October Offer of the Month

Thursday, 22nd September 2011

Fashions in wine change slowly, but change they do, driven by advances in technology and, most of all, by changes in price.

FromVineyardsDirect.com – 27 August 2011

Saturday, 27th August 2011

The luscious Château Bauduc 2009 tastes nice. (I have always wanted to write that, rather than banging on about nuances of elderberry and top notes of nutmeg.)

May Offer of the Month

Thursday, 5th May 2011

My day job keeps me in Westminster, where we are lucky enough to have two superb Indian restaurants. The Cinnamon Club, in an old public library, is the one where the politicians go. You would be unlucky if you went on a weekday lunchtime and didn’t see someone who was sitting on the TV sofa with Andrew Neil half an hour before. The food is subcontinental haute cuisine. Quilon, near St James’s Park tube, has a Michelin star. It offers subtle south Indian dishes — delectable thin rice pastry stuffed with spiced potatoes, curried halibut, guinea fowl. Like the CC, it also offers a lunchtime menu, which is fortunate, since neither place is cheap in the evening.

Offer of the Month - May 2011

Thursday, 7th April 2011

With the pound staying low, and taxes rising yet again in the budget, we wine drinkers need to snoop around for bargains to keep us drinking in the manner to which we would like to become accustomed. Luckily, The Wine Company of Colchester has stepped in with some terrific bargains. They are almost all French — how many of us can afford to glug good French wine these days? — and are terrific value. Mark Cronshaw has knocked some substantial sums off the case prices. The wines are very different, and you might want to try the sample case before selecting your very favourites.

Offer of the month - April 2011

Thursday, 10th March 2011

This month we return to Yapp Brothers of Mere, Wiltshire, the specialist ­merchants who ferret out wines from corners of France — some obscure, some ­fairly well known, but all chosen personally by Jason Yapp and his step-brother, Tom Ashworth. Every year they risk the suspension on their cars by bumping down pot-holed roads to meet ancient, gap-toothed vignerons whose forebears have been working in the same fields, growing the same grapes, since the Revolution. Or more often, meeting delightful young winemakers who are as up to date with new techniques as anyone in California or Australia. The result is a collection of delicious wines which you may not have heard of, but could easily become favourites. All are reduced from the list price.

Offer of the month - February 2011

Thursday, 13th January 2011

We passed Christmas in Kenya, on the beach. I’d spent Christmas abroad before but never in a hot country, and it took time to get used to — perhaps 20 seconds. Up late in the morning, open stockings in bed, pull on swimming trunks, descend for alfresco breakfast of mango, paw-paw and passion fruit, plus tiny sweet bananas.