The other night I was having some Cabernet Blanc with my homies and - Cabernet What, I hear you say? You heard correctly, the wine is called Cabernet Blanc, a grape variety that is grown by just a few vintners in central and western Europe. The specimen whose label you see below comes from the Pfalz, one of my favourite German wine regions.

It was produced by the Mosbacher family who have been making wine in the village of Forst for a hundred years now. Currently, they grow vines on some 20 hectares of land, with roughly 90% of the production dedicated to white wine, mostly Riesling. Cabernet Blanc makes up only about 1% of their overall production.

How do you come back from the dead you ask? If you have to, I think, do it with a bang. In our case, this ruled out re-starting the Wine Rambler with a usual post, such as a review of a steely Riesling. So I went in search of something unusual. And I think it is fair to say I found it, or rather it found me: ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you a review of North Korean wild grape wine from the DMZ!

Before we venture into the Korean Demilitarized Zone, a few words about the Wine Rambler. Julian and I started this venture purely for our own entertainment almost ten years ago. Over time it grew and changed, and so did our lives. With work and other commitments there was less time for rambling, especially for telling the really interesting stories. Research, interviews, travel and tastings can take a lot of time, and neither Julian's nor my schedule was flexible enough. That is still the case, but increasingly I found I was missing both the writing and the wine community. So, I dusted off the blog, gave it a new interface and here we are. It is unlikely we will ever go back to the olden days of several posts a week, but I am still looking forward to the occasional ramble.

To all our readers a Merry Christmas and wonderful 2016, filled with joy and exciting wine adventures!

How do you get a semi-retired wine blogger to grab his tasting glass and head out into the fray again? Make him an offer he can't resist. Include in it: World class red wines, back vintages no longer available anywhere else, an Italian region that he loves, but still knows too little about. To clinch the deal, promise him that he will get to meet a real live Italian nobleman.

Marchese Lamberto de' Frescobaldi is just that, and he is also the director of his family's vast agricultural and wine growing operation. To promote his high-end Tuscan sangiovese, Frescobaldi and their German importer had set up a spectacular vertical tasting in Munich. Read on for my impressions of 30 years of Sangiovese, and a bit with a wild boar.

It took me almost two decades to appreciate gin. In my early drinking years, it was one of two spirits that I would always decline, as more than a glass made me sick (the other being ouzo). And let's face it, what else would you do with spirits in your late teenage years than have more than a glass? In the following, vaguely wiser years I enjoyed wine and stayed away from spirits - until I moved to gin central: London. Not only did I learn to appreciate a good gin and tonic, in those dire pubs where you are stuck between the Scylla of tart Sauvignon Blanc and the Charybdis of offensively dull lager even a mediocre G&T is a life (although perhaps not liver) saver. Today's gin is of a different calibre though, and an unusual beast too: a dry gin made in Germany, and intriguingly it is infused with late harvest Riesling grapes from a first class vineyard! So when I was offered a tasting sample of "Ferdinand's Saar Dry Gin" I had to say yes, and I brought along a gin expert to help me taste it.