Three times a year we throw open the doors to Yapp HQ and host one of our ever-popular sale and wine tastings. These are not only fixed in the Yapp Calendar but also that of many of our customers.

My first Yapp Christmas Sale was a few years ago now but I remember it well. On a typically frosty November morning we opened the doors to the tasting room at 9.30am on the Friday and we’d already got a queue on the go. The second couple in (there early for the best picks from the Bin Ends table) told me they’d left Northumbria at 4.30am that day to be here first – it was the start of their Christmas preparations and was a fixed fixture in their calendar.

The two day Christmas Sale is always the most popular, there’s 30 wines opened for tasting to ‘try before you buy’ and there’s the first real buzz of Christmas on the horizon. In the tasting room you’ll overhear great debate about which of the wines will go best with the meal and of course the big love/hate debate on Christmas Pudding (personally, just for the record, I’m a fan – and always pair it with Domaine la Tour Vieille: Banyuls Réserva).

Over the years we’ve added new things to the festive mix – this year we’ll again be hosting our good friends Claud the Butler (http://www.claudthebutler.co.uk) who will be offering hot coffee and cakes from their citroen H-Van, often to the ‘other halves’ that have finished their adventures in the tasting room and are waiting for friends to reappear.

Aside from delicious wines to tickle the taste buds we’ll have a great range of wine-related gifts and gizmos available, such as a great case of Yapp Wines paired with nuts and olives from Olives Et Al (http://www.yapp.co.uk/Current-wine-offers/mixed-cases/olives-et-al-offer-case/), some top notch cheddar cheese and wine wooden gift boxes from Godminster Organic Cheddar (http://www.godminster.com/), and what we’ve always referred to a ‘Christmas in a Bottle’ – the perennially popular Kingston Black Apple Aperitif.

I’m still fascinated by the Eau de Vie de Poire William Carafe with pear inside – a great gift for someone with a curious mind!

So, don’t miss out – it’s free to rock up on either day Friday 25th or Saturday 26th November between 9.30am and 5pm – there’s 30 wines to taste, all of which will be at sale prices. On top, there’s £10 off any straight case of 12 bottles not in the sale, our Bin Ends table, tasting sheets and lots of keen Yapp staff on hand to offer friendly advice and recommendations. It has to be the best chance you’ll get to have fun and stock up for the festive season.

See you there!

Christmas Sale and Tasting
Friday 25th & Saturday 26th November, Yapp Brothers, Water Street, Mere, Wiltshire BA12 6DY
9.30am-5.00pm

(This blog is re-published from the website of our friends Claud The Butler – www.claudthebutler.co.uk)

There is a little corner of Wiltshire that will be forever France…

Claud is beside himself with excitement at the prospect of a whole day spent in the Yapp Brother’s yard in Mere alongside his buddy, the Yapp blue Citroen H delivery van and his close cousin, the very distinguished Citroen ‘Traction Avant’. And we’re feeling the excitement too as we set up in the courtyard of this award-winning and deliciously ‘under-the-radar’ wine merchants and prepare for a day serving coffee and cake to discerning oenophiles. The eagerly awaited Yapp Brothers ‘Bin End Sale’ is underway, early risers make their way across the courtyard to the ‘tasting’ room, choices are made. No wonder coffee seemed like a good idea.

Jason Yapp is busy co-ordinating a small, dedicated band of staff, but finds time to drop by to shoot the breeze and fill us in on a little of the history of the place. The fountain full of aquamarine water to the right of Claud is a replica of the original at Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the Rhône, and the grotto to his left is a hang-over from brewery days. Beer was kept cool in the grotto – until the family of brewers fell under the influence of the Temperance movement and turned their attentions to skimmed milk production. Jason’s father, Yapp père, has stopped by for coffee too, and sits in the morning sunshine in Claud’s café as if it were a regular feature of his Saturday mornings. Jason shows us black and white photo boards of the dilapidated state of the buildings when his father first bought them, way back in the late sixties. Today they nestle side-by-side, resplendent in the colours of Southern France, all blues, turquoises and yellows. Hard to imagine we’re in Wiltshire on the warmest day of the year so far.

Today ‘Team Claud’ is joined by guest member, George, taking time out from his high-flying London legal career to don an apron and help his mum with her new venture. It’s a family affair. The smell of coffee beans fills the air and visitors to Claud delicately negotiate their way through a menu of lattes, espressos, cappuccinos and flat whites. Together with side orders of home-made cake, and, for that true taste of ‘la belle france’, little madeleines fresh from our Willow Vale oven. Tom ‘Yapp’ takes a break to talk cycling with Lee. Turns out they had both climbed Mont Ventoux in the ferocious heat of Le Tour d’Etape, an amateur stage of the Tour de France, two years back.

Customers sit in the spring sunshine, tasting notes in hand, before returning to the inner sanctum that is Yapp Brother’s tasting room. I have my own ‘sale list’ to hand and take the opportunity to conduct a random ‘straw poll’ of what is drinking well today. An Alsace: Pinot Blanc 2005 comes in for special mention, and a heady rose, Bellet: Domaine de la Source Rosé 2009, is talked about with something approaching reverence. A ‘reds’ man who sounded authoritative spoke of the intense aroma of the Saint Joseph:Domaine Georges Vernay 2008 and in hushed tones of the wonders of Cornas: Cuvee Renaissance 2007. Unscientific, maybe, but those are my tips for the day, and I offer them purely on the basis of being an enthusiastic amateur with an ear to the ground.

As the sun sets over the fountain the last of the bin-enders stagger out of the Yapp Brother’s cellars clutching boxes of fine wines and head for home. We send out a last-minute plate of brownies to staff and are delighted when Tom returns the compliment with an elegant glass of deep red dessert wine that verges on ambrosial. ‘It goes with chocolate,’ he explains. Oh yes it does…

I decide that French wine, sunshine, good company, coffee and cake make for a very fine day out indeed. A votre santé!