Wine Club

It’s been something of a liver-challenging few days for the lushes of Spectator Towers. A fascinating volumetric tasting of 2013 Château Angludet (served to 60 readers during lunch from halves, bottles, magnums, double magnums and an imperial) was followed by the first day of term at the Spectator Wine School and by a memorable Spectator Wine Club lunch with Henry Jeffreys presenting his excellent new book on the pioneers behind the English wine revolution, Vines in a Cold Climate, alongside some appropriately fine English vino. When I tell you that I then dashed home to taste 18 wines for this offer, courtesy of Mr Wheeler, you’ll probably understand why my supposed Sober October has been such a washout.

So how’s your sober October going? No, nor mine. I ticked two consecutive days off the calendar, which is more than I’ve managed since, gosh, January. Baby steps, I know, but it’s bloody difficult. Mrs Ray is not helping. One minute she’s chiding me for being a lush with no self-control; the next she’s hovering around with a corkscrew muttering about what a dry old ship it is and asking what a girl must do to get a drink round here. It’s fair to say that tempers have been a trifle frayed. We perked up immensely, though, when we came to taste the wines for this offer courtesy of Field & Fawcett of Grimston Bar, York, both agreeing that we should start with a clean slate and spit on the inside. Hurrah!

Phew, we made it in one piece. Nobody was seasick, nobody fell overboard, and nobody got shot. I’m talking, of course, of our Spectator Clays, Claret and Cognac Cruise in Thames sailing barge Will, during which 30 or so readers and a crack Spectator team blasted at clays with pump action shotguns and blunderbusses before drinking the boat dry. We even managed to see off a double magnum of Delamain Pale & Dry Cognac as Tower Bridge opened. I was so proud. Next morning, feeling, yes, a trifle delicate, it was straight back to the vino, tasting our annual FromVineyardsDirect ‘defrocked’ claret offer.

It was the mighty Andrew Edmunds’s memorial last week – he of the eponymous restaurant and the Academy Club, those last vestiges of old Soho. All the great and the louche were there paying their respects to this delightful man of many parts – restaurateur, clubman, wine lover, fine print purveyor, flower arranger, fly fisherman and scourge of poets and golfers. Among those saying goodbye were Robin Yapp, his son Jason and his stepson Tom, the founder and his two successors at Yapp Bros. Robin used to lead my father badly astray and Jas (who introduced me to the Academy over a ten-hour lunch) and Tom have kept up the family tradition by doing likewise with me.  These boys know their wines.

I’m just back from a week in Alsace and I can’t stop grinning. It’s my favourite of all French wine regions, ridiculously pretty and warmly welcoming. The winemakers are just so genial and – unlike many other regions we can all think of – inherently collaborative, forever bigging up the wares of their rivals, who are invariably also their close friends. I’m delighted, then, that one of the wines that Laura Taylor of Private Cellar put up for tasting for this offer was the 2021 Domaine Allimant-Laugner Pinot Blanc (1), a bottle of which I shared with the owner-winemaker Nicolas Laugner only the other day. A blend of Pinot Blanc and Pinot Auxerrois, it’s fresh and fruity with that inimitable creamy, peachy ‘Alsace-ness’ that I love so much.

So, there we were, my chum and I, nearing the bottom of our second bottle of perfectly chilled Franciacorta, that wonderful Italian fizz that knocks spots off prosecco. It was a gorgeous wine, we both agreed, from a gorgeous country, full of gorgeous people, eating gorgeous food and living gorgeous lives. In a perfect world, we concluded with a deep, longing sigh, we would have both been born Italian. Since it isn’t and since we weren’t, we pledged to do the next best thing: to eat nothing but fine Italian food and drink nothing but fine Italian wine and think nothing but fine Italian thoughts for the rest of our lives.

Mustard’s Grill on the St Helena Highway, Napa Valley, is a top spot. Self-described as a fancy rib joint with way too many wines, its most celebrated dish is the Truckstop Deluxe – ‘always meat, sometimes potatoes, rarely vegetables’. I can never get enough of it and have popped many a shirt button there. It was in this glutton’s/lush’s paradise that I encountered the Decoy range of Duckhorn Vineyards. I was instantly smitten. They are impeccable wines from a great Napa estate. Expressly made to be enjoyed young, they ain’t cheap, but compared with other Napa wines of similar quality they are remarkably good value, especially with the discount that Mr Wheeler are generously offering.

