Three times a year we throw open the doors to Yapp HQ and host one of our ever popular sale and tasting days. The two day Christmas Sale is always the most popular, there’s 30 wines opened for tasting and there’s the first real sniff of the festive season.

Having working in marketing for many a year I always struggle with this phrase but this year’s Sale is genuinely Bigger and Better than ever! Preparations are well underway today, the sale wines have all been selected, the tasting room is being reassembled (it’s routinely Robin Yapp’s snooker room outside of the sale days) and the Bin Ends table is already looking like the proverbial well stocked larder!

To make the occasion very near the ‘one stop shop’ for all your festive comestibles we’ve also invited some of our very good friends to be here – who are also running with the ‘try before you buy’ mantra. We’ve got Mark from the Chesil Smokery (http://www.chesilsmokery.com), Doug from Godminster Cheddar (http://www.godminster.com), Sarah from Sprout and Flower (http://www.sproutandflower.co.uk) and just to keep everyone on the straight and narrow Claude the Butler (http://www.claudthebutler.co.uk) will be selling hot coffee and cakes from their Citroen H Van.

So, don’t miss out – it’s free to rock up on either day Friday 23rd or Saturday 24th of November between 9.30am and 5pm – all the wines open for tasting will be at sale prices. All in all this is an unmissable 2 days for food and wine lovers!

If you’ve not been to one of our wine tasting events before, have a look at this video, filmed at our Summer Sale in 2012:

See you there!

Christmas Sale and Tasting
Friday 23rd & Saturday 24th November, Yapp Brothers, Water Street, Mere, Wiltshire BA12 6DY
9.30am-5.00pm

It’s been a while since I worked in tertiary education and even longer since I suggested calling the 3 newly formed Faculties at the City of Bath College Freeman, Hardy and Willis – but for some reason we’re all stuck with the idea that good things come in threes.

The Yapp staff have casually suggested -

• Three Musketeers – Aramis, Porthos, D’Artagnan.
• Three Colours Trilogy – Krzysztof Kieslowski’s films
• Three Chipmunks – Alvin, Simon and Theodore
• Three Barleycorns in an Inch
• Three wine types – Red, white and rose

However, this brief blog is about one of the three Yapp Sale and Tastings in Mere, the others being the Bin Ends sale in April and our Christmas sale on the last weekend in November.

The two day Summer Sale is always popular, there’s 30 wines opened for tasting and it’s the sale where we host some of our friends to make it a rather cordial and gastronomic event.

Claude the Butler (http://www.claudthebutler.co.uk ), Godminster Organic Cheddar (http://www.godminster.com/) and Olives Et Al (http://www.olivesetal.co.uk/) will set up shop with us for a couple of days – so customers can try before they buy and stock up on delicious provisions for the summer months – and of course get the perfect wine to match!

Preparations are already underway and our intrepid shop manager Mei is selecting the sale wines this week – he is, as always, choosing wines that suit the season’s food but are also showing well in their current vintages.

So, don’t miss this great opportunity – it’s free to rock up on either day Friday 22nd or Saturday 23rd June between 9.30am and 5pm – there’s 30 wines to taste, all of which will be at sale prices. On top, there’s our usual collection discount – £10 off any straight case of 12 bottles from the Yapp list that don’t feature in the sale.

This has to be the best chance you’ll get to have fun and stock up for Summer – See you there!

Summer Wine Tasting and Sale
Friday 22nd and Saturday 23rd June, Yapp Brothers, Water Street, Mere, Wiltshire BA12 6DY
9.30am to 5.00pm.

PS: If you can’t make it to Yapp HQ this weekend you can always stock up online here!

(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 Wines’ 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!

Being an inveterate fan of Citroën’s marvellous ‘cube utile’, or H-van, as well as a discerning coffee consumer I was chuffed to be invited to the launch of  ‘Claud the Butler’(www.claudthebutler.co.uk) in my home town of Frome last weekend. Claud is the brainchild of Lee and Helen who are the next door neighbours of my friend the artist Chris Bucklow (www.chrisbucklow.com) and his family who offered up their well-appointed riverside garden for the occasion.

Claud has been lovingly kitted out to dispense coffee and cakes and (as my sons appreciated) hot chocolate. Lee and Helen designed Claud’s distinctive livery and elegant interior and he had a mechanical overhaul by H-van specialists ‘Le Cube Utile’ (www.hvan.co.uk) who also worked on a van for Rapha (www.rapha.co.uk) purveyors of the finest cycling apparel (and imbibers of Yapp wines – I digress).

I wasn’t disappointed. The sun shone. The coffee and cakes were delicious. Lee and Helen buttled busily and Claud looked terrific. He is a late model, made in 1980, so a year younger than our 1979 version. Apparently ’79 was the last year H-vans were made commercially, other than for the Army so the chances are that Claud did his Service Nationale – although I am now bound to receive an e-mail from an aficionado who knows otherwise.

Claud and Co. are going to be visiting cycling events, parties and festivals in the near future and we have managed to persuade them to come to our Bin End Wines sale next Saturday 26th March so do come and check him out. Wine, coffee, cake and tyre-kicking of the first order – it has the makings of a great day out!