Jonathan Ray

It has been a punishing, fuzzy few days, thanks to a brace of Spectator Wine-maker Lunches, a Spectator Champagne Dinner, an uproarious Spectator Writer’s Dinner with the mighty Rory Sutherland and several vital cocktail bars to investigate. How does that song go about nights I can’t remember with friends I can’t forget? It was a while before I was ready to approach the dozen or so wines that Robin Davis of Swig sent for selection but once I did, I found I had quite a thirst, great testament to the quality of the wines. The 2024 Secateurs Chenin Blanc (1) comes from Swartland, South Africa, and the eccentric mastermind that is Adi Badenhorst. I say that as a huge compliment.

Mrs Ray is recovering fast from her op and has weaned herself off hard drugs in favour of cocktails and fine vino. It hasn’t been easy drinking for two this past week and it’s great to have her back on the team. She was certainly a huge help in narrowing down the excellent selection of Corney & Barrow own-label wines to the following eight bottles. It quite brought a tear of pride to my eye to see my missus at work, tasting freestyle without recourse to any spittoon. She has a gift that girl.

Mrs Ray has had a minor op on her foot and, temporarily unable to walk, is marooned on the first floor. Don’t worry, I do visit. My dear wife’s exile upstairs does mean, though, that there’s a certain amount of flexibility as to what goes on downstairs. Indeed, I’ve been able to sneak in one or two dear chums for company. They know the drill: back door, shoes off, no ciggies and phones on silent. Several selfless souls even helped me taste these gorgeous, top-flight wines from Armit, chosen specifically with bloody Christmas in mind and each with a gratifying 20 per cent discount. The 2023 Elena Walch Pinot Grigio (1) is – shock, horror! – a PG of real quality and character.

Phew, we made it! I counted them all out and I counted them all back and our full complement of intrepid readers was present and correct as we gathered for our journey home, albeit quieter and more liverish than at embarkation. Our inaugural Spectator Wine Club assault on Bordeaux had been a glorious, heart-swelling success. Having crisscrossed the region, invading Pauillac, Margaux, St Emilion and Sauternes and taking in such stellar estates as Ch. Angludet, Ch. Belair-Monange, Le Dôme, Ch. Pichon-Baron, Ch. Lafaurie-Peyraguey and Ch. Tour Baladoz, we remained at full strength with no casualties – well, apart from a couple of walking wounded who overcooked things slightly on the first evening – and there were several mentions in despatches.

It’s the end of an era at Yapp Bros, long-time partners in the Spectator Wine Club, and many a wine-lover’s favourite independent merchant. My old mucker, the vinous truffle-hound that is Jason Yapp, is stepping down in December after 32 years with the company, having served variously as sales director, wine director and MD. Yapps ferret out the finest, quirkiest, most interesting wines France’s hidden quartiers have to offer Yapps have recently left the famously welcoming Old Brewery in Mere, Wiltshire, for larger, less romantic premises in Sparkford, Somerset, and Jas felt it time to step back. His liver will be relieved. I know mine is.

It was tasty, well-priced red Bordeaux last week and it’s tasty, well-priced white Burgundy this week. Don’t say we don’t love you. All we crave is your happiness and we work hard to attain that. By which I mean that I drink as much as I can on your behalf. Team player, that’s me. Mrs Ray tries to stick her oar in too, of course, and it’s a full-time job trying to save her from herself. It’s not that she’s not helpful. It’s just that the singing and dancing on the tables does grate after a while… Burgundy is darn pricy these days, but if you look hard enough and trust your source – in this instance, the astute Mr Wheeler – then toothsome bargains can be found. Get stuck in, I say.

Bordeaux is much on our mind at Spectator Towers. Not only are we still sobering up from our riotous annual Clays, Claret and Cognac Cruise down the Thames but we’re also preparing our first determined assault on Bordeaux itself, with 20 readers joining me there for five wine-soaked days this month. And, to top it all, this week, courtesy of Laura Taylor and our mates at Private Cellar, we’re offering six cracking clarets – all fantastic value and perfect for Christmas. Don’t laugh, the dread day is on its way.

Whoop! Whoop! Hang out the bunting, clear out your cellars, dust off your corkscrews: it’s the highlight of many a wine-lover’s year and time for our annual offer of ‘defrocked’ clarets from our confrères at FromVineyardsDirect. I know you know this but I’m going to remind you anyway – these wines come from the most famous of all Bordeaux estates, the absolute top. They are the excess production or the wines made from younger vines that don’t suit the estates’ grands vins. They are made in the same cellars as the grands vins, by the same winemaking teams and with the same devotion, and although they might not quite have the same depth and concentration as the grands vins, they boast the same impeccable pedigree and at knockdown prices.

A week on the lash in Las Vegas with my 21-year-old son – the old soak and the young Turk – was not the best preparation for tasting wines for this offer with Honest Grapes. Slinking home liverish and chastened, we agreed that what had happened in Vegas would stay there and that Mrs Ray would never know about Ludo’s first cigar (duck to water), his first stab at roulette (he lost, I won) and baccarat (he won, I lost), and especially not about my thrilling encounter with the bewitching Eureka O’Hara, drag queen extraordinaire. Thank goodness, our matching tattoos have thus far remained unseen. Such secrets will go to our graves.

