Jonathan Ray

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.

It has been a gratifyingly wine-soaked week. Our Pol Roger-fuelled dinner celebrating the mighty Michael Heath’s 90th birthday was followed by a brace of Spectator Winemaker Lunches, one featuring Marimar Torres’s sublime Sonoma Pinots and Chardonnays, the other, at Boisdale, focusing on the glory that is Lebanon’s Ch. Ksara. Fearing toxic shock if I stopped, I continued my vinous operations with an extensive tasting with Armit Wines for this offer. As always, it was tricky to narrow down the choices, hence eight rather than six wines. I don’t think we’ve offered a Slovenian wine before but the 2021 Marinic Ribolla Gialla (1) certainly merits inclusion.

The boardroom clapometer said it all. Hosted by the winemaker Louisa Rose and the sixth-generation family member Lucy Hill-Smith, our Spectator Winemaker Lunch featuring the wines of Yalumba – Australia’s oldest family-owned winery, founded by Samuel Smith in the Barossa Valley 175 years ago – was one of our finest. I’ve never heard such riotous applause, nor seen such broad smiles across our readers’ chops. Mrs Ray, being half-Australian, had threatened to join us but was slow out of the traps and had to make do with the bottles Lucy kindly sent me to try at home. Fret not, she made the most of it. And the wines were so darn good, I’m delighted to offer them here courtesy of our good chums at Honest Grapes.

We’re just back from our stout-hearted Spectator assault on Porto and the Douro Valley, of which more in these pages anon. Suffice to say that it was mission accomplished and everyone in our highly motivated, well-drilled unit more than deserved their mentions in despatches. Indeed, so gung-ho were the troops on the flight home that even the walking wounded were busy volunteering for our next campaigns. With raids planned next year on Alsace, Rioja, Tuscany and even the Napa Valley, there is much to look forward to. Top of everyone’s list, though, is Burgundy and we’ll be heading there in cahoots with Kirker Holidays on 19-23 October 2026. It was a treat, then, to remind myself why we love the region by tasting a fine selection of white burgundies from Mr Wheeler.

Our two Spectator Clays, Claret, Cognac, Cigars (and Carnage) Cruises down the Thames last week were an uproarious success. Much fun was had and, apart from a couple of walking wounded – suffering not from gunshot wounds, you’ll be glad to hear, but simply a surfeit of claret and kummel – there were no casualties. Besides, our plucky pair soon revived after a pint or so at our temporary dressing station in The Dickens Inn. Our long-term partners for the cruises, Private Cellar, did us proud, supplying some stunning clarets, introduced by winemaker extraordinaire, Jean-Michel Garcion, hot-foot, mid-harvest, from Bordeaux.

Ring out the bells, hang out the bunting! Drop whatever you’re doing and pay attention! It’s that time of year again, marked in red on wine-loving readers’ calendars: our annual offer of declassified or so-called ‘defrocked’ clarets from our canny chums at FromVineyardsDirect. You know the form but I’m going to remind you anyway, as I’d hate you to miss out. Outlined below are six cracking clarets from two cracking vintages – 2022 and 2023 – plus one gorgeous Sauternes, all from the greatest of Bordeaux estates. As I’ve explained before, these wines are the excess production or the wines made from younger vines that don’t suit the estates’ grands vins.