Jonathan Ray

The last bell of term has rung and that’s it for the Spectator Wine School for another year. Conducted via Zoom over four successive Thursdays, the sellout course was expertly taught by Laura Taylor, marketing director of our partners Private Cellar. Truancy rates were almost nonexistent — but then three 75cl bottles of wine per pupil per class is quite an incentive. Our learners even got a commemorative edition of the late, great Michael Broadbent’s seminal Wine Tasting, published by the Académie du Vin Library, as a primer. Each 90-minute session was devoted to one of four major grape varieties, namely Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir, and thanks to Mrs Taylor’s genial, lightly worn expertise, we learned an enormous amount.

So I’ve had my booster jab — hurrah! — and if it wasn’t for my early-onset CADDAD (Christmas Affected Doom, Depression and Despondency) I’d be raring to go. As it is, though, I seem to be en route to the Depths of Gloom via Lowest Point and a change at Rock Bottom. The blasted carols have been on a loop in our local supermarket seemingly for weeks and I shudder at the jingle of every bell. Happily, though, this splendid offer of nine impeccable clarets from our chums at FromVineyardsDirect has put the spring back in my step. After our two recent bumper offers of Burgundy, it seemed only right to go for some similarly toothsome red Bordeaux and I reckon we have come up trumps with wines from 2010 and 2016. Both were stellar, 10/10 vintages.

I love burgundy, you love burgundy, we all love burgundy. And for those who didn’t fill their boots a fortnight ago with treats from the Jaffelin stable, we’ve an absolute ripsnorter of an offer this week, featuring six stunners from the mighty Domaine Chanson. Founded in Beaune in 1750, DC has been owned by the Bollinger family since 1999 and their wines are hugely sought after and yet notoriously tricky to find. Happily, thanks to the efforts of Laura Taylor of Private Cellar, we’ve snaffled a small parcel just for readers of The Spectator and I’m thrilled.

Getting to grips with Burgundy and its wines is a life’s work. But what greater quest or hobby could there be? Trainspotting? Quilting? Collecting postman’s hats? I think not. As you know — well-versed wine-loving Spectator reader that you are — there are just two grape varieties to bother with in Burgundy: Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. This should make things simple. But it’s how and where said grapes are grown, vinified and aged that makes things complicated, with each village, vineyard, viticulturalist and vigneron of the Côte d’Or, Côte Chalonnaise and the Mâconnais adding their own unique little soupçon to the mix.

Yet again we have been cruelly misled. All the wild assurances from those supposedly in charge that Christmas had been cancelled — thanks to Covid, Brexit, Insulate Britain, leaves on the line or whatever the current mismanaged crisis is — turn out to be complete bunk. Unfortunately, despite no petrol, no delivery drivers and no space at Felixstowe docks, we’re told that Yuletide is firmly back on track. Bloody Boris, yet another promise he’s failed to keep. Of course, some twits continue to panic-buy bog rolls and mince pies and there will inevitably be gaps on the supermarket shelves.

Yippee! It’s that time of year again which canny, wine-loving readers pine for. No, silly, I’m not talking about Christmas. That’s still yonks away, even though the shops are already full of ghastly festive tat. Indeed, only last week, in search of a Soho loo stop after a magnum too many in the Academy Club, I found that Liberty, of all places, has an entire upper floor dedicated to Christmas. And, with the streaming September sun spotlighting plastic trees, fake wreaths, tacky tree toppers and sundry generic baubles, it looked like a pretty cheap and rubbishy Christmas they had in mind too. How the mighty are fallen.

Alsace is my favourite of all French wine regions. There, I’ve said it. Bordered by the Vosges and the Rhine, it’s achingly pretty with rolling, wooded hills and exquisite medieval villages. The food is sublime (26 Michelin-starred restaurants), the climate benign (second lowest rainfall in all of France) and the wines, well, they’re stunning, from bone dry whites to sumptuously sweet late harvest wines and tasty Pinot Noir reds. Apart from a smattering of excellent co-operatives, the wineries are nearly all family-owned, boasting long, unbroken histories despite Alsace having been the battleground of Europe for centuries, enduring such bust-ups as the Thirty Years War, the Franco-Prussian War and two world wars.

We had the first of our new season’s Spectator Winemaker’s Lunches last week and what a rip-roaring, shirt-popping success it was. Held in the Jacobite Room of Boisdale Belgravia (our extremely congenial temporary home while the unfortunate flood in our boardroom dries out), it featured the extraordinary wines of Joseph Phelps Vineyards in California and was beautifully curated by Laura Taylor, marketing director of Private Cellar. Nobody likes a show-off and I hate to brag, but we knocked back five gloriously tasty wines including the 2018 Joseph Phelps Freestone Chardonnay, the £200-a-bottle 2010 Joseph Phelps Insignia and the 2018 Joseph Phelps Insignia, surely one of the finest ever incarnations of this striking Bordeaux blend.

