When friends and relations celebrate birthdays and anniversaries I often amuse myself by investigating the vintage in question and finding out what type of wine, if any, it was good for. If the research is fruitful you can then have more fun trying to source a bottle from that year as a topical gift. The first part of this task is made relatively easy by my indispensable “Pocket Guide to Wine Vintages” by Michael Broadbent. The second part is budget dependent and normally involves calls to specialist merchants or a thorough browse on the internet: www.wine-searcher.com is a useful and user-friendly web-site for locating rare bottles.

Some people, like my godson (1990 great for just about everything), sister-in-law (1970 a classic Claret vintage) and elder son (1998 terrific in the Rhône, especially the South) have the sense to be born in indisputably good years where decent bottles are readily available albeit at a price. Others, like myself, (1967 widely indifferent) are less lucky but there is nearly always something of merit somewhere, provided one is prepared to delve and diversify. In my own instance, although ’67 was a so-so vintage in Bordeaux, the sweet wines of Sauternes were uncommonly good. The astronomical sum I paid for a half-bottle (still undrunk) of the peerless Château d’Yquem 1967 is still a source of bitter argument in the Yapp household!

If one is unlucky enough to be born in a truly dire vintage – 1984 is the most recent real stinker (being bad for Bordeaux, Rhône, Burgundy, Champagne, Port, Italy, California and just about everything else with the possible exception of Australia) – then an ability to think laterally is useful. Anyone celebrating a fiftieth birthday this year will have to dig deep to buy any 1961 Claret as it was one of the best vintages of the 20th Century. Two bottles from the prolific (and underrated) 1986 vintage, totalling 50 years together, might make for a more affordable alternative.

If you’re really stuck, as those celebrating eighteenth birthday’s this year might be (1993 I’m afraid), spirits such as malt whisky or Armagnac often age well, while being less vintage sensitive. Alternatively one can buy Tawny Ports, brandies and even rums that have been aged 10, 15 or 20+ years in barrel but don’t actually state a year of production. For the truly aged, fortified wines like Port and Madeira are more likely to retain some youthful vigour in the long-term.

A few years ago I was privileged to meet Anthony Barton of Château Léoville-Barton in Saint Julien, a wine-making hero of mine. We tasted through several recent vintages and he told me he was born in 1930, a notoriously poor year in Bordeaux – of which Michael Broadbent says simply: “Bad weather, bad times, bad wines”! He then explained to me with a mischievous twinkle that he always chooses to celebrate with the vintage of his conception – 1929 was a very good year.

As a self confessed oenophile and melomane this time of year throws many a swerve ball – the wine that I both know and love is flying out of the doors here at Yapp HQ and the staples that I habitually imbibe during the year are getting thin on the ground or await re-stocking from France.

Shops do unusual things at this time of year, for some reason best known to the outlets, they feel a need to play, on rotation, Christmas tunes that no one really seems to audit – I used to live in the middle of Bath and a ‘bad’ busker outside with a one song repertoire would wear equally thin on the ground by 10.00am on a Saturday. I always thought variety was supposed to be the spice of life? I do know that Slade wrote their Christmas Song to be overly cheering (and noisy) in 1973 as an antidote to power cuts and the 3 day week – but we’re still playing it 38 years later and that just can’t be good for your musical health.

Some swerve balls however are great and unexpected, I saw my son in his Primary School nativity play last week dressed as a sheep singing ‘rock around the flock’ and there’s always some good news if you look for it – we’ve still got good stocks of the delicious Vacqueyras: Cuvée Spéciale 2003 and the Pogues wrote a Fairytale of New York with the late and great Kirsty MacColl – so that’ll be enough to get me through to the New Year – well that and a few bottles of Yapp Champagne and Bellet: Domaine de la Source Rouge 2006.

And if variety is the spice of life – I may well be taking home our Christmas variety pack (the infamous Degustation Dozen) to see me through to new year.. as anyone who has worked at a Wine Merchant in December will know what it’s like – so much so we’ve booked our Christmas meal and night out – for 21st January 2012!

PS Our shop here in Mere is very festive, has some great wines open to taste, is open 9-6pm this week (even on Christmas Eve) – and there’s no playing of “That’s what I call Christmas 42” or whatever it may be called this year!

I’ve always loved songs where the narrative of the lyric is the reverse of the tune that carries it – I have far too many favourites to name check here (but clearly there’s a nod here to the Morrissey/ Marr song writing partnership of the 1980s) but there are times when things that shouldn’t work together just do.

So, here I am again, another birthday past and oddly this blog stems from the drive to work on my birthday where the iPhone threw out at random a gem of a song from my past (Sugar, “If I can’t change your mind” – possibly the perfect combination of down turned lyrics and a guitar part that is so enlivening that you can’t help but find your spirits lifted).

