Jonathan Ray is The Spectator’s drinks editor.
Phew, done it! Dry January, that is, and 31 whole days on the wretched water wagon, clinging on by my fingertips. Well, 31 whole days apart from a two-day, champagne-soaked trip to Pol Roger (about which more anon on our Spectator Wine Club website) and three days with the missus in the Loire Valley (ditto).
I don’t know about you but my cellar took a pounding over Christmas and on New Year’s Eve. Yes, yes, I know it’s only a cobwebbed cupboard under the stairs. The point is that it’s all but empty apart from a few corks, some half-drunk vermouth, a shattered decanter, a bottle of Bailey’s (where did
Our final Spectator Wine Club lunch of the year was a huge success last week. There was something of a festive, end of term feel to it and although we didn’t quite have to flick the boardroom lights it was clear that nobody was going anywhere until the last dregs of the last bottle were
Tricky time of year this, with the festivities hoving into view. Never easy for anyone, least of all those of us who suffer from Christmas Affected Doom, Depression and Despondency (CADDAD), a ghastly affliction about which I’ve written at length elsewhere so won’t bore you with now. Suffice to say that it is a dreadful
We’ve a really strong selection this week from Tanners of Shrewsbury. In fact, I was so impressed that it took a heck of a lot of swilling, swirling and spitting (well, not so much of the latter to be honest) to whittle the wines down to six. Tanners’ Robert Boutflower even put up a deliciously
So, dear old Boris has put his size 10s in it again, upsetting prosecco producers and Italians everywhere with his frank and forthright views about Brexit and the cheaper end of the Italian sparkling wine industry. Our former editor and current Foreign Secretary seemed to suggest that Italy should back his version of a Brexit
Jonathan Ray visits the oldest rum distillery in the world and gets his hands dirty blending My travels round the Caribbean wouldn’t be complete without a trip to Mount Gay, the longest-established rum brand in the world. The oldest surviving deed from the company shows that it was in operation as early as 1703 and
In Grenada, Jonathan Ray attempts to extend his life by eating plenty of dark chocolate. I’m in the House of Chocolate mini museum in St. George’s, Grenada, and Kindra, my guide, is giving me a brief chocolate master class. Not only do I learn all about its production, I stuff my face with as much
Jonathan Ray gets his head around how to create the perfect rum cocktail. I’ve lost count of the number of different rum cocktails I’ve had over the last few days hopping round the islands of the Caribbean. Each cocktail consumed purely in the interests of research of course. I’ve had some classics; some twists on
Jonathan Ray gets a taste for rum but knows when it’s time to stop. Excitement in the Caribbean concerning Prince Harry’s impending visit to the region is definitely rising. Flags and bunting are being hung left, right and centre and as I left Antigua airport this morning, en route to St. Kitts and Nevis, there
One of FromVineyardsDirect’s finest ruses has been to obtain, quietly and discreetly, small amounts of surplus production from the most celebrated châteaux in all Bordeaux (and I mean the most celebrated) and to sell the wine on under their own labels at extremely reasonable prices. These ‘declassified’ wines (as they like to call them) are
In my line of work, I’m lucky enough to go to a lot of wine tastings – press tastings that is – sometimes as many as three or four a day at the height of wine tasting season. They are what a wine-writing colleague of mine likes to call drinks parties. He lurches about from
We had some fascinating wines at the Spectator Wine School’s penultimate class of term this week. The theme was wines of the New World and our poor students had drawn the short straw in that they had me hosting the two hour session. Usually each class is hosted in turn by an expert from one
We’re with my alma mater Berry Bros & Rudd this week featuring some of their excellent own selection wines. I was quite bowled over by their quality, as indeed I was by the generosity of wine director Mark Pardoe’s discounts. In fact I strongly recommend you start your festive stockpiling right here, right now. Why
We had a fine party at 67 Pall Mall last night to launch the new edition of Simon Hoggart’s Life’s Too Short to Drink Bad Wine, a cult classic which I have had the great pleasure of revising and updating. Not that it needed much of either. All I really did was to write a
We’re not due a Wine Club offering in the magazine until next week, but so good were the wines that I tasted recently with-FromVineyardsDirect .com that we just had to include them so that readers might join in the fun. It’s an entirely French line-up, ideal for autumn. And despite the plunging pound and the
We had some fine limericks in response to our most recent Spectator Wine Club competition in which we asked readers to come up with a limerick that included one, any or all the names of our seven partner wine merchants. There are honourable mentions going to Dejeniera Pygott in Canada for managing to rhyme ‘party’
Just in case it had slipped your notice I thought I’d let you know that International Sherry Week is coming up on 7th-13th November. No, no, please hear me out! Long seen as the preserve of maiden aunts and retired vicars, sherry is on something of a roll and I, for one, blooming well love
Hennessy, the best-selling cognac of all, is giving two lucky Spectator readers the chance to win a bottle of Hennessy XO – the first ever XO Cognac, originally created in 1870 – and two tickets to the 60th running of the legendary Hennessy Gold Cup on Saturday 26th November at Newbury Racecourse. As the longest-standing
We have six real treats this week: three from Italy and three from Spain. I would have been happy with almost any of the wines that Private Cellar’s Laura Taylor put up and those that didn’t make my final six only just missed out by inches. And, in the face of a plunging pound, Laura