Wine Club

Cooee, we’re back! Come on, wine lovers, it’s time to get cracking! Whether you’re clinging desperately to the water wagon like me or enjoying a liquor-fuelled January like Mrs Ray (she didn’t feel very well this morning, bless her), we have work to do refilling those bare wine racks that were plundered during the festivities.

So, this is it, the final offer of the year. Mrs Ray says I can drink whatever I need in whatever quantity just as long as I stop banging on about how miserable a month December is. Thanks to these beauties from Swig Wines, I’ve been silence personified, if a little squiffy, and should just

My annual bout of CADDAD (Christmas Affected Doom, Depression and Despondency) struck early this year. It’s a terrible affliction about which I’ve written many times before and it knocked me flat in late September, just as the first mince pies and Christmas puddings appeared in the supermarkets. Stoicism being my middle name, I dug deep

Tanners of Shrewsbury have one of the finest own-label ranges in the country and with dread Christmas in the offing and belts tight as ever, it seemed smart to look no further. With high quality, low prices and the chance to mix your own case, don’t miss this opportunity to fill your boots. I’m no

It has been a gloriously wine-soaked year for us lushes at the Spectator Wine Club, during which we have worked closely with our chums at Private Cellar, the leading independent merchant based on the edge of the Cambridgeshire Fens. PC’s marketing director, Laura Taylor, was not only headteacher at this year’s Spectator Wine School, she

Clearly, it was a mistake to taste the wines Corney & Barrow sent for this offer on the same night as Mrs Ray’s book club. We squabbled for space and then squabbled for wine, and while every one of the dozen or so bottles was drained dry, the books weren’t even opened. My wife says

So successful were our ‘defrocked’ clarets from FromVinyardsDirect and so numerous the emails asking us to repeat the offer that it seemed churlish to refuse. As you know, these wines come from some of the finest estates in all Bordeaux, made by the same teams that make the grands vins – using younger vines/excess fruit

We’ve wines from four countries this week – France, Italy, South Africa and New Zealand – with two contrasting Chardonnays, a pair of Pinots and a brace of Bordeaux blends. Each one is an absolute cracker (you also have the word of Mrs Ray on this since, having run out of gin, she decided she

Our Spectator Wine Time Friday/BYOB lunch last week was a belter, with 15 of us managing to see off 21 bottles quite comfortably and with no apparent ill effects. Indeed, we all left pretty much as steadily as we arrived, and I was proud that several readers still had it in them to enjoy a

It’s been something of a liver-challenging few days for the lushes of Spectator Towers. A fascinating volumetric tasting of 2013 Château Angludet (served to 60 readers during lunch from halves, bottles, magnums, double magnums and an imperial) was followed by the first day of term at the Spectator Wine School and by a memorable Spectator

So how’s your sober October going? No, nor mine. I ticked two consecutive days off the calendar, which is more than I’ve managed since, gosh, January. Baby steps, I know, but it’s bloody difficult. Mrs Ray is not helping. One minute she’s chiding me for being a lush with no self-control; the next she’s hovering

Phew, we made it in one piece. Nobody was seasick, nobody fell overboard, and nobody got shot. I’m talking, of course, of our Spectator Clays, Claret and Cognac Cruise in Thames sailing barge Will, during which 30 or so readers and a crack Spectator team blasted at clays with pump action shotguns and blunderbusses before

It was the mighty Andrew Edmunds’s memorial last week – he of the eponymous restaurant and the Academy Club, those last vestiges of old Soho. All the great and the louche were there paying their respects to this delightful man of many parts – restaurateur, clubman, wine lover, fine print purveyor, flower arranger, fly fisherman

I’m just back from a week in Alsace and I can’t stop grinning. It’s my favourite of all French wine regions, ridiculously pretty and warmly welcoming. The winemakers are just so genial and – unlike many other regions we can all think of – inherently collaborative, forever bigging up the wares of their rivals, who

So, there we were, my chum and I, nearing the bottom of our second bottle of perfectly chilled Franciacorta, that wonderful Italian fizz that knocks spots off prosecco. It was a gorgeous wine, we both agreed, from a gorgeous country, full of gorgeous people, eating gorgeous food and living gorgeous lives. In a perfect world,

Mustard’s Grill on the St Helena Highway, Napa Valley, is a top spot. Self-described as a fancy rib joint with way too many wines, its most celebrated dish is the Truckstop Deluxe – ‘always meat, sometimes potatoes, rarely vegetables’. I can never get enough of it and have popped many a shirt button there. It

This ridiculous cost of profiteering crisis is taking its toll. All of us – apart from the sleek, smug fat cats – are suffering and tightening our belts, but I’m damned if I’m going to be done out of my vino. And I’m damned if you are too. I mean, what else is there to

Hey you there on your sun lounger! Take a gander at this summer sale, courtesy of our chums at FromVineyardsDirect. These are extremely toothsome bin-ends and overstocks at pre-duty increase prices. I’ve tasted them, rejected the also-rans and beaten FVD down on price as much as I can. There are some cracking mystery cases included

Well, crikey, that was fun! The recent inaugural Spectator tour of Champagne, that is. We had a hoot, visiting five producers and enjoying two first-rate dinners courtesy of Taittinger and Pol Roger. We learned lots, laughed lots, drank lots and I don’t think a single spittoon was sullied during the entire trip. Bravo! Oh, and

I confess to feeling a trifle delicate when tasting the dozen or so wines from FromVineyardsDirect for this offer. A late night at the Academy Club had turned into early morning at the Experimental Cocktail Club and neither Mrs Ray nor I were at our best. Indeed, Mrs R decided it was all too much