ben butterworth

clear and simple journalism

  • Is orange (wine) the new white ?

    Is orange (wine) the new white ?

    Orange wine has surged in popularity: but what is it?

    This week, I went to an orange wine tasting at DBM wines in Clifton, Bristol, to find out why these eye-catching new wines have caught the attention of so many.

    Orange wine, it turns out, is not made of oranges. “Orange wine is the opposite of rosé” says DBM Wine’s Nick Cowley. While rosé uses red wine grapes in a brewing process very similar to making white wine, orange wine uses white wine grapes in a process very similar to making red wine.

    Wine brewers make white wine by crushing white grapes and separating the juices they release from the remaining pulp. This juice is transferred into vats to start fermenting and the leftover grape pulp is discarded. To make orange wine, however, the grape juice and pulp aren’t separated right away and are left alone to infuse for days, even weeks. 

    This process is similar to how you make red wines with black grapes, except red wines are left to infuse for longer, sometimes months. This infusion process extracts flavour compounds from the grape pulp before the juice is filtered off for fermentation, such as the distinctive tannins common in red wine. 

    “They’re really food wines,” says Nick. “Orange wines tend to pair well with strong, garlicky foods like tapas.” The tannins from the infusion process give orange wines more astringency than white wine, which pairs fantastically with meats and strong flavours. This astringency isn’t so overpowering that a glass of orange wine can’t be enjoyed by itself, though; some tasters at Wednesday’s “Orange is the New White” wine tasting at DBM Wines called them “quaffable”.

    Orange wines seem to be popular almost exclusively among people in their 20s and 30s, according to Nick’s experience in the store. It doesn’t surprise him, he says, as different generations enjoy different tastes; he suspects their affinity for orange wine began in visits to trendy wine bars and restaurants. Orange wines are becoming so popular that this week, DBM’s regular weekly wine tasting had to expand to run on two nights to meet demand.

    Despite this, it seems like orange wines are still relatively niche; Majestic Wine’s website reveals they only stock 3 varieties of orange wine and have not yet made a section dedicated to it. Even looking in major UK supermarkets like Tesco, Lidl, Waitrose and ASDA, I could only find a total of 6 distinct bottles.

    Don’t let this fool you into thinking that there isn’t a wide variety of orange wines, though. Because customers don’t know what to expect of orange wine the way they do for red or white wines, many brewers are experimenting with what orange wines can be like.

    So what should you look out for when buying a bottle of orange? Experience trumps everything, says the DBM wines team – test them out glass by glass until you find your own taste. If you’re stuck for inspiration, start with orange wines made in the same regions as other wines you’ve enjoyed. Also keep an eye out for orange wines aged in amphorae, terracotta vases used as storage by the ancient Greeks, that impart a neutral flavour that let orange wine’s flavours shine.

    Footnotes for this article are available here.

    This article © 2025 by Ben Butterworth is licensed under CC BY 4.0

  • How often is cancer caused by drinking?

    A study in the British Journal of Cancer identified alcohol consumption as a cause of 3.3% of cancer cases in the United Kingdom in 2015. This ranked it well behind Tobacco smoking (14.7%) and obesity (6.3%) as a cause, but did put it a cause almost as often as exposure to UV radiation (3.8%).

    The study admits this statistic may be inaccurate because of the way they described alcohol consumption in their model. For instance, ex- and occasional drinkers might be represented in a way that underestimates their consumption of alcohol. The authors admit the way they chose to model alcohol consumption in their estimate could lead to an overestimation, too. The study went on to say, however, that alternative methods of estimating the number of cases caused by alcohol consumption would have introduced a greater level of uncertainty.

    Alcohol is known to increase your risk of getting mouth, throat, larynx, oesophagus, liver, colorectum, and breast cancer, but there is not yet enough evidence to confirm it causes other types of cancer, too.

    Although the consensus is that no amount of alcohol can be called completely “safe” to drink, most countries in Europe provide “low-risk consumption guidelines” that take research into account and present a realistic guide to how much you can drink to minimise your risk of cancer and other illnesses. You can view the guidelines for your country here.

    Footnotes to this article are available at https://github.com/benbutterworth/footnotes

    This article © 2025 by Ben Butterworth is licensed under CC BY 4.0

  • What is peer review, and why do we bother?

    Peer review is the process of making sure we can trust the knowledge we publish.

    In the peer review process, new research is sent to experts for them to check that the claims it makes are justified and strong enough to become public knowledge.

    To get their work published, researchers sent it to research journals like Nature and Science that collect and share research from people all over the world. The research journals then organise the peer review process to help them decide whether or not this research will be published.

    The reason we bother peer reviewing papers is because it is important that the common set of facts we all believe can be trusted. Peer review limits the reach and impact of poor research before it goes public, and makes sure that we don’t accidentally publish things that aren’t (to the best of our knowledge) true.

    So how does it work?

    A manuscript which explains what a group of researchers did, why they did it, and what they discovered, is sent to an expert who has no conflicts of interest with anyone who conducted the research. This expert then goes through the manuscript and sends the journal a report of their thoughts on what was good, bad, or needed improvement in the manuscript. The journal uses this report to decide whether the research should be published, rejected, or given back to the authors to make small changes before they make a decision.

    Every journal has a slightly different way of running the peer review process. Some journals insist that both researchers and reviewers remain anonymous to one another until after the review is complete, others don’t. Some journals pay experts to review their manuscripts, some don’t. But the core method of the peer review process doesn’t change.

    What’s the catch?