Hurrah, it’s September and Domaine du Grand Mayne time! This is our fifth annual offer with the estate and the wines are better than ever, having had something of a revamp under the new head wine-maker, Coline Sicard. The leading estate in the Côtes de Duras – which lies between Saint-Émilion and Bergerac and is one of France’s oldest AOCs – DGM is famed for its sustainable approach to winemaking and the hearteningly fair prices they charge. If you like Bordeaux-style wines but quail at Bordeaux prices, then take a squint at these treats If you like Bordeaux grape varieties and Bordeaux-style wines, but quail at Bordeaux prices, then I beg you to take a squint at the treats below.

For someone who says she hates whisky, Mrs Ray drinks an awful lot of it. We’re just back from a challenging week at the Edinburgh Festival, where we seemed to spend as much time in The Lucky Liquor Co, Nightcap, Bramble and Panda & Sons as we did in any shows. It was a relief, then, to come home to some good, honest vino, which is exactly what this offer with FromVineyardsDirect is all about, highlighting some of their core range, their bestsellers and particular favourites of mine. I feared the 2018 Comte Leloup du Chateau de Chasseloir Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie (1) would be too long in the tooth but, gosh, how wrong could I be? It’s in great form, fresh, built to last.

Wet, cold and miserable though it is, summer wouldn’t be summer without our annual Summer Sale with our old chums at Mr Wheeler. Hurrah! The operations director, Mark Cronshaw, sent me a stack of wines to try and, devilishly hard though it was (not helped by an intense weekend on the hard stuff in Edinburgh with those wicked purveyors of wonder at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society) I managed to pick six highlights below – wines that I think offer particularly good value for money. Here I have picked wines that I think offer particularly good value for money With almost 100 wines on offer at extremely tasty prices, there are many others that caught my eye too, and I beg you to look at the wider list (see link below).

Mrs Ray has temporarily foresworn alcohol. Our recent weekend in northern Italy took its toll and it’ll be a while before she looks a bottle of Amaro in the eye again. It’s all my fault apparently and I stand accused as a pusher and a feeder, solely responsible for her liverish state. I tried to explain the concept of free will as I brought her yet more tea’n’Anadin but the homily was badly received and I narrowly missed a pair of flying slippers as I retreated. Hints of butter, lemon and toast are beautifully kept in check with a slightly salty/savoury finish It’s her loss. As a proud half-Aussie, my wife loves the wines from Down Under and there are few finer than those from McHenry Hohnen, the range of which I was delighted to taste for this offer, albeit on my own.

Around of applause, please, as we welcome Haynes Hanson & Clark to the Spectator Wine Club. Hurrah! Established almost 50 years ago with shops in Chelsea and the Cotswolds, HHC is a firm favourite of canny wine lovers and I’m delighted to offer their wines. Buying director Sióbhan Astbury sent me some absolute peaches to choose from and it was a thorny exercise narrowing them down, hindered (rather than helped) by Mrs Ray who, with a curt ‘I’m on the phone!’, nicked one of the bottles and buggered off upstairs with it. Welcome Haynes Hanson & Clark – a firm favourite of canny wine lovers The 2023 Domaine Gayda ‘Sphère’ Viognier (1) is a charmer from an eye-catching estate in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

After a week in Hungary, I’ve almost forgotten what French wines taste like. I’m just back from our inaugural Spectator tour of Budapest and Tokaj where, in the company of my colleague Richard Bratby and 20 or so extremely engaging and really quite thirsty readers, I drank little else but dry Furmint, sweet Tokaji and Bull’s Blood. Well, some of us also did what the locals did and downed a glass or so of pálinka just to be polite. Oh, and a few beers. And some martinis in Hotsy Totsy and some more in Boutiq (don’t blame me, it was Richard’s idea). The point is that I’ve been on an all-Hungarian diet and, sublimely tasty and satisfying though this was, by journey’s end all I craved was a fine white burgundy.

Robin Davis of Swig Wines, specialists in sourcing quirky wines from passionate, artisanal and often eccentric producers, sent me so many bottles to choose from that I got in a right stew. Mrs Ray despaired at my indecision and repaired upstairs with a bottle and a box set. I couldn’t whittle the selection down to six, so came up with the following ten and no mixed case. A classic blend of Cab Sauv, Merlot and Cab Franc which would easily pass for a wine twice the price The 2023 Christoph Bauer Gemischter Schatz (literal translation: ‘mixed treasure’) (1) from Jetzelsdorf, north of Vienna, is like nothing else I’ve come across in Austria, being a field blend of co-fermented Welsch-riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Neuberger and Traminer.

New Zealand, ah, New Zealand! I don’t know anyone who has been there who hasn’t been completely bewitched by the country. I’m lucky enough to have gone there many times, though not for ages. I haven’t felt ready to return, being scarred by a night of bad judgment and poor behaviour in Wellington a few years back. Hosted by a group of winemakers, we’d started in Matterhorn, I think it was, moved on to Elixir, Hawthorn Lounge and – here it gets a bit blurry – Dirty Little Secret. Next thing I knew I was waking up in a hotel in Queenstown wondering how the heck I got there and in whose company.

Hurrah! It’s May and time for our annual offer of top-notch Beaujolais from family-owned Maison Jean Loron (est: 1711), courtesy of Mr Wheeler. All the wines are 100 per cent Gamay, of course, but they’re very different, each with their own subtle characteristics and quirks and Mrs Ray and I had quite an evening delving into the range. And, gosh, we came up smiling every time – beaming, even – and just that little bit squiffy. The 2022 Brouilly, Ch. de la Pierre (1) comes from a 12-hectare domaine with a 12th-century château (complete with whizz-bang, high-tech winery) at its heart, surrounded by fields of wild grass, grazing horses and ancient woodland. It’s all very bourgeons chéris du mois de mai.