Our nine merchant partners – Armit Wines, Corney & Barrow, FromVineyardsDirect, Honest Grapes, Mr Wheeler, Private Cellar, Swig, Tanners and Yapp Bros – represent the cream of the UK’s independents and boast centuries of experience between them. They all have particular areas of expertise and stock wines that you would never be able to find on the supermarket shelves or local off-licence.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
I was snitched on last week. You know how it is – after a long, wine-soaked lunch in town, I tottered off full of bonhomie to catch the train back to Skid Row-on-Sea and, to ward off any incipient hangover, nipped into M&S for a couple of those little plastic bottles of rosé they have
We’ve some cracking South African wines on offer this week, courtesy of Private Cellar, including yet another bona fide Spectator scoop: the exclusive on the 2023 Hamilton Russell Vineyards Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. For one week only, The Spectator is the only place where these wines – made in tiny quantities and destined to sell
Klaxon alert! We’ve a bona fide Spectator scoop and if you love Chateau Musar as much as I think you do – and all Speccie readers love Ch. Musar – then please get your skates on! Our good friends at Mr Wheeler are giving us ten days before anyone else (including the Wine Society) in
Italy’s victory over Scotland in last week’s Six Nations Rugby provoked much merriment in our house. Our Scottish chums watching with us were stunned into grumpy silence, and the grumpier they got, the funnier this seemed. It took many bottles to restore their good humour. Said bottles were all Italian, of course, courtesy of Honest
It was Mrs Ray’s birthday the other day. Or rather it was what she now terms her birthday week – seven days during which flags fly, trumpets sound, corks pop and she can do no wrong. I find it all quite exhausting. It’s not just the running up and down with cups of tea and