My longed-for trips to Greece and Spain are booked, England thumped India in the third Test, Spurs are top of the league (and Arsenal are bottom, that’s to say last, 20th out of 20, the back marker), and, having long abandoned any attempts at Alcohol-Free August, I’ve been drinking the wines of mighty Mas de Daumas Gassac all week courtesy of our friends at Honest Grapes. I can hardly stop grinning. M de DG is generally acknowledged to be the ‘Lafite of the Languedoc’ and if you’re new to its remarkable wines, crikey, you’re in for a treat. I envy you discovering them for the first time. The 2020 Moulin de Gassac Picpoul de Pinet (1) is as fine an example of this increasingly trendy grape/wine as you’ll find.

I keep pinching myself. After the misery of the last 18 months, things really do seem to be on the up. Everyone I know is double-jabbed, they’re all desperate to carouse and I’ve been out on the toot five nights (and three lunches) on the bounce. Spurs beat mighty Man City in their season opener (fnarr, fnarr), Joe Root got 180 at Lord’s (I was there), no. 2 son nailed his A-levels, I got a parking ticket overturned and — saving the best for last — Tanners of Shrewsbury are back in the warm embrace of the Spectator Wine Club. Landlord, drinks all round! Family-owned and run since 1842, Tanners are one of the UK’s leading independent merchants and it has been too long since we joined forces. I’m thrilled they’re back.

I have quite the spring in my step as I write and no, clever clogs, not just because of my regular mid-morning sharpener, satisfying and restorative though it was. What do you take me for? No, it’s because I have nothing but good news to impart this week and I’m confident that your happiness is secure. We have six very tasty, exceedingly easy-going wines on offer this week; we have an extremely generous 20 per cent discount on all bottles and — yippee! — our celebrated Spectator Winemaker Lunches are back with a bang, kicking off on Friday 17 September with many more to follow.

Klaxon alert! Calling all wine lovers! Whatever you’re doing, stop it this instant and read this immediately for we have a bona fide belter of an offer this week: an exclusive on the newly released 2015 Chateau Musar. Thanks to our chums at Mr Wheeler and their longstanding relationship with the estate, Spectator readers have first shout on this magnificent wine and if you like Musar — and come on, everyone likes Musar — I beg you to get stuck in. I’m assured that the 2015 vintage cannot currently be bought anywhere else in the UK.

We’re looking back so as to look forward this week. It has been such a rotten 18 months that in order to greet our longed-for freedom in appropriate bottle-draining style, we’re revisiting highlights of past FromVineyardsDirect offers. Previous vintages of all the bottles below have been huge hits with readers and I have every confidence these new incarnations will hit the bull’s-eye too when the shackles finally come off on 19 July. It’s a sort of vinous These You Have Loved. The 2020 Rive Droite, Rive Gauche (1) from vineyards on both banks of the Rhône is as tasty a Côtes du Rhône Blanc as you will find. A blend of Grenache Blanc, Bourboulenc and Viognier, it’s dry but creamy with delicate hints of apricot. £9.

Robin Yapp, the dentist-turned-wine merchant who founded Yapp Bros in 1969, used to scare the pants off my poor father on forays to France. A somewhat insouciant driver, Robin would belt along in his ancient right-hand-drive estate car, foot to the floor, with his mind on other things. Every now and then, mid-anecdote, he would drift languidly into the left lane to overtake whatever French fool impeded his progress. My father, white-faced in the passenger seat, would gulp at the oncoming camions and yell ‘No, NO, back, BACK, something’s coming!’ as Robin coasted casually back to the correct side and continued his story.

After a monumental, liver-challenging but heart-lifting and even tear-inducing 12-hour lunch with Fuzzy, Nigel and co, we’re back with a bang. We drank, we danced and we hiccoughed our happy way home as if Covid and the long, spirit-sapping lockdowns had never happened. And so, jabbed and double-jabbed, drinks in hand, here we are strolling on the sunlit foothills of Mount Hope. Everything is possible and normality is just around the corner. Hurrah! Indeed, let me present to you my reworking of that beloved acronym SNAFU: Situation Normal All Fabulously Uplifting. The sun is out, the birds are singing and it’s hard, even for a grumpy pessimist/realist like me, not to feel happy and excited.

I haven’t been to Le Marche for yonks. Heck, I haven’t been anywhere for yonks. Who has? My last jaunt abroad was an overnight flit to Paris in February last year. It was huge fun, with the opera followed by such an exhaustive bar crawl that I needn’t have booked a hotel. I only went there to retrieve my bag and have a pee before legging it to the Gare du Nord. I pine to go away properly and I pine for Italy’s Le Marche especially. Sandwiched between the Apennines and the Adriatic, Le Marche has everything that Tuscany and Umbria have, minus the crowds and the prices (I’m talking pre-Covid of course).