Jonathan Ray

Jonathan Ray gets a taste for rum but knows when it’s time to stop. Excitement in the Caribbean concerning Prince Harry’s impending visit to the region is definitely rising. Flags and bunting are being hung left, right and centre and as I left Antigua airport this morning, en route to St. Kitts and Nevis, there was an honour guard of soldiers being put through their paces on the tarmac. Taking the proffered salute was a stout gentleman on a rather modest dais looking far from regal with his high-vis yellow jacket and clipboard. I think it’s fair to say that everyone still needs a bit more practice. But who cares?

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.

Jonathan Ray gives a heartening update on the campaign to bring back the imperial pint of champagne When the Spectator urges so things start to happen. You might recall a despatch of mine a week or so ago concerning a Spectator Winemaker’s Lunch we held for readers in our boardroom, hosted by James Simpson MW, managing director of Pol Roger (UK). Whilst we consoled/congratulated ourselves (delete where applicable) in the immediate aftermath of Brexit by drinking plenty of fine vintage Pol, James pointed out that one benefit of our departure from Europe could be the return of the much-missed imperial pint of champagne, a deeply civilised measure roughly equivalent to 50cl (oh, ok, 56.

Jonathan Ray heads to north Wales and braves both Welsh rain and Welsh wine in search of the fabled Welsh salt marsh lamb. Portmeirion was as beguiling as ever and the Welsh summer weather as vile. My wife, Marina, and I and our two teenage boys are just back from spending a week in one of Portmeirion’s quirky cottages and we had a hoot. We were last there five years ago – also in high summer – when it sheeted with rain all week. This time we did a little better and had five days of rain and two of blinding sunshine. But, having visited the Italianate fantasy folly that is Portmeirion many times over the last forty odd years, my memories of it are always bright and sunny.