This ridiculous cost of profiteering crisis is taking its toll. All of us – apart from the sleek, smug fat cats – are suffering and tightening our belts, but I’m damned if I’m going to be done out of my vino. And I’m damned if you are too. I mean, what else is there to take our minds off things during these dark days of doom and despondency?  I take my duties as your drinks editor seriously and feel it timely, therefore, to reintroduce you to the wines of Domaine du Grand Mayne, producer of some of the tastiest, best-value wines around.

Hey you there on your sun lounger! Take a gander at this summer sale, courtesy of our chums at FromVineyardsDirect. These are extremely toothsome bin-ends and overstocks at pre-duty increase prices. I’ve tasted them, rejected the also-rans and beaten FVD down on price as much as I can. There are some cracking mystery cases included too. First the whites. 2020 Rive Droite, Rive Gauche (1) has often featured in these pages – a creamy, peachy Viognier-based white Côtes du Rhône that never fails to please. £10.95 down from £12.75. The 2022 Racine Picpoul de Pinet (2) is another crowd-pleaser and as decent a Picpoul as you’ll find. Fresh, creamy and lemony, it’s spot on as a lively aperitif. £12.95 down from £14.95.

Well, crikey, that was fun! The recent inaugural Spectator tour of Champagne, that is. We had a hoot, visiting five producers and enjoying two first-rate dinners courtesy of Taittinger and Pol Roger. We learned lots, laughed lots, drank lots and I don’t think a single spittoon was sullied during the entire trip. Bravo! Oh, and hats off to Peter Brown who came top of the rigorous end of tour examination and who got a bottle of Pol for his troubles. Well done, Peter! After a week of fizz, though, however swanky the wines (and some were very swanky), it’s a joy to encounter some tasty still wines of great value such as these we’re offering here.

I confess to feeling a trifle delicate when tasting the dozen or so wines from FromVineyardsDirect for this offer. A late night at the Academy Club had turned into early morning at the Experimental Cocktail Club and neither Mrs Ray nor I were at our best. Indeed, Mrs R decided it was all too much and retired to bed blaming me for everything while also inquiring as to when I might be planning to grow up. It was a strange question that I refused to dignify with an answer. Anyway, the point is that I was not in the best of health when I first sampled the wines, yet I still managed to like them. When I tried them again later, I absolutely loved them and would be surprised if you don’t too.

There are worse ways of spending the late May bank holiday than tasting a dozen or so wines from Swig, the merchant beloved of my sainted predecessors Messrs Waugh and Hoggart. Mrs Ray did question why I had to start so early, finish so late and ask so many neighbours to help but then she, too, got swept up in the fun and agreed that putting out spittoons would only spoil things and add to the washing up. She’s a trouper all right. This selection from Swig is the perfect summer fare The 2021 Di Meno Grillo (1), from the hills of north-west Sicily, is so engaging it demanded inclusion. I don’t get much on the nose – maybe a touch of peach and melon – but on the palate I get plenty: lemon zest, herbs, melon and grapefruit, and I love it.

Feeling desperately fragile after a cocktail-soaked long weekend with Lunch Club in Berlin, I tried to appease an exasperated, eye-rolling Mrs Ray by vowing never to drink again. Wouldn’t touch a drop. As I rallied, though, and the Berliner katzenjammer slowly cleared, I pulled myself together and pointed out that there was work to do and fine Italian wine from Mr Wheeler to taste. Mrs R is a sucker for top Italian vino so it didn’t take long for her to join me, and we had a merry couple of hours coming up with the following selection. She even made her signature pappardelle pasta with venison ragout to soak it all up, so all is well.

I happily did my bit for Blighty during the coronation and drank nothing but English wine, beer and spirits the whole weekend. If I was guilty of slightly over-egging the pudding it was only through an excessive bout of patriotism and I can report with pride that even my much-needed hangover cure – The Original Pick-Me-Up from D. R. Harris & Co – was English made. Once off the naughty step and given reluctant permission by Mrs Ray to resume active service, I moved straight from the vinous delights of Kent and Sussex to those of Burgundy, courtesy of Honest Grapes and Albert Bichot. Founded in Beaune in 1831, Albert Bichot is the leading buyer at the Hospices de Beaune auction and one of the region’s largest producers, with more than 150 different wines on its list.

