Wine Club

Order today. So, with Mrs Ray packed off to the airport for her sun-soaked sojourn in Italy, training for The Spectator’s Clays, Claret and Cognac Cruise begins in earnest. The clays could still do with work but I’m close to nailing the liquid element of the jaunt. I’ve been helped immensely by Armit Wines and the delectable dozen bottles they sent me. Thanks to regular timed sampling, I’m close to match fitness and I’m delighted with this selection (four Italian, one French) I’ve made on your behalf. The 2021 Bacioilcielo Fiano (1) might be completely unpronounceable – the sort of wine you point to on a wine list rather than ask for – but it’s so drinkable.

Order today. There are some typically quirky gems from Swig on offer this week and it’s great to have Robin Davis and the gang back in these pages. Their offer in January was a rip-roarer and, as before, there is plenty here to satisfy even the most demanding of thirsts. The 2020 Bourgogne Chardonnay Les Truffières, Domaine de Mauperthuis (1) is a Chablis in all but name and price, produced in Auxerre on south-facing Kimmeridgian soils that could easily pass for those of Montée de Tonnerre. Matured for 12 months in stainless steel, it’s crisp, clean and pure, taking its time to unfold gently in the glass and reveal its lightly honeyed floral notes. £14.50 down from £17.50.

Order today. Klaxon alert! Would all claret lovers please form an orderly queue? Esme Johnstone and the FromVineyardsDirect gang are clearing their cobwebbed cellars to make room for newer vintages and are offering us a brilliant baker’s dozen of Bordeaux bin-ends at a special, Spectator-only knockdown price. Hurrah! The wines from 2014 and 2015 (cracking vintages) are in that glorious mid-maturity stage, great to knock back now yet still worthy of salting away. There are limited stocks, though, and once they’re gone, they’re gone. The 2014 Ch. Méaume ‘Réserve du Château’ (1) is from a much-loved Bordeaux Supérieur estate between St Emilion and Pomerol.

Order today. Poor Mrs Ray finally cracked. Ever the stoic, she paid no heed to the life-challenging heatwaves and associated power cuts. She disregarded the Covid that raged through her loved ones and took hours-long delays in and out of Gatwick with her usual eudaimonic tranquillity of mind. The baggage chaos at Heathrow, the melting runway at Luton, the rail/barrister/postal strikes and prospect of our next PM being elected by less than a quarter of 1 per cent of the country; well, they barely registered. No, what finally did for my dear wife was seeing her favourite Mâcon-Lugny rise in price from £14 to almost £20. Her evening tipple priced out of reach was the final straw. She was quite undone.

Order today and use the discount code SPECJULY at the checkout. So, I finally got the plague. No, not monkeypox, the other one – Covid. I blame that Tuscan wedding. Not the hot’n’sweaty event itself, nor the jam-packed flights there and back; no, I blame the three subsequent days on the wagon, strictly enforced by Mrs Ray to prove that we’re not complete and utter lushes and can, on occasion, do without. Well, as any fule kno, Muscadet keeps the doctor away and water won’t. Thus it is that I’m still testing positive after 14 days. Sigh. But I’m back on the vino now and feel much better for it, thank you, the associated vitamins and antioxidants putting a distinct spring in my step.

Order today. We’re just back from a quick flit to Italy and a wild and wonderful wedding. It was all huge fun, although as I look back with throbbing, bloodshot eyes, I see, of course, that we could have done things differently, not to say better, such as by pacing ourselves more sensibly and staying off the grappa. It was arriving late that threw us (thanks easyJet) and the resultant determination to hit the ground running and prove our worth. The inevitable upshot is a distinct liverishness today. At least I’m not as frail as Mrs Ray, who sat pale, monosyllabic and remorseful next to me on the flight home.

Order today. The first red wine I ever drank was a scrumptiously succulent Beaujolais, and I’ve had a fondness for the region and its wines ever since. At 52, my father was getting on a bit when I was born and he was desperate to educate me in the delights of the grape as quickly as possible. I was weaned on Cyprus ‘sherry’ and was no more than ten when I enjoyed my first glass of enticingly sweet and fizzy Asti Spumante. Light, refreshing, low-alcohol German Riesling followed, and by the time I was off to senior school, I had graduated – at my father’s behest – to soft, juicy, jammy Beaujolais. Once I was 16 I’d mastered the Tequila Sunrise and the Harvey Wallbanger, too, but that’s another – rather messy – story.

Order today. We got away with it! I wasn’t actually there, of course (and if I was, I didn’t realise) but I can report that our inaugural Spectator Wine Club BYOB/Wine Time Friday lunch passed off without a hitch. There was no excessive boozing, no fighting, no vomiting, no karaoke and definitely no poor treatment of security and cleaning staff. There was just plenty of fun. (So much so that we’ve another lined up for Friday 9 September, if you’re interested.) Of course, the past masters at vinous fun are those naughty Yapp Bros, Jason and Tom (step-bros to be exact). They rootle out wonderful, well-priced wines that others overlook and some of my favourite bottles have been enjoyed in their company.

Order today. I’ve been banished upstairs. Mrs Ray has turned our ground floor into an art gallery in which to show her and her friends’ paintings, prints and pottery during Brighton’s annual Artists Open Houses, and I’ve been told not to come down and talk to visitors ‘or otherwise spoil things’. What can she mean? So it is that I sit in my lonely eyrie with just my thoughts and my bottles as company. I foolishly left the spittoon downstairs so the delectable selection supplied by Corney & Barrow for this offer left me merrier than usual and more indecisive too. Indeed, so tricky was it to whittle the wines down that we’ve ended up with nine rather than six, so I’d better get cracking.