    Unfortunately, peer review does not eliminate the possibility that research is wrong. Plenty of past research has been proven wrong, and current facts will probably be proven wrong sometime in the future, too. The peer review process does, however, prevent researchers from making claims that aren’t backed up by evidence or supported by our current knowledge.

    The review process has practical limitations; it would be impossible to ask every expert in a field to review every new paper that comes out! So, instead of trying to find out whether all experts in a field agree, the peer review process normally asks around 2-4 experts to give their opinion on a piece of research. It might seem like these experts have a lot of power, but in the end it is the journal who decides what will be published, and not the experts.

    This article is based on my experience with helping organise the peer review process at Diabetologia, where I currently work as Senior Editorial Assistant.

    This article © 2025 by Ben Butterworth is licensed under CC BY 4.0

  • Stop visiting ChatGPT.com and take your Large Language Models offline with Ollama

    According to two web analytics services, chatgpt.com is currently the 6th most visited website in the world. That means a hell of a lot of people are asking it questions, and it’s getting a hell of a lot of data.

    Even though OpenAI’s Data Processing Addendum, released Feburary 2025, states OpenAI will “not “sell” […] or “share” […] Personal Data”, you might still want to keep absolute control over your data for peace of mind. Taking your interactions with large language models (LLMs) offline keeps the ball in your court.

    But that’s not the only reason to take things offline. There are times when the internet fails you; webservers collapse and sometimes you just don’t have access to WIFI. Having an LLM ready to use offline gives you a great backup for when things go wrong.

    And then there’s curiosity. There’s a wealth of open-source LLMs to play and experiment with, not just ChatGPT! Not only are there dozens of general purpose LLMs, but you can toy with specialised large language models like like IBM’s granite, built specifically for problem solving, or Meta’s codellama, designed to write and discuss code.

    But how do you go about downloading an LLM to your laptop?

    LLMs à la carte with Ollama

    Get your offline chatbot dreams started with Ollama, a command line tool for building and interacting with open-source LLMs locally on your machine.

    To make sure you can use it, you’ll need to check that your machine has the right specs. Even a small LLM will take up at least 1.5 GB of spare disk space and need at least 8GB of RAM to run. If you want to experiment with some beefier models, you might need up to 20GB of spare storage and 16GB RAM.  

    Once you’ve checked you’ve got the right specs, simply visit the Ollama website and follow the installation instructions for your operating system.

    Actually using Ollama

    Once you’ve downloaded Ollama, you can almost start using open-source LLMs rightaway! Browse through Ollama’s catalogue of models and find one that’s right for you (and your machine), then open up a terminal and type ollama run MODEL_NAME to download your first, offline large language model!

    There’s plenty more that Ollama can do, but for now, enjoy experimenting!

    *Footnotes at https://github.com/benbutterworth/footnotes

  • 10 posts in 10 days

    Explaining the sudden increace in awful posts.

    I have a confession: I am procrastinating.

    Not the cute kind of procrastinating where you cram the night before a big deadline, but the lots-of-excuses, i’ll-do-it-tommorrow, just-this-one-last-thing-then-i’ll-be-ready type of procrastination that makes just starting to work feel like climbing a mountain.

    But what is it that I’m putting off?

    I’m terrified of writing

    Earlier this year, I commited to pursuing journalism as a career. It would not be contraversial to label this as “an interesting choice”; I have spent my life until now studying to become a physicist. It was going pretty well, until I figured out that I didn’t enjoy research nearly as much as I thought.

    So, in Febuary I enrolled in a journalism course and switched to working part time, saying to myself that it’d give me more time to write and pursue my goals. This raises an obvious question: why is this site so empty?

    It’s empty because I am putting off getting started. I’m putting it off because I am terrified of writing something bad, or, even worse, wrong. I really care about becoming a journalist, and I want to be good at it. The thing is, I’m way out of my depth and don’t know where to begin.

    The 10 posts, 10 days challenge

    This challenge is my attempt to get out of my head and break that thought pattern. It’s not complex and the title speaks for itself – 10 posts, 10 days.

    In this challenge I will publish one article every single day starting from today until Friday next week (3-13 June 2025).These articles don’t have to be big or impressive, but they do have to exist. I hope that doing this will let me find some forward momentum that’ll keep me writing regularly.

    The Rules

    1. Every article has to be published before midnight, every night.
    2. Each article will be started and finished on the same day; no working on one thing over multiple days.
    3. Each article will be a genuine attempt at journalism where I’ll try to answer questions and report events, instead of giving my opinion.

    So that’s it, this is 1 of 10; see you in number 2!

  • End youth homelessness this Easter while crushing strangers at Catan

    From 5-20th April games nights all over Bristol will raise money for the youth charity 1625 People.

    Cafes, bars and games shops all over Bristol will host games nights this Easter to help end youth homelessness in the charity 1625 People’s ‘gaming for good’ campaign.

    1625 People works with young people facing homelessness to give them the support they need to “be the best they can be”, whether that be finding them a place to stay or providing them with essential skills training. Their “gaming for good” campaign urges people to “play for a cause” and donate.

    Venues all over Bristol will host games nights from the 5th to the 20th April to raise money for the chairity. Events range from a “Buddy Up!” social gaming night at Replay, a popular board games cafe, to a Mario kart tournament at Kongs, the King’s Street institution .

    1625 People run 3 supported housing projects and 270 bed spaces in the South West and Bristol for young people in need of accommodation. They are restoring the Grade II listed Kingsley Hall on Old Market Street into a hub for support and training, hoping to create a “welcoming, safe space(s) where young people can overcome isolation, improve their mental wellbeing and create connections.”

    So get gaming! See the full list of gaming for good events on 1625 People’s site here!