Jonathan Ray

At dinner the other night, our host spotted a well-priced magnum of fizz on the list and beckoned the sommelier. Alas, it turned out the magnums were no more, the last one having been sold two nights previously. ‘Oh dear,’ sighed my chum. ‘I guess we’d better have it by the half-magnum, then, and see how we get on.’ Well, it won’t surprise you to learn that we got on just fine and ended up having two half-magnums. Crisp, clean, creamy and toasty with an elegantly fine mousse and the most stylish of finishes The fact is that magnums are a real treat, the ideal size for wine lovers, especially at this time of year with parties galore and friends dropping by unexpectedly.

Reports of the demise of our old chums at FromVineyardsDirect are grossly exaggerated. Indeed, those many readers who expressed concern as to their health will be delighted to learn that Esme and David are alive and kicking as part of the Wine Company stable along with that other Speccie partner, Mr Wheeler. And here they are gracing our pages once more with a timely offer comprising their celebrated ‘defrocked’ clarets (and one Sauternes). Readers love these wines with reason, for they boast impeccable pedigrees and provenance, at knock-down prices. As I’ve mentioned before, they are the over-production— from younger vines and newer plantings — of some of the finest châteaux in all Bordeaux. And I mean the finest.

Those naughty Yapp Brothers (actually, proprietors Jason Yapp and Tom Ashworth are naughty stepbrothers) are well known for preying upon unwary drinks writers and leading them astray. One day I’ll tell you about that bull fight in Dax with the bottle-of-rosé-a-head breakfast, the beer and pigs’ trotter lunch and the subsequent salsa festival where — I blush to recall — the wheels came off quite dramatically and only momentum saw us through. In the meantime, we’ll stick to the wines because, wicked as they are, the boys are also well known for the wonderful vinous treasures they unearth on their travels. Not for nothing are Yapp Bros the 2019 International Wine Challenge Rhône and Languedoc-Roussillon Specialist Merchants of the Year.

Our second offer from Naked Wines, the iconoclastic online merchant that funds selected winemakers via so-called angels — wine lovers who pay a sub for distribution to said vignerons in return for fine vino. Since there’s no marketing, advertising, agents, wholesalers etc, RRPs are said to be as low as possible. I’m not entirely convinced that this is the case, but I do vouch for the quality of the following wines, all of which I much enjoyed and which we are offering at prices below even those that the angels pay, thus truly as low as possible. The 2016 Simpsons of Barham Court ‘Beora’ (1) is a cracking English fizz.

Well, that’s a sight that will live with me for a long time, that of our esteemed business editor, Martin Vander Weyer, being knocked almost completely over by the ferocious recoil of an ancient and cacophonous blunderbuss. He was vainly trying to get to grips with the weapon in a doomed effort to pepper a sizeable balloon. The rubber sphere in question might only have bobbed a few short metres away on gloomy grey waters but it’s fair to say that never has a target been so safe from harm and never has a man been so profoundly – albeit temporarily – deafened. We were aboard Thames Sailing Barge Will, moored up in the middle of the river at Thamesmead, just beyond the Thames Barrier.

As you settle down to read this over your boiled egg and soldiers, three dozen or so hardy Spectator readers will be messing about in a boat during our annual ‘Clays, Claret and Cognac’ cruise up and down the Thames. They will be aboard Thames sailing barge Will, blasting at clays (which, fret not, are biodegradable) with a variety of weapons including blunderbuss, musketoon and elephant gun, before repairing below for claret and cognac, served alongside a shirt-popping lunch. We are running the cruise in cahoots with our chums at Private Cellar, and marketing director Laura Taylor and I are so smitten with the wines we are showing that we just couldn’t refrain from offering them here to the wider Spectator readership.

One of the jolliest of our recent Spectator Winemaker Lunches was that hosted by Maria Urrutia, fifth--generation director of the family-owned Compañia Vinicola del Norte de España, better known as CVNE, producers of exemplary Rioja since 1879. Fine Rioja is, famously, one of the most accessible of all wines and the most fairly priced, especially when compared to Bordeaux, Burgundy and beyond. The wines are only released when ready to drink (a punter-friendly concept completely unknown to the Bordelais), with labels and terminology that are easy to understand.

A very tasty offer this week from guest partner Honest Grapes, the multi-award-winning online merchant founded five years ago by Nathan Hill and Tom Harrow, aka ‘Winechap’, celebrated as the nattiest dresser in the wine trade. HG is the antithesis of the aloof, pin-striped wine merchant of yore and the boys are whatever the diametric opposite of fuddy--duddy is. The Honest Grapes’ mantra is Down with Elitism, Join the Revolution! Since these are volatile times, let me reassure you that they’re talking about revolutionising the world of wine, nothing more incendiary than that. I met Tom thanks to a shared passion for Franciacorta, the sublime fizz made near Lake Iseo in Lombardy.

Jonathan Ray reviews our recent Spectator Winemaker’s lunch with James Simpson MW of Champagne Pol Roger As readers well know, Pol Roger is pretty much the Spectator house pour. Anything of note that happens at 22 Old Queen Street is marked with a bottle or so of Pol. Indeed, the fabled Spectator Summer Party the other week was awash with the stuff. And we did pretty well at our recent Spectator Winemaker’s Lunch too. Our host – Pol Roger UK’s MD, James Simpson MW – was generosity itself and brought some cracking bottles with him. He started by explaining that Pol Roger is one of the few family-owned champagne houses remaining and that it’s also one of the smallest, producing some 1.5m bottles a year.

Jonathan Ray reviews our recent Spectator Winemaker’s lunch with Amandine Bernard of Ch. Beauchêne Our most recent Winemaker Lunch was a rare occurrence in that nobody around the table once mentioned Brexit. A turn up for the books, given it’s usually amongst the most discussed topics. And one I’m more than happy to attribute to the quality of the wines on offer, thanks to which the dreaded b-word slipped our collective mind. Another achievement then for Chateau Beauchêne, whose owners - the Bernard family - have been making wine since the 18th century. Our host, Amandine Bernard, told us that the family’s first vineyard - purchased in 1794 - is still in use today.