Andrew's still buzzing about the London International Wine Fair. And one of the most interesting winemakers there was Mark Shannon, who makes A Mano wines in Puglia.

He's a Californian who visited Puglia in Italy and fell in love with their wine, and way of life. He moved over there a few years ago, and now makes A Mano wines ("A Mano" meaning "handmade") with passion and old-fashioned know-how.

We've always loved A Mano here at Surf4Wine, and if you've ever tasted any of Mark's wines you'll know why. Click below to hear Andrew talking to him about everything from cleanliness to George Clooney!

S4W talks to Mark Shannon

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!