Jonathan Ray

So, dear old Boris has put his size 10s in it again, upsetting prosecco producers and Italians everywhere with his frank and forthright views about Brexit and the cheaper end of the Italian sparkling wine industry. Our former editor and current Foreign Secretary seemed to suggest that Italy should back his version of a Brexit deal or face instead the prospect of plummeting sales of prosecco in the UK, one of the largest markets for the fizz if not the largest. Folk often talk of prosecco as Italy’s champagne. They could not be more wrong. Champagne and prosecco are both sparkling wines, yes, but are made from completely different grape varieties in completely different places by completely different methods.

Jonathan Ray visits the oldest rum distillery in the world and gets his hands dirty blending My travels round the Caribbean wouldn’t be complete without a trip to Mount Gay, the longest-established rum brand in the world. The oldest surviving deed from the company shows that it was in operation as early as 1703 and it was quite probably established many years before that. Either way, it’s fair to say that Mount Gay knows what it’s about when it comes to making rum and I have to confess that I’ve always loved their stuff. Every drinks cabinet, back bar or shelf in the kitchen should have a bottle of Mount Gay Eclipse – for sipping by the fire in the winter and for sloshing into cocktails in the summer.

Jonathan Ray gets his head around how to create the perfect rum cocktail. I’ve lost count of the number of different rum cocktails I’ve had over the last few days hopping round the islands of the Caribbean. Each cocktail consumed purely in the interests of research of course. I’ve had some classics; some twists on classics and several ‘signature’ or ‘house’ cocktails. Oh, and plenty of rum punches. I’d hate you to think that I’d been sitting idly by however and so I’m proud to report that one or two of the more tolerant barmen allowed me to create my own cocktails, some concoctions being rather more successful than others.

In my line of work, I’m lucky enough to go to a lot of wine tastings – press tastings that is – sometimes as many as three or four a day at the height of wine tasting season. They are what a wine-writing colleague of mine likes to call drinks parties. He lurches about from bottle to bottle, being charming to everyone and consuming as much as he can. He never fails to chat someone up and never manages to trouble the spittoons. He rarely seems to file any copy though and I’m beginning to think that he believes they are simply put on for the benefit of his social life. Actually, these tastings can be hard work. Not hard work as in being a miner or a farmer or a fighter pilot.

We had a fine party at 67 Pall Mall last night to launch the new edition of Simon Hoggart’s Life’s Too Short to Drink Bad Wine, a cult classic which I have had the great pleasure of revising and updating. Not that it needed much of either. All I really did was to write a foreword and add twelve new wines to the 100 or so wines that Simon had chosen ‘for the discerning drinker’. I first met Simon decades ago when I was in my early twenties. He and my father – Cyril Ray – were colleagues on the late, lamented Punch magazine and my father was keen for me to meet someone whom he greatly admired. So, one day the three of us went out for a fine, shirt-popping lunch at Brooks’s in St. James’s Street.

We had some fine limericks in response to our most recent Spectator Wine Club competition in which we asked readers to come up with a limerick that included one, any or all the names of our seven partner wine merchants. There are honourable mentions going to Dejeniera Pygott in Canada for managing to rhyme ‘party’ with words other than ‘tarty’ and Tony Lenton whose champagne-sipping with frisky Jane led to his cork popping (there were some deliciously rude limericks far too blue to publish on a family website like this). The outright winner, though, was Edward Fox-Ingleby of London.

Hennessy, the best-selling cognac of all, is giving two lucky Spectator readers the chance to win a bottle of Hennessy XO – the first ever XO Cognac, originally created in 1870 – and two tickets to the 60th running of the legendary Hennessy Gold Cup on Saturday 26th November at Newbury Racecourse. As the longest-standing sports sponsorship in the world, the Hennessy Gold Cup is one of the most celebrated events in the British jump racing calendar. This special event is attended each year by fashionable race-goers and VIPs, with past attendees including Eddie Redmayne, Dame Joan Collins, Dame Judi Dench, Sir Rod Stewart, Hugh Bonneville, Jennifer Saunders, Jerry Hall and Pippa Middleton to name but a few.

Jonathan Ray encounters his new favourite drink.  The other night I had a drink I’d never had before and I positively lapped it up. Indeed, I don’t think my life will ever be the same again. I’m completely smitten. What so unexpectedly seduced me was a kümmel and soda. Actually, to be honest, it was a kümmel and sparkling mineral water, namely Menzendorff Kümmel and San Pellegrino, served in a tumbler over ice with an accompanying sprig of rosemary. And goodness me it was delicious!

This competition has now closed. Read Jonathan Ray's post-competition blog here. I’m hoping you might forgive a little self indulgence with our latest competition.  My dear old dad Cyril Ray – formerly assistant editor of this very magazine (in the days of Inglis, Levin and Whitehorn) and twenty times the writer about drink (or indeed anything else) that I could ever hope to be – died 25 years ago this month. He wrote and edited countless books about wine, food and social history including Merry England, Bollinger, Lafite, Cognac, In a Glass Lightly and the long-running series The Compleat Imbiber.