Johnny-ray-wine-club

Good grief, I’ve just been well and truly seduced! Back in April, attentive readers might recall, I led a heavily oversubscribed Spectator visit to Chapel Down winery in Kent for a bit of a tasting and one heck of a lunch. We ate and drank like kings and lingered far longer over lunch than was planned with coffee skipped in favour of a mad sprint for the train. As I dashed down the stairs two at a time the Chapel Down MD, Mark Harvey, yelled after me that since there wasn’t time now he was going to send me a little something in the post. It arrived the other week

Jonathan Ray reckons size matters and finds himself wrong footed by the supermarkets. So there I was at my birthday supper. Marina, bless her, had done all the grub and I’d done the wine. We had 20 folk round the table, some keen on their wine and some keen on, well, just drinking. Indeed, the ones with the most highly polished drinking boots seemed pretty indifferent as to what it was exactly that they drank so long as they drank something. We started with a selection of fine English fizz that I had amassed during my whistle-stop tour of the wineries of West Sussex and Surrey (see Browsing and Sluicing…)

To get himself in shape for the forthcoming Spectator St. George’s Day trip to Chapel Down Winery in Kent, Jonathan Ray spends a weekend in the wine-lands of Sussex and Surrey. It’s one of life’s greatest pleasures, taking one’s car across the Channel and pootling about Champagne, say, or the Loire Valley or Alsace, Burgundy, Bordeaux or even down to the Rhône. You know the form. You toss a coin to choose the day’s designated driver and then simply lurch from winery to winery, cellar door to cellar door, restaurant to restaurant. In no time at all you’re delightfully squiffy, your shirt buttons are popping and the car boot is

Ronnie Corbett was an absolute gent, one of the nicest of men and hilarious company. He was self-deprecating, courteous and genuinely charming with an endless stream of anecdotes and a fine line in dirty limericks. He loved his wine and, although he denied it, was very knowledgeable about it. I met him about ten years ago when I interviewed him over lunch. We kept loosely in touch thereafter, enjoying the occasional very liquid lunch together, usually in the company of his just-as-funny-and-almost-as-ribald wife, Anne. I remember we got through an awful lot of Théophile Roederer champagne at Scott’s before tucking into some Yarra Yering Chardonnay from Australia’s Yarra Valley, Ronnie’s

Which is worse – to take an expensive wine to a party (“Oh, how sweet of you!”) only for the host to snaffle it away, or to take a lousy one (“Oh, um, thanks….”), and be publicly humiliated as it is placed next to the cooking sherry? Of course, in our parents’ day it was considered terribly naff, even insulting, to take a bottle, just as it was to take flowers or chocolates.  You simply presented yourself, had a nice time, wrote a fulsome letter of thanks the following morning and then sent flowers or chocolates. Nowadays, though, a bottle is de rigueur.  But what should you take?  The simple

Yet again wine drinkers get it straight in the goolies from the Chancellor. Duty on wine will rise with inflation while that on beer, cider and spirits will remain as it is, having been cut last year. We endure almost the highest duty levels in the EU (after yesterday’s announcement, duty has risen to £2.08 per 75cl bottle, up from £2.05) and when one tots up the fixed costs of a bottle of £4.99 wine – the glass, the capsule, the label, the import costs, the profit margin, the VAT, the new rate of duty and so on – the value of the actual wine inside will be no more

I’m one of those sad folk who rather likes airline food. On those rare occasions I get to turn left, of course, never when I get to turn right. Don’t be daft. And now that they are finally taking it seriously, I rather like airline wine. Food and drink might only be ninth or tenth on our list of concerns when we book our flight, but by the time we stand at the aircraft’s door it’s second only to who we’re going to sit next to (please God not beside that fat man or that bawling baby). Once we finally buckle our seatbelt, however, our only worry is what we’re

We had a fine Spectator Winemaker Dinner just before Christmas, hosted by the inimitable Richard Geoffroy, Chef de Cave at the equally inimitable Dom Pérignon. Richard brought with him ample amounts of his spectacular fizz: the 2005, the 2004 Rosé and the P2 1998. We ate and drank royally and there wasn’t a person there who wasn’t seduced by the magic of Dom Pérignon. It might not be as exclusive and as rare as Moët & Chandon (whose prestige cuvée it is) would have us believe, but my goodness it’s a belter, up there with the very, very finest. Richard insists that his champagne be served from red wine glasses.

Buying wine in a restaurant can be both an uplifting and a dispiriting experience. Uplifting because you are very likely to come across wonderful wines you just won’t find anywhere else, wines chosen specifically to suit the style and food of the chef, with a highly trained sommelier on hand to proffer genuine and useful advice. Dispiriting because the savage mark ups charged by all too many greedy restaurateurs these days can put all but the most basic of wines out of our reach. The usual formula is for the restaurant to multiply a wine’s original trade price by anything from between three to five, and the results can be

Once in a while, you stumble upon a restaurant that unexpectedly hits the spot perfectly. It’s unlikely to be pricey or smart, and very likely to be cheap and cheerful. It might be well-known to everyone except you or – much more likely – the well-kept secret of a select few. It probably doesn’t look that prepossessing. But, hey-ho, needs must. You’re hungry and in you dive. Hours later you totter outside, beaming, shirt buttons popping, having eaten one of the finest meals ever. And who wouldn’t want to tip like-minded souls the wink? So, in the spirit of sharing, here are ten unexpectedly wonderful places that I have discovered recently