Jonathan Ray

Peter Gago, the exuberant head winemaker at Penfolds, producer of Australia’s most celebrated and garlanded wine, Grange, was in fine form at our recent Spectator Winemaker Dinner held at the Marylebone Hotel. Peter was generosity itself, too, bringing with him a spectacular array of Penfolds wines, including Bin 51 Eden Valley Riesling, Yattarna Chardonnay, Bin 389 Cabernet/Shiraz, RWT Shiraz, Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon (produced from the oldest Cabernet vines in the world, incidentally, and I bet you didn’t know that), St Henri Shiraz and the mighty Grange itself (the 2008 in fact, rated a 100 point wine by the noble Robert Parker). We finished with an extraordinary 30 year old tawny.

When I was last in Perth – more than ten years ago – it was well and truly shut. There was nobody around, nothing to see and nothing to do. I was bored to screams and couldn’t wait to leave. Back then, Perth used to bang on proudly not only about its 19 beaches and extensive ocean and river fronts (which it still does of course), but also about its being the world’s most remote city. Locals took perverse glory in Perth’s isolation (it’s some 3,000km from Jakarta, its nearest non-Australian city, and some 2,000km from Adelaide, its nearest Australian one). And, boy, didn’t it just feel stuck in the middle of nowhere? I must have imagined it, but I’m sure I remember tumbleweed blowing down the deserted, arrow-straight main drag, St.

Well, that’s January done and dusted. Phew! An immense relief, I’m sure, for all those clinging to the wagon by their fingertips. But pity the poor souls about to give up booze for Lent; it starts this coming Wednesday (10 February) and goes on all the way till 24 March. Best get some decent wine in, then, and put a spring back in our step. And for those noble folk about to board the Lenten water wagon, why not give yourself something to look forward to in glorious, daffodil--dappled April? Mark Cronshaw of The Wine Company heeded my plea for something cheering and presented a fine selection for us this week, one that I have whittled down to a particularly toothsome half-dozen.

I don’t know about you, but I was rather crushed when the Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, declared that none of us should be drinking more than 14 units of alcohol a week. It was only a few days ago that we chaps were permitted 21. I can’t say that I’ve exactly taken Dame Sally’s advice to heart, although I have been taking it a trifle easy this month, if only to prepare for a forthcoming long weekend in Madrid (the recommended limit for men in Spain being a gratifying 35 units). The trouble is that what I grandly call my cellar (really a cobwebbed cupboard under the stairs) took something of a battering during the recent New Year festivities and there are gaping holes in the racks where once dozens of bottles lay gently slumbering.

  Much has already been written about The Spectator’s notorious spin around the Med this summer on board Cunard’s Queen Victoria, and there’s nothing much I can add except to confirm that, yes, we did indeed have a complete and utter hoot. In fact such a complete and utter hoot was it that once we’re all fully recovered and match fit we’re darn well going to do it again. Needless to say, much of the jollity and most of the japes were the result of enjoying vast amounts of vino of the tippest-toppest quality in a seemingly endless supply. Just when we thought we’d succeeded in drinking the ship dry, more bottles appeared.

It’s already started — the festive flood of shoddy champagne on BOGOF deals in the supermarkets. Well, BOGOF indeed. Such fizz might bear the magical name of champagne, but all too often these wines will have been made from the second or even third pressing of inferior fruit from the less good plots, and aged for the bare legal minimum of 15 months rather than the more usual four or five years. If I can’t have or can’t afford Pol or Bol or something similar, then I’d far rather stick to the 2013 Blanquette de Limoux, ‘Saint-Hilaire’, Aimery, a wonderful sparkler made by the champagne method in the Languedoc and offered here by the wise old Wine Company.

They’re a crafty bunch at FromVineyardsDirect.com and no mistake. One of their smartest wheezes is to ferret out, very discreetly, small parcels of surplus production from the top — and I mean the top — châteaux of Bordeaux and sell them on to their customers at extremely reasonable prices. These ‘defrocked’ wines (as they like to call them) are made from estate fruit with the same care and attention that goes into the property’s grand vin by the same winemaking teams. I know which châteaux the wines are from but, for obvious reasons, FVD would rather I didn’t say.

A serious wine merchant stands or falls by the quality of its own-label or house wines. When I worked at Berry Bros & Rudd over 20 years ago, doing shamefully little to help make it the award-winning success it is today, my boss, Simon Berry, used to stress that any fool could source, market and sell a bottle of 1982 Ch. Lafite but it took real skill to do that with an own-label wine. This has to be pitch perfect both in terms of quality and of price and can’t rely on simply being a famous name. We had a decent, if small, range in those days, headed then as now by the fabled Good Ordinary Claret (of which more below). It was nothing like as imposing as the current Own Selection, though, relaunched last month with more than 50 bright, shiny new wines, and each one a belter.

We have three remarkably fine bottles from the Wine Company this week, each a classic example of its type. First, the Michel Guilleminot Blanc de Noirs Brut Champagne NV, a fabulous fizz from the Vallée de l’Aube. Fresh, vibrant and fruity, with a delicate mousse and a touch of biscuit and brioche, this mouth-filling, 100 per cent Pinot Noir gives many a Grande Marque a run for its money. It certainly beats any supermarket own-label champagne hands down. £21 if you buy six bottles, down from £26.99. The 2012 Sumaridge Chardonnay is from South Africa’s Upper Hemel-en-Aarde Valley near the whale-watchers’ paradise of Hermanus.

Jason Yapp has been even more ebullient than usual, if such a thing was possible, Yapp Brothers having scooped three awards at the International Wine Challenge, including ‘Languedoc-Roussillon Specialist Merchant of the Year’. Jason knows Languedoc-Roussillon like nobody else: he and I had a memorable trip there recently thanks not only to the spectacular wines we tasted but to the transvestite nightclub in Avignon we found ourselves in, for reasons that now escape me, surrounded by French truckers in summer frocks discussing brake systems and the perils of the Paris périphérique. For this offer, I challenged Jason to show a selection that might justify his IWC gong.

Just in case you hadn’t noticed, the Rugby World Cup kicks off this Friday with England vs Fiji at HQ. The delicious prospect of six weeks of international rugby prompted sports-mad Laura Taylor and Amanda Skinner from Private Cellar to present a fine selection of wines for me to taste drawn only from those rugby nations that produce wine. I whittled their original selection down to what I like to think of as a formidable wine/rugby half-dozen from France, England, South Africa, New Zealand, Argentina and Italy. Thank your lucky stars we’re not offering you kava from Tonga.

Ok, so first things first. Jeremy Clarke didn’t fall overboard after all. He did, though, dance all night every night (almost), have everyone in stitches and host a rip-roaring High Life vs Low Life pub quiz. He even wore a fez with unexpected aplomb. Taki forwent the delights of his own High Life to join ours. He was exceedingly generous to his dining companions with his wine choices, and had us enthralled with his insider tales of Spectator days gone by and libel actions lost (mainly) and won (occasionally).