A takeaway curry appears to have become the de-facto birthday meal (friends & family, with no need to cook on a school night, and the baby sitters come to you) and friends have now (quite correctly) started to look forward to some Yapp wines matched to their meal. I played it fairly safely and had a chilled bottle of Alsace: Gewürztraminer 2007 to go with the various fair we picked up from the “Sultan” in Melksham. My Dad stuck to beer for the duration but the wine with its lychee aromas, complex palate with subtle spicy undertones worked well with the spicy dishes on the table.

But this led to a discussion about more unusual matches we’d hit on in the past. So, can you have red wine with fish? I think the answer is yes – if you pick a light red (from the Loire or a gamay) that you pair with a strong flavoured fish – in the past I have paired Gamay de l’Ardèche 2010 with a mackerel starter and (I think) got away with it – on taste as well as the small ‘shock value’ from my guests – red with fish?!
[Ed. – An erroneously ordered Chianti is precisely how, in ‘From Russia With Love’, James Bond discovers that Donald 'Red' Grant is a SPECTRE agent – no gentleman would have red wine with fish!]

So, as with many things in life, you don’t know until you try it – every now and then it’s good fun to shake it up a bit and just see what happens. Just think ahead and pick combinations that don’t compete too much with each other – look at the ‘weight’ of the food and wine match, then decide if you’ll try and complement or contrast the flavours of the dish. There’s no real right or wrong here – you may too stumble upon a pairing that in principal shouldn’t work but does – it’s your meal after all.

However, there is no denying that, as with musical classic matches (Strummer/ Jones), you’d have to go an awful long way and then some to beat some chilled Jurançon Moelleux: Domaine Bellegarde 2008 with a good chunk of Roquefort!

As a native of Somerset and someone whose working life is preoccupied with the origin and provenance of comestibles I am often struck by what a raw deal Cheddar cheese gets in terms of geographical protectionism. Proper Cheddar is one of this sceptred isle’s most outstanding products and yet we happily let outrageous interlopers, making vastly inferior cheese, sully its good name. Go into practically any supermarket and you will find ‘Cheddar’ from all manner of places, including Canada for crying out loud, that is not worthy of the title and ought not be allowed to use it. If we started to claim to make ‘Parmesan’ we would be laughed out of the EU so we jolly well ought to look after own.

Good cheddar is really the King of cheeses, a claim which is supported by the evidence that even the French, who are understandably proud of their own culinary heritage, concede that it is something we should celebrate. I am regularly visited by discerning French wine makers who always appreciate being served mature, tasty cheddar and often insist on taking some back home. Keen’s (from Wincanton), Godminster (Bruton) and Montgomery’s (North Cadbury) are 3 of the finest that should be easy to source through any reputable cheesemonger, such as my local, Sagebury Cheese, in Frome (www.sageburyfinefoods.co.uk).

During a wine tasting trip to Australia last year I was served some Montgomery’s in Cutler & Co in Melbourne (www.cutlerandco.com.au), which was delicious with a bottle of Dan Buckle’s Mount Langi Ghiran Shiraz. That serving may have had maximum ‘food miles’ but it does show that fine cheddar enjoys a healthy international reputation. It also touches on the thorny question on what wine one should drink with cheese which is what, after a rather rambling prelude, I was intending to write about. Personally, I think light and fruity red wines like Beaujolais or Saumur Champigny go well with creamy soft cheeses such as brie and more mature, full-bodied wines are a better option with hard, stronger tasting cheeses. Blue cheeses have a natural affinity for sweet wines and there can be few better combinations than a salty Roquefort paired with an intensely sweet Jurançon or Monbazillac.

The distinguished wine journalist Michael Broadbent, who has been writing about wine for over 50 years, dislikes drinking any red wine with cheese and asserts that palate-cleansing sweet white wines, like Chenin Blancs from the Loire, are always a better bet. The Financial Times wine guru, Jancis Robinson, (www.jancisrobinson.com) is more open-minded on the subject and concedes that a robust red with a bit of bottle-age can be a fine accompaniment to a hard cheese. We met up recently to taste some wines for a gala dinner being held at her alma mater St Anne’s college Oxford and Jancis selected a Bandol: Mas de la Rouvière 2004 to accompany the cheese. This is a bold, herb-scented, briary Provençal red, made from the Mourvèdre grape, that has a wealth of dark, sun-kissed fruit over rugged tannins.

Well if it’s good enough for Jancis and the friends of her youth it’s good enough for me. This weekend I shall procure some vrai Somerset Cheddar a bottle of the aforementioned Bandol and some rough oatcakes and thoroughly road-test the combination.

