Having arrived at the fair much later then planned on day one, I really only had time for two 'meet-the-winemaker' interviews for our Blog (hear my chat with Charlie Melton), and get the latest gossip from the Liberty stand.

But, I did manage to taste a few wines - more to do today - and I couldn't resist blogging about this one in particular as it is both from an old favourite in terms of producers from our list, and made from a grape variety I hadn't herd of until yesterday.

A. Mano Aleatico Passito 2007 is a red sweet wine made form the Aleatico grape variety. Lovely dark chocolate notes, ripe plums and hints of dark berry fruits. Really interesting bitter-sweet finish that, I think would make this wine a great partner to that most difficult of food-stuff, chocolate.

Nice to taste something new, and a very good reminder of one of the reasons that Italy is so interesting as a wine producing country. Namely, it has a whole host of native grape varieties to tempt and intrigue us with. More like this please...

Apologies for photo quality. I didn't want to be bothered lugging a camera to London as well as an MP3 recorder and laptop, so this is taken with my iPhone. I love my iPhone, and I was happy to see it could handle the odd photo situation too.

Now I'm off on a train again for the hard slog back to London Excel and day two of the fair. It's a pretty torturous experience getting to the fair - Wantage to London is the easy bit with Paddington only a 45 minute train ride away. It's the bit from Paddington to Tower Gateway, and especially the DLR train ride to London Excel that is the real killer. At least I have 'Spooks' on the iPod part of the phone to keep me company - oh, and a few more blogs to get up too!