Jonathan Ray

The last time I drank mead was 7 April 1978. It was my 18th birthday and —unforgettably — it was snowing heavily. My chum Mark had bought me a bottle of Lindisfarne Mead which I knocked back on top of several Tequila Sunrises, a bottle of Black Tower and a few Brandy Alexanders. This toxic mix took its toll and I was violently sick during an all-comers’ snowball fight the length of the Fulham Road, before getting arrested for being drunk and disorderly outside the Café des Artistes at 3 a.m. I only mention this because my younger son, Ludo, is now 18 and has developed a serious mead habit.

Mrs Ray and I are barely speaking. When she accompanied me to my appointment with the vaccinator yesterday, she loudly declared that when it comes to needles I’m something of a fainter and that she had stay and hold my hand. This is utter tosh of course, unless you count that time my dentist thought it would be funny to mutter ‘Is it safe?’ from the film Marathon Man whilst waving a massive seven-gauge syringe in my face and I collapsed in a heap. ‘We’ve got a fainter!’ yelled the security guard yesterday and the shout went down the line until the head nurse was called and I was ushered into a private room complete with bed, vaccinator and a 20st rugby player called Kevin, there to catch me when I fell.

Hold on to your hats folks for this is one heck of an offer, nothing short of a good old-fashioned Spectator scoop. I humbly suggest that you must be either crazy or teetotal to overlook it. We’ve five wines, all from Anthony Hamilton Russell in South Africa, of which two — the 2020 Hamilton Russell Vineyards Chardonnay and the 2020 Hamilton Russell Vineyards Pinot Noir — are not available to buy anywhere else in the UK until Easter at the earliest. Our old mates at Private Cellar have cannily sourced the initial UK allocation of both wines (50 six-bottle boxes of each) and Laura Taylor, PC’s marketing director, has generously agreed to offer first dibs to readers of The Spectator. Laura, thank you!

OK, so that stone I put on during the first lockdown and then managed — very smugly — to lose, thanks to my patented ‘don’t-eat-anything-white-and-ditch-the-chocolate-you-idiot’ diet… well, I’ve put the whole darn thing on again. Every bloody pound. I was 13st 2lb, then 14st 2lb, then 13st 2lb and now I’m flipping well back to 14st 2lb. Grrr! As the pounds fell away, I gaily bought thin clothes online which now don’t fit. And since the fat clothes I used to wear were binned in a fit of misplaced optimism, I find myself somewhat between wardrobes. Thank goodness there’s nowhere to go, no one to see and Zoom — if one’s careful — is only from the neck up.

I don’t know about you but I’m now comfortably back in the saddle after a serious but ultimately doomed attempt at dry January. My corkscrew and I are inseparable friends once more and it’s as if I’d never been away. Wet February here I come! I ache for uncorking time — which Mrs Ray and I have currently set to 7 p.m., with an option to bring it forward an hour if either of us is struggling. I have a daily mantra as I ready myself for yet another night stuck chez nous. Wine is made to be drunk… it’s good for us (I know, I know, in moderation)… we need our pleasures… no need to go crazy… break yourself in gently… drink less but better… such God-given delights are there to be enjoyed… and so on.

Dry January? Are you kidding? What dry January? I’m sorry, but I really don’t think this is the year to be considering such things. Having sought a number of opinions, the consensus was this: don’t be such an idiot, now is not the time. At Mrs Ray’s behest I did try my best, though, and managed almost three weeks before discovering a well hidden but fully stocked bar on my careening wagon. I was undone in a trice and have been grinning ever since. Anyway, we’ve made it to the cusp of February and, courtesy of FromVineyardsDirect, I’m delighted to present the ideal wines with which to fill the gaps left by Christmas, NYE and bloody lockdown. As we all know, a Muscadet keeps the doctor away and the 2016 Comte Leloup du Ch.

Well, it’s almost upon us, the strangest of Christmases. Thrust into our ridiculous bubbles, some folk are stuck seeing the people they don’t want to see and other folk are stuck not seeing the people they do want to see. It’s all going to be very odd and not a little challenging. The key to a passable Christmas, though, remains the same: wine and plenty of it. It’s more important to drink well than to drink heavily, of course, and with this very toothsome selection from Honest Grapes — Decanter’s Outstanding Wine Retailer of the Year 2020 — you can do just that. Drink well, that is. And if you take advantage of the very special Santa’s Selection you will drink very well indeed. What?

Our squabbles at home about Christmas are as traditional for us as carol-singing, roast turkey and stockings are for others. Our current standoff concerns the tree. Our boys think a plastic one is most environmentally friendly. Yes, they argue, ultimately it will go to landfill, but it’s reusable, will last for decades and doesn’t necessitate a real tree being felled. But, says Mrs Ray, creating plastic is a no-no, and think of the environmental costs of its delivery from China. Divide, conquer and I hate Christmas are my middle names, so I sat back, let them exhaust themselves quarrelling before landing my killer blow: what about no tree?

Oh dear, I’m so sorry, I got a bit carried away this week. Now that we’re no longer on the naughty step and Christmas isn’t being taken away from us after all, I’m in a cloud of euphoric indecision. We can finally meet actual, real, genuine people — hurrah! — but what the heck are we going to drink? We need to get stockpiling. The thing is, so tasty were the wines Mr Wheeler sent me and so over-excited was I that I just couldn’t decide which to pick, hence this bumper selection. Trust me, though, for each and every bottle is absolutely first-rate. The 2019 Greenhough ‘River Garden’ Sauvignon Blanc (1) from Nelson, New Zealand, is spot-on.

