Our nine merchant partners – Armit Wines, Corney & Barrow, FromVineyardsDirect, Honest Grapes, Mr Wheeler, Private Cellar, Swig, Tanners 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.
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
Mrs Ray is worried. Although she’s finally accepted that I drink too much when I’m out and about or at home with company, she’s fretting that I drink too much tout seul. Some misguided saps regard drinking on one’s own as the start of a very slippery slope, but I believe it to be one
Lunch at the Academy Club with my wicked chums Mark Slemeck and Charlie Grey was probably not the best preparation for tasting a dozen or so wines for this offer from Corney & Barrow. Mark likes his wine but likes his caipirinhas better and Charlie is more of a Pinot Grigio/Newcastle Brown Ale kind of
With a seemingly endless round of lunches, dinners and tastings, it has been a punishing few days of far too much vino. Even dear Mrs Ray expressed her concern, although I thought that a bit rich given the state of her after Book Club. We decided, though, to take it easy, and I even foreswore
Hurrah! At last, I’ve persuaded the mighty Wine Society to grace our pages, and I’m delighted. Founded in 1874, the WS is the world’s oldest cooperative wine club, famed for sourcing top-quality wines at modest prices and for championing lesser-known regions. I’ve said it before: if, for whatever bizarre reason, I had to buy wine
If it’s Thursday, it must be Budapest. Vienna of the other week is but a memory – and a rather sketchy one at that thanks to all those Corn ’n’ Oils – now superseded in the hippocampus by our wine-soaked Spectator tour of Budapest and the vineyards of Eger and Tokaj. We had a hoot,
I’ve been in Vienna, drinking Grüner Veltliner, Zweigelt and Blaufränkisch like a fish. It’s thirsty work being a lush and I also patronised the fabled Loos American Bar rather more often than I should have. It’s such a seductive spot, LAB, and their Corn ’n’ Oils are very fine, and I can never resist a
I know I keep saying it, but Alsace is my favourite of all French wine regions. Heck, it might even be my favourite in all the world. It has everything: a remarkable history, glorious scenery, chocolate box-pretty towns and villages, fabulous food, extraordinarily fine eaux-de-vie and stunning, smile-inducing wines. Oh, my goodness, the wines. Produced
