Lifestyle

Having moved out to the Styx over ten years ago, we’re only now just starting to get used to living in a rural community. Easy access to cash points, music venues, restaurants and somewhere to walk to get the Sunday papers are all things from a past life, but rural living does throw up decent […]

I spent last Saturday evening holed up in room 34 of the Cardiff M4 Travelodge with several other grown men dressed in lycra. Now, I acknowledge that for some readers this might be a fairly run-of the-mill night out, but it was a first for me. We had headed West for an early start on […]

With another weekend of pomp, pageantry and partying fast approaching all of the team here at Yapp Brothers are looking forward to a few days relaxation with family and friends. As we spend much of our time dispensing advice on wine and food combinations we thought it only just that we reported what drinks some […]

Every now and then it’s fun to mix things up a little, and on my drive to work today one of the numerous reminders pinged up on the iPhone – being such an all-encompassing device the reminder really could be anything from a new local gig being flagged (as an aside, I’d strongly recommend the […]

Back in April we set a fiendish quiz based on the Tour de France bike race mixed with a bit of local wine knowledge - we had a first prize of a rather nice cycling jersey, thanks to our friends over at Rapha, and we offered two runners up prizes of a bottle of Yapp […]

Some people are enraged by florid taste descriptions, but the wine business would be a pretty soulless place without gooseberries, saddle leather and wet dogs. There has been quite a bit of comment in the press recently resulting from research undertaken by a Professor John Hayes at Pennsylvania State University's Sensory Evaluation Centre that concluded […]

My date with destiny in the Pyrenees approaches faster than I would like. Three months into proper training for the Etape 2012 (see January blog) and I have covered 700 training miles on the bike (I had hoped to have 1,000 miles under the belt by Easter). Speaking of the belt, while I am getting […]

I had great fun composing the montage for this year’s list cover in homage to my Dad, Robin Yapp, loosely inspired by classic 1970s album covers such as (the inside sleeve) of Eric Clapton’s Slowhand and the Rolling Stone’s seminal Exile on Main Street. Appropriately I took the shot on the inside sill of Robin’s […]

I’ve always enjoyed St Patricks night. Not for any particular religious belief but more for the party that now goes alongside – I’ve seen many a great band over a sea of Guinness – Stiff Little Fingers still tour around the Saint's day, I’ve seen the Pogues and The Men They Couldn’t Hang in various […]

Long before I met my wife she belonged to a Wine Club in Cardiff, not that I think really this was for genuine oenophiles but more of a social club where the cheese got as much attention as the wine. It was though by all accounts great fun and had a loyal following. At one […]