Our merchant partners – Armit Wines, Brunswick Fine Wines, Corney & Barrow, FromVineyardsDirect, Mr Wheeler, Private Cellar and Yapp Bros – represent the cream of the UK’s independents and boast centuries of experience between them. They all have particular areas of expertise and stock wines that you would never be able to find on the supermarket shelves or local off-licence.
We’re with Brunswick Fine Wine & Spirits again this week and what a jolly tasting my old chum Jamie ‘Jimmy’ Graham and co-owner Carlos de Haan laid on for me in their shop at 15 New Road, Brighton, the other day. I’m embarrassed to call what I do work. The boys know my weakness and
We broke the decibel level of the boardroom last week. Even our sainted editor, Lord G himself, came to see what the fuss was about. On discovering that it was the reunion lunch of last year’s Spectator Wine Club tour to Bordeaux, he commended the assembled old soaks on the diligence of their continued researches
Ladies and gentlemen, drum roll please, no pushing at the back, let’s hear it for… The Bunch! Yes, The Bunch! If you don’t know who I’m talking about, you’re in for a treat. And if you do know, you’ll realise why I’m so excited. A loose coalition of six of the UK’s finest independent wine
It’s always a treat to visit Corney & Barrow HQ – all swish after its refurb – but especially so when in the company of Chloë Smith-Ferrari, grand panjandrum of the Spectator Club, headmistress of the Spectator Wine School and possessor of an impressively inquiring thirst. C&B wheeled out the big guns with James Franklin,
Whoop, whoop! After missing out last year, we’re back with our annual offer of Chateau Musar. And, thanks to our chums at Mr Wheeler, canny readers of The Spectator have the exclusive on the newly released 2019 vintage for the next two weeks. It’s available nowhere else but here. I mean, do you realise just
Hats off please as we welcome a new partner to these pages – Waud Handford of South Ken. Hurrah! Run by two charming stalwarts of the wine trade – James Handford MW and Charles Waud – Waud Handford boasts an enviably mouth-watering list, and it was quite the brow-furrowing task whittling down this offer to
I love my mother-in-law. Love, respect and value her. Only she, it seems, understands me. We share a decades’ long empathy, and I believe her to be a saint, an absolute saint. As I mentioned last time, I tried so hard to stay on the January water wagon, to which cheerless charabanc I’d been banished
So, you’re on the water wagon? Well, bully for you. Nobody likes a show-off. Actually, erm, I was on it too but, with Mrs Ray away and nobody to keep an eye on me, I fell off in week one with something of a thump (well, something of a thumping hangover, as it turned out).
We had a suitably effervescent hoot at our penultimate Spectator Winemakers’ Lunch of the year in the boardroom last week, hosted by Baptiste Marchal of Brimoncourt Champagne. Every bottle was drained and huge fun was had. Founded by former naval officer, paratrooper, lawyer, entrepreneur and art dealer Alexandre Cornot in 2008, Brimoncourt Champagne is based
Jamie ‘Jimmy’ Graham, co-proprietor with Carlos de Haan of Brunswick Fine Wines in Brighton, is one of my oldest chums. We cut our vinous teeth at Berry Bros decades ago, we live on the same street in Skid Row-on-Sea and, as always, we will be drowning our considerable sorrows together on Christmas Day. I’ve long
Klaxon alert! You have spoken and we have listened. You told us that you wanted a second bite of the vinous cherry that is our annual ‘defrocked’ claret offer with FromVineyardsDirect and so, dear readers, here it is, just as before: same wines, same vintages (2022 and 2023, belters both), same prices. As you know,
It has been a week of alcoholic highlights, and, yes, I’ve made the most of it. Oh, don’t be like that, you sound like Mrs Ray with her tut-tut-tutting and eye-rolling. The Spectator Wine Club tour of Bordeaux was followed by a Rhône dinner with Domaine Vieux Télégraph, a champagne dinner with Virginie T, a
Cooee, we’re back! What? Oh, I’m talking about our second annual Spectator Wine Club assault on Bordeaux. I thought you knew. We had one heck of a trip, thanks so much for asking, and lost nobody in the field. With drinking boots brightly polished we easily saw off seven wineries and several dozen bottles in
It was just going to be Nigel and me. You know, two old chums meeting for a quiet Monday evening drink and a natter. When I pitched up, though, Pete and Nick were also there, and if anything triggers my alarm bells it’s the presence of these two smiling assassins. I love all three boys
It has been a gratifyingly wine-soaked week. Our Pol Roger-fuelled dinner celebrating the mighty Michael Heath’s 90th birthday was followed by a brace of Spectator Winemaker Lunches, one featuring Marimar Torres’s sublime Sonoma Pinots and Chardonnays, the other, at Boisdale, focusing on the glory that is Lebanon’s Ch. Ksara. Fearing toxic shock if I stopped,
The boardroom clapometer said it all. Hosted by the winemaker Louisa Rose and the sixth-generation family member Lucy Hill-Smith, our Spectator Winemaker Lunch featuring the wines of Yalumba – Australia’s oldest family-owned winery, founded by Samuel Smith in the Barossa Valley 175 years ago – was one of our finest. I’ve never heard such riotous
We’re just back from our stout-hearted Spectator assault on Porto and the Douro Valley, of which more in these pages anon. Suffice to say that it was mission accomplished and everyone in our highly motivated, well-drilled unit more than deserved their mentions in despatches. Indeed, so gung-ho were the troops on the flight home that
Our two Spectator Clays, Claret, Cognac, Cigars (and Carnage) Cruises down the Thames last week were an uproarious success. Much fun was had and, apart from a couple of walking wounded – suffering not from gunshot wounds, you’ll be glad to hear, but simply a surfeit of claret and kummel – there were no casualties.
Ring out the bells, hang out the bunting! Drop whatever you’re doing and pay attention! It’s that time of year again, marked in red on wine-loving readers’ calendars: our annual offer of declassified or so-called ‘defrocked’ clarets from our canny chums at FromVineyardsDirect. You know the form but I’m going to remind you anyway, as
Salute! It’s an all-Italian offer this week thanks to our fratelli nel vino at Honest Grapes, whose speciality is that great country. We could, of course, offer nothing but Italian wines all year and still not cover every region and every grape variety, but we’ve done our very best on this occasion to give as
