Having for each of the past 15 years selected and recommended New Zealand’s top 100 wines for one of our major daily newspapers, I think I can appreciate more than most the challenges for Michael Cooper when he set out to write 100 Must Try New Zealand Wines, his latest book. The biggest challenge when you are doing something like this is to first settle on a formula that will result in a selection of wines that will satisfy the needs of the widest possible audience, not just those who believe that expensive equals best and have the dosh to support that belief, writes Warren Barton in The Southland Times.

Homegrown winemaker Invivo Wines has built early success in its Japanese export market using strong in-store presence and its strategy of regular face-to-face meetings with consumers. For the Kiwi winemaking company, having a Japanese customer drive four hours to meet co-founder Rob Cameron is a good sign that small measures can lead to great events. Cameron, Invivo cofounder and winemaker, visited Tokyo and Yokohama recently where he poured heaps of Invivo wine and got up close and personal with Japanese wine lovers, reports NZ Exporter.

In the green foothills of the Brokenback mountain range in the Hunter Valley, the first buds of spring have begun to flower, but this is not likely to be a season of great cheer in one of Australia’s oldest wine producing regions. New figures show sales of Australian wine have fallen sharply as the industry faces its worst slowdown in a decade and a half. Growers here talk of the “perfect storm” whipped up by a strong currency, oversupply and cautious consumers, reports BBC News.

Drinking alcohol can increase your risk of cancer because ethanol is itself a carcinogen on certain parts of the body, scientists have found. Researchers said they found that when ethanol is broken down by the body, it can cause DNA damage that may lead to dangerous changes to the cells. The U.S team from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Maryland, used human cells engineered to produce an enzyme that is found in liver and breast tissue, reports Daily Mail.