I’m seeing Jason Yapp next week and am deeply nervous. It’s been a while since we caught up and as followers of this column might recall, he and wicked step-brother Tom Ashworth have form in leading me astray. I think I told you about our little adventure in that backstreet bar in Biarritz. It was years ago and I’m still in shock. And still paying off the credit card. And still apologising to Mrs Ray, although she really should have moved on by now. The fact that mighty Gavin Rankin, le patron of London’s finest eatery, Bellamy’s – that fabled ‘club without a sub’ – is going to be joining us and that we are convening at 12.15 p.m. ‘because we’ve a lot to get through and the Pink Coconut opens early on a Wednesday’ only heightens my anxiety.

It’s uncanny, but if I gauge it right, I can summon my wife as if by magic. Mrs R’s hearing is at its most acute in that lull between her afternoon Earl Grey and evening G&T, at which point she can hear me pop a cork from two floors away. She’ll be down in a trice, equipped with an inquiring thirst. ‘Ooh, a tasting,’ she’ll declare, all fresh-faced innocence. ‘Can I help?’ And so it was that we hoovered through some fabulous wines from Corney & Barrow together and came up – unanimously – with this final selection. The 2021 Pãsãri Chardonnay/Feteascã Regalã (1) is one of my wines of the year. Made at a British-owned Romanian estate by an Australian and a Spaniard, it’s deliciously undemanding.

If you don’t like fine, well-priced Provencal rosé – crisp, clean, lively, refreshing and perfect for spring – then look away now. If, however, you’re an out ’n’ proud pink-drink lover like me then what are you waiting for? Get stuck in! Rosé has never been more popular, and with reason: the best are very tasty indeed. I’m not talking about so-called ‘lady petrol’, the grim, off-dry to sweet, neon-coloured, bubblegum-like California Blush Zinfandel, designed for chugging back over ice from a goldfish bowl in the beer garden of the Dog and Vomit on a Sunday afternoon. No, I’m talking about beautifully crafted, pale, pale pink wines made with the same care and attention that goes into the making of the finest reds and whites.

Mrs Ray can’t stop humming. She loves this time of year. It might be sheeting down and there might be a massive leak in our roof which none of five different builders has managed to fix, but all she notices are the daffs in full bloom, the fluffy pink cherry blossom and her treasured magnolia bursting into life. I suspect that Mrs R’s high spirits might have been somewhat enhanced by the dozen or so bottles of Rioja from Honest Grapes that we’ve just tasted, especially as we didn’t trouble the spittoon quite as much as we should have. But, heck, the wines were just so moreish, perfect with the marinated anchovies and roast leg of South Downs lamb we had for supper. They were almost impossible to narrow down to six.

Whoop, whoop, it’s another Spectator scoop! Mighty Ch. Musar of Lebanon has just released its latest – 2017 – vintage, and wily Johnny Wheeler has ensured that readers are the first in the UK to get their hands on it. This wine is not available anywhere else until Easter and, with Musar repositioning the brand (aka putting the price up a fiver a bottle), you won’t find it cheaper. If Musar’s your thing – and it’s certainly mine – do get stuck in. Yes, the 2017 Ch. Musar White (1) is an acquired taste but it’s one that I have most definitely acquired and trust you have/will too. It’s hard to know with what to compare it, weaving as it does between dry white Bordeaux, white Rioja, white Rhône and even Manzanilla sherry in style.

I don’t know how Laura Taylor does it. Private Cellar’s marketing director has managed – after a similar coup with the previous vintage – to snare an elusive and handsome parcel of 2022 Hamilton Russell Vineyards Chardonnay and Pinot Noir especially for readers of The Spectator. You cannot buy these anywhere else yet. These are wines of the highest order and greatly sought-after and we are blessed to be so honoured. Indeed, as Anthony Hamilton Russell himself said to Laura: ‘Your allocation is more than many countries get!’ It helps, of course, that Laura knows the estate – in South Africa’s Hemel-en-Aarde Valley – well, and that she visited it only a month or so ago.