Jonathan Ray

Time can hang heavy in Spectator Towers on the afternoon of press day. It doesn’t hang heavy for long – there are the regular podcasts, daily emails and the next issue to ponder – but for an hour or so after the magazine has been put to bed, time can hang heavy. This being a house of journalistic bent, when time hangs heavy so thoughts wander, not so much to when the next scoop might appear but rather the next refreshing glass. So it was on Wednesday last week. I’d bagged myself the Apollo conference room in which to taste some truly fine burgundies courtesy of FromVineyardsDirect and had barely opened the first bottle before in burst editorial stardust in the form of Freddy Gray, Rupert Hawksley, Will Moore and Lara Prendergast, all parched and gasping.

Any so-called ‘working lunch’ with Chloe Ferrari, commander-in-chief of the Spectator Club, and Laura Taylor, director of Private Cellar, needs to be approached with caution. It’s not that we don’t get any work done – remarkably, we do – but these guys know their wines (Laura is nearly a Master of Wine and Chloe is principal of the Spectator Wine School) and their enquiring thirsts know no bounds. Only last week in Brighton, after lunch at Wild Flor and post-prandials in Alphabet, Patio and, I think, the Plotting Parlour, it went a bit awry. Somehow I found myself in Haywards Heath in the dark having thought I was simply walking home to my crib in Skid Row-on-Sea. I genuinely can’t remember how or why.

Ilove our offers with Armit Wines. They always put up fascinating wines, which makes life interesting for me, and they always offer tasty discounts (up to 21 per cent this week), which makes life rosy for you. I prepared to taste Armit’s latest suggestions on my own, poor Mrs Ray feeling a little piano after the previous night’s book club, but the sound of popping corks triggered her Fomo and raised her spirits sufficiently for her to join me for the reds. She’s a pushover for fine Pinot Noir and wine 4 put her firmly back on track. She had more than rallied by wine 6, so much so that she insisted on going back and casting her eyes over the whites too. ‘I’m only trying to help,’ she said sniffily. ‘I could be doing other things you know.’ She’s a trouper.

Everyone loves Rioja. And if they don’t, they should. They’re such drinker-friendly wines, made with love and care in – largely – immaculately run, family-owned wineries, and only ever released when judged to be ready to crack open and knock back. They’re also superb value compared with Bordeaux ’n’ Burgundy. I mean, when did you last buy a 2006 claret of any standing for less than 25 quid? Well, we’ve a glorious 2006 Rioja here for just £23.50. I was joined in the garden in choosing my selection from Mr Wheeler by the ever-gasping Mrs Ray and her sister, Felicity, who professed not to be thirsty, but she might manage a drop if a drop was going. Well, they’re peas in a pod these two and, despite their focus drifting somewhat on occasion – gosh they can chat!

Tony Laithwaite loves wine. Of course he does. As the owner of wineries and vineyards around the world, and as the force behind Direct Wines, the Sunday Times Wine Club and Laithwaites Wine, he’s bound to. What I mean is he actually loves the wine in his glass, and that after almost 60 years in the trade (gaining a CBE for his trouble) he still smiles with unabashed delight as he uncorks a bottle of something tasty. Having bumped into Tony at a recent dinner, I challenged him to join me at The Spectator with as many favourite bottles as he could muster in order to conjure up a selection worthy of you, dear reader. He more than met the challenge. I then failed hopelessly in picking six from his long list and ended up choosing ten. Lucky you!

There have been some poorly looking folk wandering about Spectator Towers recently. I’ve lost count of the number of ashen faces I’ve clocked, their owners clinging feebly to the banisters for support or hiding whimpering in dark corners. One or two looked far, far from well. If I were their mother – or their doctor – I would have told them to stay in bed. In fairness, it has been a deliciously drink-soaked couple of weeks. Our free-flowing, inaugural Spectator English Wine Festival in the garden was followed by a very fine rosé-fuelled Provençal soirée with Catriona Olding and Martin Vander Weyer and that by the notoriously bibulous Spectator Summer Party, about which ’nuff said.

It’s taken a while, but we’ve finally nabbed him. Ranald Macdonald that is. You know, the convivial iconoclast, flaneur, boulevardier, songwriter, cigar smoker and whisky lover; le patron of Boisdale Belgravia – the club-like restaurant known as Scotland’s Unofficial Embassy to the UK – devoted Spectator reader and all-round good egg. We’ve run many highly entertaining, late-into-the-night events at Boisdale, and I spend rather more of my leisure hours in its warm, North British embrace than Mrs Ray cares for. What I particularly enjoy is Boisdale’s cannily chosen wine list (I’m not alone: World of Fine Wine recently declared it one of the top ten lists in London) and I’ve long badgered Ranald to make some of its treasures available to us.

