Jonathan Ray is The Spectator’s drinks editor.
Despite being the old man of St James’s, Berry Bros & Rudd is anything but stuffy. Yes, of course Berrys is traditional, selling plenty of cru classé claret, vintage port and so on, but it’s imaginative too, championing neglected regions as much as it does emerging ones. It has over a dozen wines from long-ignored
When I was pondering a theme for this week’s offer with Mark Cronshaw, operations director of The Wine Company, he sucked his teeth, stared into the distance and came up with a brainwave: why not simply offer The Wine Company’s best-sellers? Wines that have been tried, tested and loved by their customers, but offered with
It’s a complete recipe for disaster of course. By which I mean being trapped at sea with The Spectator’s ‘Low life’ correspondent for an entire week. That’s seven whole days. At sea. Crikey! Not that Jeremy Clarke isn’t the best of company (he is — everyone adores him) and not that we won’t all have
Private Cellar is the Jack Russell of the wine trade, tiny but tenacious, nipping in and snuffling out first-rate everyday wines that others either miss or require in greater quantities than are available. Private Cellar, based in Newmarket, has no shop to speak of and a staff of just eight, selling online from a commendably
We’ve four lovely wines this week that virtually chose themselves, so spot on are they. FromVineyardsDirect are great at this kind of thing — finding little treasures that others have either overlooked or were too slow to grab first. The Prosecco Collalbrigo Brut (1) is a typical example. I’ve come across a lot of lousy
For some inexplicable reason, the Loire remains a woefully underrated area. The longest river in France, its banks are home to a remarkable variety of grapes and wine styles — red and white, sweet and dry, sparkling and still. Lightness and freshness is the region’s signature and the following selection from the inimitable Yapp Bros,
Berry Bros & Rudd have done it again and come up with six fascinating wines at very generous prices. A couple are almost 25 per cent cheaper than on Berrys’ list and the mixed case is almost 20 per cent cheaper. And it’s a quirky selection all right. Berrys might have one of the finest
We’re heading south for the winter this week, specifically to South Africa and New Zealand, courtesy of Tanners of Shrewsbury. First to New Zealand, a country whose wines I adore. I’m not alone: we in the UK are New Zealand’s biggest market and happily spend more on each bottle of Kiwi wine than on wine
The end of the month is nigh and the sorry few still on the January water wagon are no doubt clinging to it by their fingertips, knuckles ever whiter. I’m not trying to tempt any of you to jump off prematurely, I promise, but we’ve some cracking wines this week courtesy of FromVineyardsDirect, those crafty
I’ve so many mates on the wagon this month that there is hardly anyone left to play with. It turns out that even my old chum Jason Yapp is doing a detox. More baby steps really, he tells me, a day at a time, but even so. Happily, though, before Jason went all virtuous, he
Just in case you missed it last week we’re showing again the details of the final Wine Club offer of the year, courtesy of Private Cellar, the East Anglian wine merchant which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. The great Jancis Robinson recently declared the company to be the finest independent merchant in the
And so to our final Wine Club offer of the year, courtesy of Private Cellar, the small but perfectly formed wine merchant based in Newmarket and currently in the throes of great jollification. For not only is Private Cellar celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, it is also marking the fact that no less an
Even in the driving rain, the Isle of Islay is a heart-stoppingly beautiful spot. High in the hills behind the Bruichladdich distillery, there are sweeping views east across Loch Indaal, and I fancied I could just about pinpoint Bowmore distillery across the foaming grey waters. The wind was gusting, the sheep were bleating, the geese
We’ve a really peachy quartet of wines this week courtesy of FromVineyardsDirect, all at extremely attractive prices. Messrs Johnstone and Campbell of FVD are dogged in their pursuit of bargains and have done us proud. The 2011 Château Bauduc, Bordeaux Blanc (1) will be familiar to diners-out as the house white in both Gordon Ramsay’s
The Allegrini family has been making wine in the Veneto since the 16th century. It rather understates things to say that the Allegrinis know what they’re about, but they do, and today the family produces almost one million bottles of tip-top quality vino a year. And although the Allegrinis now make wine in Tuscany and
With the need to stock up for Christmas in mind, we have gone all trad this week with a brilliant selection of classic French wines from our old friends Berry Bros & Rudd. And I’m delighted to report that having softened up Mark Pardoe MW, Berrys’ wine buying director, with a large, chilled glass of
There is nothing that Esme Johnstone and David Campbell of FromVineyardsDirect.com don’t know about Bordeaux. Their contacts there are legendary and they put them to good use in quietly snapping up the surplus production or the wine that doesn’t quite fit the final blend of the Grands Vins from some of the region’s finest châteaux.
Having just turned 13, my boy Ferdy doesn’t really do early mornings. Indeed, during the summer hols we rarely glimpsed him before noon and then only fleetingly whenever he chose to assemble himself a triple-decker jam and Nutella sandwich and flee back upstairs to his darkened room and repeats of Top Gear on his iPad.
It’s back to basics this week and pretty darn delicious basics at that. Corney & Barrow’s house selection has an almost fanatical following among Spectator readers and it’s a real pleasure to offer the core of the range here at extremely generous rates. In fact, if one takes advantage of the fabled Brett-Smith indulgence (£6
It’s fair to say that they let their hair down a bit in the Spectator offices on a Thursday afternoon, the magazine having gone to press, and it could have been a rash move to hold a wine tasting in the boardroom. As it was, everyone behaved impeccably and went about the task of tasting