Wine Club
Spectator wine club
SEPTEMBER WINE CLUB
Southwold has just been voted the finest seaside resort in Britain, and it’s easy to see why.
Southwold has just been voted the finest seaside resort in Britain, and it’s easy to see why. Even in the rain last month people looked cheerful, and in the bustling dining-room of the Crown you’d imagine that the drizzle outside was a splendid excuse for more hearty trenchering. I was on my annual visit to Adnams, best known as a brewer but also one of our most adventurous wine merchants. If you find yourself in Southwold, you should drop in to their wine cellar and kitchen store; the kitchen gadgets actually work, and the wine is beguilingly displayed. For instance, they have pick ’n’ mix shelves, where you can make an assortment of any dozen bottles for, say, £69, £79 and so forth.
Still, I know my stern duty and my first stop was at the tasting rooms, making the selection for this month’s offer. All of the wines have been discounted, some very generously. I greatly enjoyed the Le Jade Viognier from the Pays d’Oc 2006 (1) which is fresh, crisp, beautifully balanced and has a lovely floral nose. Viogniers just get better and better, and this is excellent value at £5.42.
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Wine Club archive
June Wine Club
A visit to the London International Wine Fair is, paradoxically, a sobering experience.
May Wine Club
I’ve been reading an intriguing article by Miles Thomas in the Psychologist magazine. It’s called ‘On Vines and Minds’, and it discusses many of the ways in which our brains determine the experience of drinking wine.
April Wine Club
The budget has hit wine merchants and drinkers quite hard.
February Wine Club
Time for our annual offer of Château Musar from the excellent folk at Wheeler Cellars, sister company to Lay & Wheeler.
January Wine Club
I love Stone, Vine & Sun of Winchester. They keep winning awards for best independent wine merchant; they have a knack for finding delicious wines at excellent prices from places you haven’t heard about yet but very soon will.
December Wine Club
This is our positively final offer for Christmas, and it’s terrific. Thanks to Lay & Wheeler we have half a dozen French classics, all of which would be very welcome on the Yuletide dinner table, or at a memorable party. What’s more, every one is generously discounted. They are not cheap wines, but they are tremendous value.
NOVEMBER WINE CLUB
I cannot imagine anyone who looks less like Father Christmas than Adam Brett-Smith, the managing director of Corney & Barrow. Adam is slender instead of fat, his face clean-shaven rather than covered in a fluffy white beard, and he would no more wear a red fur-lined suit and a silly hat than you or I would go to work dressed as Ronald McDonald.
OCTOBER WINE CLUB
A visit to Averys of Bristol is always a delight. They are one of our oldest wine merchants, and while most of the stock is kept these days in a modern warehouse out of town, they still have a cellar in central Bristol.
