Jonathan Ray is The Spectator’s drinks editor.
Ladies and gentlemen, drum roll please, no pushing at the back, let’s hear it for… The Bunch! Yes, The Bunch! If you don’t know who I’m talking about, you’re in for a treat. And if you do know, you’ll realise why I’m so excited. A loose coalition of six of the UK’s finest independent wine
From our US edition
I first got a taste for it in Eminence, Missouri. Riding a horse, that is, Western style. I also got a taste for the glorious Ozarks, a striking part of the world too often overlooked by, well, erm, everyone. The fact that it was sometimes hard to get a drink put a slight dampener on
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,
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
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
It’s the largest city in Europe, spans two continents, has been the capital of three mighty empires – Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman – and is visited each year by some 20 million tourists. These days – and I’m only guessing here based on the scores of battered, bloodied and bandaged scalps I spotted – it’s
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
I was in Scottsdale, Arizona and, to put it mildly, a little squiffy. Most folk go there to play golf (yawn) but I’d gone there to drink and, after a lengthy tequila masterclass in La Hacienda and several cocktails at Platform 18 (‘best US cocktail bar’ in the 2023 Spirited Awards, incidentally) in nearby Phoenix,
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).
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
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
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,
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
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
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
You saw Homicide: Life on the Street, right? You know, that gritty TV police drama set in Baltimore. What? Ah, no, you’re thinking of The Wire, that other gritty TV police drama set in Baltimore, the one with Idris Elba and Dominic West. Homicide predates The Wire and was filmed largely around Fells Point and along Baltimore’s historic waterfront. The former City Recreation
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,
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
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
Call me crazy, but I’ve always loved Belfast. Even when it was grim, scary and unlovable, I loved Belfast. It doubtless helped that when I came to know it, I was courting a local girl. I loved it because she loved it and, well, I loved it even after she chucked me. The people, the
