Wine Club Offers

It’s April at last, my favourite time of the year. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and, if you squint slightly, the sea here in Brighton could almost pass for blue. We’ll be mowing the lawn before you know it. And we’ve some lovely April-appropriate wines, courtesy of Corney & Barrow — well-priced too. In fact, if one takes advantage of the fabled Brett-Smith Indulgence (£6 off a case when buying two dozen bottles or more), there’s a double discount on offer. Hooray! No apology for including the 2014 Corney & Barrow Blanc. It might be overstating it slightly to say that irate readers picket our offices when we don’t include Corney & Barrow’s house wines in these offers, but we certainly get some pithy emails.

This is being written before the budget and goodness knows what the Chancellor has in store for wine lovers. Yet another bashing, no doubt, hard on the heels of the chief medical officer’s doleful pronouncement in which she slashed the recommended number of units of alcohol per week we should all be consuming. Happily, Esme Johnstone of FromVineyardsDirect has promised that should duty go up, he’ll keep his prices firmly as they are for the duration of this offer. Not only that, even though FVD is celebrated for its cut-to-the-bone pricing, Esme has generously lopped a bit off the RRPs just for us. The 2014 Domaine de la Chesnaie, a simple, undemanding but deliciously satisfying Sauvignon Blanc from Bernard Chereau in the Loire Valley.

If the daffs outside my window are anything to go by and the robin busily building its nest in the ivy, spring is almost here. And thanks to Private Cellar, we have the perfect wines with which to greet it. At great prices too, with up to £2 a bottle lopped off. Not only that, there’s a copy of the excellent Wine Folly: The Essential Guide to Wine for all those who order two or more mixed cases. The 2014 Domaine de Laguille Blanc, Côtes de Gascogne (1) is effectively Private Cellar’s house white and darn good it is too. Light, fruity and zesty, it’s a classic Gascon blend of Ugni Blanc and Colombard and has won a host of medals, including silver at the most recent Decanter Fine Wine Awards.

The disarming thing about Jason Yapp is that he’s always on such good form. I can’t remember meeting anyone who loves his job so much and who brims with quite so much bonhomie. We tasted the wines for this offer a few days before he headed to Vinisud, the vast Languedoc-Roussillon wine fair held each year in Montpellier, and he was as excited and as waggy-tailed as a truffle hound on the trail of its first headily scented tuber of the day. Nobody knows the French backwaters better than Jason, and Yapp Brothers thoroughly deserve their status as the International Wine Challenge’s specialist merchant of the year for Languedoc-Roussillon, the Rhône and regional France. The following selection draws on that expertise.

Well, that’s January done and dusted. Phew! An immense relief, I’m sure, for all those clinging to the wagon by their fingertips. But pity the poor souls about to give up booze for Lent; it starts this coming Wednesday (10 February) and goes on all the way till 24 March. Best get some decent wine in, then, and put a spring back in our step. And for those noble folk about to board the Lenten water wagon, why not give yourself something to look forward to in glorious, daffodil--dappled April? Mark Cronshaw of The Wine Company heeded my plea for something cheering and presented a fine selection for us this week, one that I have whittled down to a particularly toothsome half-dozen.

  Much has already been written about The Spectator’s notorious spin around the Med this summer on board Cunard’s Queen Victoria, and there’s nothing much I can add except to confirm that, yes, we did indeed have a complete and utter hoot. In fact such a complete and utter hoot was it that once we’re all fully recovered and match fit we’re darn well going to do it again. Needless to say, much of the jollity and most of the japes were the result of enjoying vast amounts of vino of the tippest-toppest quality in a seemingly endless supply. Just when we thought we’d succeeded in drinking the ship dry, more bottles appeared.