And it was all going so well. Actually, that’s a complete lie. Nothing’s going well for any of us. What I meant was that since I gave my poor liver such a merciless pounding during the last lockdown, I had decided not to drink a drop during Lockdown #2. Last time there was no apparent end in sight and it was impossible to foreswear the comfort of alcohol. This time, a finite 28 days seemed just about do-able. And it was and I was managing. Each day dragged like the blazes of course but the following morning, I’d scratch another line on the wall of my cell and press on with my empty life best I could. What undid me, though, were these fabulous clarets that Esme Johnstone, the canny fox behind FromVineyardsDirect, sent me to try.

Those naughty Yapps — Jason Yapp and step-bro Tom Ashworth — might be notorious leaders-astray of naive and innocent journalists, but they do know their wine. In particular they know their Rhône wine, and nobody deserves to be International Wine Challenge Rhône Specialist Merchant of the Year more than they do. In honour of said award, we’ve compiled an all-Rhône selection starting with the 2019 Yapp Blanc (1). A cheery blend of Grenache Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc, it’s made expressly for the Yapps by Les Vignerons Ardéchois, an exemplary coalition of wineries in Ruoms. It’s fresh, lively, crisp, clean and dry and as satisfying a house white as you will find. £7.50 down from £8.50.

These are dark days indeed and, with nobody seemingly in control, we’re pretty much back where we started, with lockdown beckoning once more with its bony finger. Well sod that. With a long, lonely winter ahead, I’m stocking up like fury. No, not with bog rolls and baked beans, you fool, with vino! I don’t think any vino suits this time of year better than fine Rioja, and the family--owned Compañia Vinicola del Norte de España (better known as CVNE) and its sister bodegas of Viña Real and Contino make some of the finest.

I don’t know about you but I’m still drinking like a bloody fish. I just can’t help myself. I mean there’s bugger all else to do now that I’ve finally watched all those 264 episodes of Frasier chronologically, put 1,191 meticulously chosen songs on my Spotify playlist (that’s a heartening 74 hours and 28 minutes’ worth) and grown, shaped and finally cut off my thick, grizzly face fungus. And since my don’t-eat-anything-white diet has worked so darn well (17lb lost since 1 August thank you very much) I can no longer obsess about that either. No, all I can think about is what I’m going to drink tonight.

The shifting sands of this blasted coronavirus — or, rather, the shifting sands of the government’s response to it — are driving us all mad. Having been lectured over the summer by Boris and co. on the importance of getting back to work, taking public transport, going to the local and eating out, we’re now told what selfish, virus-spreading twits we are and that we must be in bed by 10 p.m. or else. Folk at one end of our tiny island are told to do one thing and folk at the other end something completely different. It’s utterly bonkers and deeply confusing.

There are few finer places to be during these endlessly dark days than Bellamy’s in Bruton Place, London W1. And there are few finer folk to be there with than Chloe Smith, from strategic partnerships at The Spectator, and Laura Taylor, marketing director of Private Cellar. Gavin Rankin, le patron qui mange ici, is as witty, charming and attentive as ever and our glasses of fizz — the strikingly fine Ayala Brut Majeur Champagne — are on the house. I mean how good does it get? Perhaps there is a God after all. Ayala, founded in 1860, is one of the original Grand Marques and, part of the mighty Bollinger stable since 2005, is beloved by those in the know.

Good grief I miss our Spectator Winemaker Lunches! As you know, these extremely convivial and really rather bibulous events are held — or were held until the dread plague and pestilence fell upon us — in the boardroom at 22 Old Queen Street roughly every fortnight. A maximum of 14 readers join me and a winemaker of note for a fine cold lunch and the chance to sample some pretty dandy bottles and to hear all about how and where they were made. Your humble correspondent serves as wine waiter and as the vino flows — we rarely dip below a creditable one bottle per head — the conversation increases in volume and ranges far beyond the topic of fermented grape juice.

Nothing but good news this week. Hurrah! Firstly, I know you’ll be thrilled to hear that my don’t-eat-anything-white diet is working a treat. That’s no bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, cheese, cream, milk, sugar and so on. And, yes, clever clogs, cauliflower is allowed. I’ve also throttled back on the vino and managed to shed 7lb last week. Yes, yes, I know — most of that is water retention but, heck, it’s better than putting 7lb on. You’ll be even more thrilled, though, with this corking offer from Private Cellar of wines perfect for this glorious weather, plus an exclusive-to-Spectator-readers rosé and the jolliest, most genially priced bin-end red you’ll ever see. Let’s get cracking!

It was when the old lady passing the bottle bank lobbed me two quid and told me to get myself a nice cup of tea that I realised my lockdown face fungus had to go. I hadn’t shaved for months and as I battled with the empties that spewed noisily from my split carrier bag, I realised I was far from kempt. I wanted to explain to her that it wasn’t empty bottles of cider I was getting shot of but top class cru Beaujolais that I’d tasted on behalf of no less a journal than The Spectator, but a crowd was already beginning to gather and rather than humiliate myself further, I touched my forelock, muttered a humble ‘Thank you, lady’, and slunk home.