With the Fifa World Cup, England vs New Zealand Test Series, Royal Ascot and golf’s US Open (yawn) well under way – not to mention Henley and Wimbledon just around the corner – it’s imperative that the armchair sports fan (and armchair sports hater) has the right vino to hand. Well, we’re here to help. Indeed, my old chum Tom Ashworth, CEO of Yapp Bros, and I toiled late into the night – actually, early into the morning – to ensure that the wines for this offer were just so. As dawn broke and we hiccoughed our farewells, we reflected somewhat unsteadily on a job well done. As ever, drinkability is the key.

Mrs Ray was having none of it. Back home after two weeks crisscrossing France with the Spectator Wine Club, getting lightly soused at every turn, I decided finally to heed my ever-loving’s advice and have a night off the booze. I was both pickled and pooped and all I craved was an iced elderflower and an early bed. This did not go down well. How – demanded my dear wife – could I not want to share a modest glass with her after such a long absence? How could I not uncork something tasty to share over the dinner she had lovingly prepared? Had I no feelings? Why was it always about me? And this from the woman who spends most of her waking hours telling me to put away the corkscrew and sober up.

If you’ve been lucky enough to come to our Spectator Writers’ Dinners in the boardroom, you will have enjoyed many wines from Château Léoube, the sustainable, organic estate founded at Cap Bénat in Provence by Lord and Lady Bamford in 1997. We love these wines and we love you, and so I’m delighted to offer here the whole range at special Spectator-friendly prices. The Forever Sparkling Love Rosé Alcohol Free (1) was an unexpected hit at Spectator Towers recently, with all bottles drained. I’m not keen on alcohol-free drinks – my morning glass of water’n’cider vinegar aside – but found this de-alcoholised (by vacuum distillation) Grenache/Cinsault blend to be surprisingly tasty.

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 started off with the 2023 La Nerthe ‘Les Cassagnes’ Côtes du Rhône Blanc (1) from a 500-year-old, family-owned estate just a few miles north of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. I adore the white wines of the Rhône and this is exactly the sort of wine that tickles my tummy. A peachy, apricotty, lemony, creamy blend of Viognier, Grenache Blanc, Roussanne and Marsanne, it’s so tasty and just that little bit different. £19.65 down from £22.95.

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 and smilingly left us to it. As jeroboam followed magnum, we had a hoot recalling the châteaux, restaurants and bars we’d visited, the wines we’d drunk and the tales we’d told. It was a tremendous trip, and our lunch a worthy memorial to it. But once Keith, Roland and Sir Richard started on the smutty limericks and Sue N. told – and graphically enacted – her joke about the mislaid garden rake, it was clearly time to flick the lights.

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 merchants (Corney & Barrow, Haynes Hanson & Clark, Lea & Sandeman, Private Cellar, Tanners and Yapp Bros), The Bunch was set up some 35 years or so ago in response to scandals surrounding the likes of Hungerford Wine Company and Mayfair Cellars, with its founders vowing to abide by a strict code of conduct that, quite simply, puts the punter first. That’s the boring bit.

I first got a taste for it in Eminence, Missouri. Riding a horse, that is, Western style. I also got a taste for the glorious Ozarks, a striking part of the world too often overlooked by, well, erm, everyone. The fact that it was sometimes hard to get a drink put a slight dampener on things. Too many wretched “dry” counties dotted about the two states I was criss-crossing – I’m told, almost 40 in Arkansas and 30 in Missouri. Can this really be true? ‘Swing the loop like you’re putting on a cape – you know, like Zorro,’ Lori said… as I got tangled up again To Europeans, this is plain daft. I know we’re all terrible drunks, especially we Brits, but it’s nice to be able to get a proper drink whenever a thirst strikes. Just saying.

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, head of merchant sales, Olivia Galéa, head of marketing, and Rebecca Palmer, head of merchant buying, there to greet us or, more likely, to check that we didn’t nick the silver or try to snaffle a bottle of DRC. They opened an embarrassing number of bottles on our – sorry, your – behalf – and Chloë and I stayed far longer than planned, intent on choosing the finest possible.