged for the more premium price tag, with its cool notes of citrus and strawberry.
Silky and supple, it slips down far too easily, as Generation Z have discovered for themselves.
If you really can’t get enough of the rooster it’s also available by the box for £15.50 (where it’s even better value).
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HAT’S off to Joy for knowing exactly who they’re aiming at with their vibrant-looking, simple sippers.
And this is another bottle with real eye-catching looks and colour that has led to it going viral. Gone are grape varieties and countries of origin.
Instead, we have analogies for cosy jumpers, juicy berries and mischievous elves.
The wine in the bottle mirrors the styling: very simple and sweet.
It’s suggested that you mix this with lemonade, oranges and strawberries for a wine-themed cocktail.
Perfect for first-time drinkers but vino aficionados should swerve.
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COMBINING two vino trends was always going to be a risk but, with this, it has paid off in spades.
And not only has it gone down a storm on social media but even the wine pros like it.
A hybrid-style bottle, which is half French rosé and half orange wine, it has the moreish texture and bergamot notes of the latter with the ripe strawberry fruit of the former.
The resulting tangerine colour will look great in your glass and on your feeds but it’s also a fine one to sip.
Not just a novelty bottle, this is a great intro to orange wine and I think it’s well worth the premium price tag.
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AS far as wine names go, this vino does exactly what it says on the label.
Very sweet and jammy, with a slick of vanilla wood that’s a bit rough around the edges – a bit like licking a new shed (or at least that’s how I imagine that would be!).
Still, the branding is eye-catching, which is why it’s become a trendy sipper and I suppose if you really, really love strawberry jam, then chances are that you might like this too.
In the real world and off the grid this vino is possibly a bit of a one-glass wonder for most people, though.
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ANOTHER vino to go viral and I’m not sure Lidl actually knows just how good this wine is for the price.
It’s a seemingly accidental dupe of a much more famous rosé produced around the corner in Lugana, near the Italian home of George Clooney, called Cà dei Frati Rosa dei Frati, which sells for around £25 a bottle.
Delightfully different, this soft, rose-tinted tipple will appeal to everyone with its pear and white peach flavours and a slick of saline.
Definitely a trending wine to take note of and taste for yourself.
A proper lesser-known gem.
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FOR a drink that’s been talked about in leading wine circles as “19 Crimes against winemaking”, as a hugely commercial tipple this is actually not too bad.
If you’re after a powerhouse vino with lots of very sweet, ripe fruit and flavours of caramel and vanilla, there’s no ignoring this Australian red.
Best with grilled meat or cheese to smooth it out, it’s big and unsubtle, which is why it packs a punch with its branding and has been a hit online – but in many ways that’s all part of its charm.
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IT’S been around for a long time but unlike another, ahem, “softly spoken divine wine”, Brad Pitt’s French pink Miraval has not lost any of its quality punch over the years.
And still huge on TikTok, it shows no sign of losing its popularity on social media either. In fact, dare I say it, over time it’s actually got better.
A beautiful bottle inside and out, this lean and quietly confident pink sipper put celeb rosé on the map – and the rest have been playing catch-up.
It’s not the cheapest cult tipple but for what you get when it’s on offer it’s very well priced.
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A VERY recent addition to the online trending wine list is this great-value Malbec from M&S which influencers and grid gluggers have been quick to pay attention to.
As the label suggests, this is a classic example of the grape from Argentina: ripe and smooth with notes of mocha, vanilla, blueberry and blackberry.
Not too sweet and with just enough grip, it would be impressive at twice the price.
One for pouring, sipping and savouring with your sizzling Friday night steak.
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