Jonathan Ray

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.

Whoop, whoop! After missing out last year, we’re back with our annual offer of Chateau Musar. And, thanks to our chums at Mr Wheeler, canny readers of The Spectator have the exclusive on the newly released 2019 vintage for the next two weeks. It’s available nowhere else but here. I mean, do you realise just how much we love you? Lebanon is in crisis and has suffered far more than it ought. It’s astonishing that only one vintage of Musar was ever lost – that of 1976 – and we must do all we can to help this remarkable estate and this bewitching country. In other words, please fill your boots. The 2018 Ch.

Hats off please as we welcome a new partner to these pages – Waud Handford of South Ken. Hurrah! Run by two charming stalwarts of the wine trade – James Handford MW and Charles Waud – Waud Handford boasts an enviably mouth-watering list, and it was quite the brow-furrowing task whittling down this offer to just six all-French wines. Gosh they’re tasty! But don’t take my word for it. If you fancy trying before you buy, just nip into the shop at 105 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 with a copy of the Speccie and tell them I sent you. I told you they were charming. The 2023 Grand Bateau Blanc (1) is that rarity: a tasty, well-priced dry white Bordeaux.

I love my mother-in-law. Love, respect and value her. Only she, it seems, understands me. We share a decades’ long empathy, and I believe her to be a saint, an absolute saint. As I mentioned last time, I tried so hard to stay on the January water wagon, to which cheerless charabanc I’d been banished by Mrs Ray, and, as you also know, apart from one tiny blip, I managed to cling on tightly by my very fingernails. But did I get credit for such bravery and stoicism from my ever-loving? Did I get patted on the back for such fortitude? I did not. Someone having split on me about said tiny blip – oh don’t worry, I know who you are, you unfeeling rotter – Mrs R. insisted that, instead of simply tacking on an extra day in penance, I had to go back and start all over again.

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). I clambered back on smartish, though, and don’t think anyone missed me. Please don’t say anything. My missus would take a very dim view of such a thing. Very dim. Anyway, whether on or off the wagon, we must fill the gaps left by bloody Christmas, and this is where this bin end offer with FromVineyardsDirect comes in, with wines really to savour at cracking prices.

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 in a former printing factory in Aÿ (with such august neighbours as Bollinger, Gosset and Deutz), where the Spectator Wine Club has been entertained several times during our bibulous tours of Champagne.

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 badgered Jamie to run an offer here and, over several homemade Quarante Quatres (my new favourite tipple), he finally succumbed. I didn’t ask him because he’s a mate – almost everyone who runs offers here is a mate, the wine trade is like that – I asked him because the wines Brunswick peddle are so good and I wanted you to share the joy.

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, these wines are surplus to requirement at some of the greatest, most revered estates in all Bordeaux. They’re made in the same cellars as the grands vins, by the same winemaking teams, with the same love, care and devotion, and share the same impeccable pedigree. No, they don’t quite have the same finesse, polish and elegance as the grands vins, but nor are they nearly as costly, in some cases being 1/20th of the price.

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 fine whisky tasting with Boisdale and Duncan Taylor Whisky, a lunch with Springfontein and a weekend for 40 readers at Swinton Park in North Yorks. We had some great grub at Swinton, the tastiest of all dishes being roast grouse paired with a brace of contrasting Pinot Noirs, surely the best of all grapes to partner great British game.

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 five days. And who knew that Spectator readers could come up with such hilarious – not to say smutty – limericks? Yes, I’m looking at you Sir Richard. And you, Nick, and you, Paul. If I had any hair left on my pate, it would have curled. We tasted remarkable wines and were looked after beautifully.

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 dearly but, when together, they have form. They pick on me and egg me on. A magnum or so in and I’ve become a willing accomplice, we’ve overshot the runway and all is lost, with written apologies in the post. If Mrs Ray had known who I was going to spend the evening with, she would never have let me leave the house. Or ever let me back in.