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.
We’ve not had an offer from my alma mater Berry Bros & Rudd for yonks, almost a year in fact, and I’m delighted to see them back in these pages with a really very tasty selection of wines. And just for a change, they are offering a six-bottle case this time rather than the more
Esme Johnstone, the genial boss of FromVineyardsDirect, is the past master at rootling out tasty little parcels of this and that and at unearthing vinous treats from past vintages. I’m delighted to say he’s done it again this week with six very stylish French wines including two fully mature, extremely well-priced clarets and one steal
Chateau Musar, that extraordinary Lebanese winery with vineyards deep in the Bekaa Valley, boasts an almost fanatical following. Indeed, two of Musar’s most devoted admirers were my esteemed predecessors — Messrs Waugh and Hoggart — thanks to whom our Wine Club partner, Mr Wheeler, has been wafting Musar under the beaks of Spectator readers very
Dear right-wing people, please stop the red scares. Please give the Cold War lingo a rest. Please remember it is not the 1950s anymore and that there’s about as much chance of Kevin Spacey taking the title role in a biopic of Jesus Christ as there is of Commies coming to power in Britain. Please
‘If Mueller was looking at your finances and your family finances, unrelated to Russia — is that a red line?’ Trump: ‘I would say yeah. I would say yes. By the way, I would say, I don’t — I don’t — I mean, it’s possible there’s a condo or something, so, you know, I sell
The news that Marion Maréchal-Le Pen will share a stage this week with US conservatives, addressing the annual Conservative Political Action Conference event shortly after vice-president Mike Pence, has caused much excitement within the French right. The 28-year-old Maréchal-Le Pen, niece of Marine, the leader of the National Front, withdrew from political life in June
What a convenient inconvenience the row about Jeremy Corbyn’s links with a Czechoslovakian agent is for the Labour leader. While the allegations that he was an informant during the Cold War may well be the ‘nonsense’ that he claims they are (they certainly don’t seem to correlate with anything released at the end of that
When I saw the photo of Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black holding a photo of an ultrasound, and all the subsequent headlines proclaiming ‘Tom and Lance are having a baby’ I thought one thing above all: ‘That’s strange’. Not ‘eww’, or ‘gross’, or ‘what a way to get over certain negative recent publicity’, but
Dry January must have heightened my senses. Or maybe I’m simply craving alcohol. Either way, I’m pretty chuffed with this week’s selection, courtesy of FromVineyardsDirect: six classic French wines. It took an age to whittle the wines down to six, largely because I felt compelled to drain every bottle. I’d hate you to think I
If you ran the marketing department of a progressive organisation, which wanted to advertise its inclusiveness, how would you do it? My guess is that you would run down the checklist of identity politics and first make sure your advertising had a perfect gender balance. Showing men and women equally would not be enough, however.
The Oscars promise to be truly unbearable this year, with vomit-inducing levels of sanctimony followed by the usual gibberish from the commentariat. The results and speeches and even clothes will be subject to endless politicised scrutiny, and whatever the film industry does to stay Woke, the Buzzfeed headline will inevitably be ‘and people aren’t happy
I have learned a lot since writing about gender laws here last week. I’ve learned that if you ever want to flood your Twitter timeline with people arguing about something, writing an article about gender laws is a good way to do it. I’ve learned that some people do indeed get very angry about this
Good grief, I’m glad that’s over. Dry January, that is. The worst thing was that for most of it I slept terribly and invariably woke with what can only be described as a hangover: throbbing head, aching eyes and dreadful feelings of remorse for having drunk too much the night before (not to mention for
Well, I don’t know about you but I found the recent festivities somewhat challenging. I didn’t draw a sober breath between 8 November and New Year’s Day which, as my wife Marina kindly pointed out, was neither big nor clever. She’s no slouch herself when the corks are popping so for her to call me
I can’t lie to you, I hate this time of year. I further admit to being a fully paid-up member of the Bah Humbug Brotherhood and a long-time sufferer of Christmas Affected Doom, Depression and Despondency (known to anyone who will listen, such as sympathetic barmen and random strangers in the Dog and Vomit as
Christmas is the time for fine claret, whether the grub you plan to gorge on is a juicy rib of beef, a succulent saddle of lamb or the dread festive turkey. And, if you’re canny, there’s no need to break the bank. We’ve put together three keenly priced clarets with our partners Mr Wheeler. Each has unimpeachable
I adore the wines of New Zealand and reckon I could survive on nothing but, if I were ordered to drink the wines of just one country for the rest of my days. Well, I’d need the odd bacon sandwich or plate of oysters in between, but I think you know what I mean. One
It’s the turn of FromVineyardsDirect this week and, just to keep things simple, FVD’s Esme Johnstone and I decided simply to offer readers FVD’s six best-selling wines. FVD’s customers love them, I love them and I trust you’ll love them, too. I even persuaded the normally unpersuadable Esme to knock off 50p here and £1
Gosh I love Gosset champagne! And having recently been in the enviable but liver-challenging position of researching a book on my favourite fizzes, I remain convinced that this oldest of all Champagne houses (est. 1584) is up there with the very best. Thanks to our partners, Mr. Wheeler, we are able to offer almost the
Esme Johnstone, of FromVineyardsDirect.com, has done it again. He’s managed to snaffle some cracking ‘defrocked’ clarets (and one Sauternes) from some of Bordeaux’s finest estates and is offering them here at remarkably keen prices. These wines are from the same vineyards and same winemaking teams that produce the estates’ fabled grands vins (which sadly I’m