(This piece by Jason Yapp first appeared in Country Calling – www.countrycalling.co.uk)

Summer (assuming, of course, we actually get a Summer) is a time for carefree and irreverent imbibing when we can quaff pretty, coral-coloured rosés and aromatic, young Sauvignons en plein air. Salads and picnic foods cry out for simple, supple wines. Nobody wants to drink anything too demanding while relaxing in a deckchair – clean un-oaked white wines and lightly-chilled reds are the order of the day. However, as Autumn approaches and temperatures cool, ones’ taste buds turn to weightier offerings. Bring on the dense, brooding reds and rich, complex whites that make for fulfilling fireside drinking.

One of nature’s compensations for Summer’s end is the wealth of exciting seasonal foodstuffs that become available. Game alone is a reason for wine-lovers to be cheerful as it is the perfect vehicle for bold, muscular, tannic, chest-thumping reds such as Cornas, Irouléguy and Madiran. Just the contemplation of roast pheasant or jugged venison accompanied by a glass of opaque, dark wine with beaded bubbles winking at the brim can have me longing for the first frosts, the scent of wood-smoke and the inimitable sense of well-being imbued by hunkering down beside your own hearth.

Wild mushrooms are another cause for celebration (not to mention ceps and truffles) although the explosion in the popularity of foraging means that competition can be stiff. Apparently demand for wild provender from restaurants is such that gangs of professional fungi finders are fighting turf wars in the New Forest.

There is something about the earthy, elemental qualities of uncultivated mushrooms that marries particularly harmoniously with the tertiary, ‘forest floor’ (the French sous-bois sounds more inviting – if pretentious) scents and flavours of a ‘meaty’ red wine that is beginning to benefit from bottle-age. 80% of wine sold in the U.K. is consumed within 24 hours of purchase, which a depressing statistic as even quite humble wines like Côtes du Rhône Villages and Petit Châteaux Bordeaux can benefit enormously from being cellared for a year or two. As a wine ages its tannins soften and sweeten and a more complex spectrum of tastes evolves. Savvy wine-buyers should be purchasing wines for drinking next Winter or thereafter right now.

Another culinary delight heralded by the onset of Autumn is the availability of the milk-rich mountain cheeses the king of which is Vacherin Mont d’Or, which is traditionally wrapped in spruce bark and can be baked and served warm as a ready-made fondue. Opinions vary as to what wine should accompany this delicacy but an intense and slightly-oxidative Vin Jaune from the Jura or a rich and spicy Gewürztraminer from Alsace would both feature on my short list.

For me the drink that really encapsulates the turning of the seasons and exudes mellow fruitfulness like no other is Pineau de Charentes – a heady blend of Cognac and grape juice that can be sipped chilled as an aperitif or enjoyed at ambient temperature as a decadent bonne bouche. The Louis Roederer wine columnist of the year Victoria Moore fell for our Reserve bottling from Domaine Gardrat: “This one is stunning. It feels like a caress and when you take a sip is so good that you stop talking. It tastes gloriously mellow, of plump, alcohol-soaked raisins, of prunes, walnuts and the smell of freshly ground coffee, of preparing for Christmas but also of late summer sun.” It is not cheap at £19.25 per bottle but, as with most things in life, you get what you pay for.

(This article by Jason Yapp first appeared in Country Calling).

At a recent family gathering (my nephews 3rd birthday to be precise) there was thankfully a good selection of Yapp wine doing the rounds as well as more child friendly fair, my Aunty Shirley mentioned that she liked a glass of wine with her meal but didn’t always fancy broaching a full bottle.

This started the discussion about the merits of the half bottle of wine (I’ve always enjoyed the concept of the Magnum but a half bottle?) after all, purists will be quick to point out that finer wines age best in full-size bottles or (better still) magnums. They are right – as far as I remember from WSET study, the lower ratio of wine to air in the bottle encourages a slow maturation that benefits the wine. But there are always two sides to every story – it’s also a great way to try fine wines ‘early’ as the wine matures quicker in half bottles – I was warming to the concept more.

Then, I was thinking about mid-week ‘school nights’ – a half bottle gives 3 glasses and I could run a white with the starter and a red with the main – that would keep both adults at home happy for the night – while the 2 fans of CBBC (aka my children) slept upstairs – we’d not let any wine go to waste and we’d have the opportunity to sample different wines over the evening.

However, the most convincing argument for the half bottle was made by Mei, our long standing Shop Manager – “Ah, the half bottle – it comes into it’s own when you  want just a bit more – so being mindful of the advice at  http://www.drinkaware.co.uk – I think I’ve found a reason to add some halves to my home selection.

Like the small variety packs of breakfast cereal I loved as a child there is something about a favourite wine in a small perfectly formed version of it’s traditional format. Very few merchants these days carry a decent stock of half bottles – so as one of the few that continues to promote this underrated format why not give our current Helpful Halves a try?