A quick post to wish you and your families and healthy, happy and wine-filled 2016! Huge thanks for your support since launching The 23rd Parallel just six short weeks ago – the following already established has been extremely flattering, so I’ll be doing my best to keep the content coming in the months ahead.

Last night’s NYE was a very low-key one, a welcome moment of calm after what had been an extremely hectic 4-5 weeks. The wine of the night was a 2006 Pol Roger Rosé, below. Tasting notes as ever are right here.

By way of a catch-up, a few of my blog highlights so far have been:

• Favourite post: the perils of a holiday romance! Can a wine lose its mojo?
• Most talked-about/educational post: those Port and mince pies…here
• Favourite wine: 1985 Chateau Leoville-Barton. Incredible
• Most promising development: 2013 Churton “Best End” Sauvignon Blanc
• Unconventional and surprising: 2008 Kurni Rosso
• Most indomitable character: it has to be Igor Serdyuk at HKIWSF. Leading the charge for Crimean wine – with genuine quality

The first three months of this year will be a lot less hectic, mainly because I’m running the 50km Green Power Hike on 30th January, then the Seoul Marathon on 20th March: a lot of training to get done so January is, unfortunately, going to have to be a dry month. Where’s that spittoon?!

In no particular order, here is a selection of some of the things I intend to write about in the weeks and months to come:

• A look at Hong Kong’s current wine trends, featuring interviews with leading industry figures
• The growth of wine education in this part of the world
• Tasting the wines of a boutique Napa Valley producer, and the challenges associated with making a footprint here
• A sherry tasting: trying to decode this very unique wine
• What its like to be studying for the Master of Wine qualification: a chat with a second year student
• How to establish an Italian wine distributor in Hong Kong
• A retrospective of New Zealand‘s wine scene, using texts and data from 50+ years ago
• Margaret River trip: the three of us are heading down to WA at the end of March; I plan on getting my hands dirty in a winery!

If you have any ideas for subject matter you’d like me to investigate (i.e. taste) and write about, just holler.

Please continue to follow The 23rd Parallel and remember to share, discuss, retweet and recommend via Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, word of mouth, carrier pigeon, smoke signal and morse code.

Thanks for your help, and Happy New Year!

Dave