Wine Club: a taste of Rhône royalty

A reader upbraided me gently the other day saying he felt I was overly effusive about the wines I feature in these pages. He hinted that I must be in the pay of the merchants in order to endorse quite so heartily whatever six random wines they care to offload on me.

Well, I promise I’m not in anyone’s pocket. Just to be clear, the offers work like this: I chat to whichever merchant we’re featuring and between us we try to come up with a pertinent/interesting theme, region, country or producer. The merchant sends me – or we taste together – anything up to a couple of dozen wines that we think might work, out of which I choose my favourite six. These we then offer to you at as keen a price as I can bully the merchant into. Plenty of wines fall by the wayside, either because I don’t like them (or think you won’t) or because they’re too pricey (or too cheap).