Order today. I had my regular May meeting with the accounts department (Mrs Ray) the other night and it did not go well. The general gist was that I’m a profligate fool and that I need to drink less, not to mention less expensively. And no, she did not appreciate me quoting the late, great Errol Flynn’s line: ‘My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.’ She looked at me long and hard and I feared a lengthy dissection of my failings, but she simply muttered something about me being no Errol Flynn before leaving me with my thoughts and the dregs of a rather tasty claret (see below). The upshot is that this week I’m focusing on wines that give particularly good value. Each wine below is a corker and, in my view, massively undervalued.

Order today. As you know, when it comes to champagne, Pol Roger is pretty much The Spectator’s house pour. Indeed, a dog-eared sign on the door of the office fridge demands that staff always ensure there are two bottles chilling within it for emergency celebrations and commiserations or simply for whenever the moment strikes. It’s a rare occasion at 22 Old Queen Street when a bottle of Pol isn’t broached, then, and the fabled Spectator summer party is fuelled by little else. But one can’t live on Grande Marque Champagne alone and much as we adore PR, there are other effervescent treats out there that should not be ignored.

Order today. I don’t know how well you know Amsterdam, but there’s a frightfully swanky hotel there called The Dylan in which I was lucky enough to blag myself and Mrs Ray a jolly weekend a year or so ago. There are many fine things about The Dylan but that which tickles me the most is their tradition of High Wine, the hotel’s delightfully decadent version of High Tea, served mid to late afternoon and comprising four different amuses-bouches elegantly laid out alongside four cleverly matched glasses of wine. I’ve never been one for non-alcoholic hot drinks at elevenses, much preferring alcoholic cold ones at what Mrs R and I term sevenses, so The Dylan’s tradition chimes perfectly with ours.

Email your order today. It’s flipping well snowing as I write, but my Glyndebourne tickets have come and my MCC pass has just plopped on to the mat so it must surely be spring. And where a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, so this old soak’s fancy lightly turns to just how many bottles I need to get me through Easter. Growing up in Kent I lived near Romney Marsh, a special place that I still love for its windswept acres, lonely churches and tales of smugglers, revenue men and Dr Syn, the mysterious vicar of Dymchurch, who was not quite who he seemed.

Order now. A reader upbraided me gently the other day saying he felt I was overly effusive about the wines I feature in these pages. He hinted that I must be in the pay of the merchants in order to endorse quite so heartily whatever six random wines they care to offload on me. Well, I promise I’m not in anyone’s pocket. Just to be clear, the offers work like this: I chat to whichever merchant we’re featuring and between us we try to come up with a pertinent/interesting theme, region, country or producer. The merchant sends me – or we taste together – anything up to a couple of dozen wines that we think might work, out of which I choose my favourite six. These we then offer to you at as keen a price as I can bully the merchant into.

Order today. My father loved nothing more than a smutty limerick. Indeed, he delighted in penning lewd lines whenever he was encouraged to do so. This being a family magazine, I won’t sully your breakfast with his verse on Verdicchio – tame though it is – but can happily send under plain brown-paper wrapper or via email if such things appeal. This is a cracking example of how tempting a wine proper Gavi di Gavi should be It’s just that said lickerish limerick was brought to mind on tasting the first wine of this very genial selection – three Italian, three French – from our old mates at Honest Grapes.

Anthony and Olive Hamilton Russell love The Spectator and we love them. They have hosted more Spectator Winemaker Lunches than any other producer (they’ll be in our boardroom again next week) and it was only the afterglow of the splendidly bibulous Spectator/Hamilton Russell dinner at Tate Britain the night before lockdown that kept me going during the dark days that followed. Anthony is a long-time subscriber to our organ and, through the kind offices of Laura Taylor – marketing director of Private Cellar – who has known and admired AHR and his remarkable wines for 25 years, he has paid us the enormous compliment of offering the latest vintages to us and us alone.

Readers (and writers) of The Spectator have long adored the wines of Château Musar, the cult winery of Lebanon. Indeed, thanks to our chums at Mr Wheeler, we have such a close relationship with the estate that our loyalty is being rewarded by yet another bona fide Speccie scoop: for the next month, this is the only place in the UK from which to buy the newly released 2016 Château Musar. This great wine is simply not available anywhere else currently and once it goes, it goes. So get cracking and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Dry January is but a memory and, nearing the end of a demi-sec February fortnight — just a precaution to check that everything is working as it should be — I’m pretty much match fit once again and raring to go. I certainly loved choosing these delectable Yapp Bros wines on your behalf and, with the help of Mrs Ray, made sure that none of the bottles went to waste. As befits a Loire specialist, Yapp Bros have had a top quality Muscadet on their list for 50 years and their current staple is the 2020 Jean-François Baron Muscadet Sur Lie (1), complete with its jolly Quentin Blake label.

Well I don’t know about you but I’m just that little bit overexcited. In a couple of days I’ll be free of this ridiculous, self-imposed, puritanical water wagon regime and I’ve the wheelie suitcase dusted off and ready in anticipation. Roll on Wine Time Friday! If Boris leaves us nothing else to remember him by except this joyful and alternative use for the acronym WTF, then that’s a legacy of sorts, I suppose. And what finer bottles to cram into the perambulating portmanteau than these select beauties from our old chums at FromVineyardsDirect?

Cooee, we’re back! And back in some style with a corking offer from Swig, stalwarts of the Spectator Wine Club under my sainted predecessors. I’m so pleased we’ve tempted them back, especially in this, their 25th anniversary year. Founded by Robin Davis in north London’s Belsize Park, Swig has become one of the country’s finest independents and is Decanter’s 2021 Best Midsize Online Retailer. Just saying. As always, only the best is good enough for Speccie readers. Like you, I’m sure, I rather overcooked it during the festivities.