Lifestyle

This Sunday - 25th January - is Burns Night, or more accurately Burns Supper, or even more accurately Burns Nicht. True followers will no doubt toast the poet with whisky, but we would (naturellement) suggest a robust red like the Rasteau Côtes du Rhône Villages: Saint Gayan 2011.     We have before produced a […]

In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter Long ago. Christina Georgina Rossetti’s 19th century romantic verse still sends a shiver through my bones. Yet one more reason why January seems the strangest […]

For many of us, especially those in the wine trade, January is a contemplative month of metaphorical and hopefully physical belt-tightening. The hefty outlay of Christmas shopping comes home to roost and the bathroom scales provide testament to days of festive indulgence. It is a time to take stock and put ones house in order […]

The Yapp team spend a great deal of time discussing food and wine combinations with our discerning clientele, particularly in the run up to Christmas, so we thought we would share a few of our own plans for the forthcoming festivities. Christmas Eve Bianca who is heading off to join friends and family in her […]

Back in the olden days before Facebook and YouTube, when we could still coerce our progeny into communal craftwork, we decided to resist the commercialisation of Christmas and create an in-house Christmas card. What began as a bit of a lark has now become a labour of love and as the festive season looms we […]

December is a bit of a crunch time here at Yapp Brothers so I plan to do all of my shopping as locally as possible or on-line. The secret of a stress free festive season lies in prior planning so here is my personal guide to items I recommend as gifts to others or (even […]

With our american cousins celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas just around the corner, we thought it was the perfect time to punt some ideas on wine matches with turkey.     For roast turkey we would suggest weighty whites, such as Brézème or light to medium-bodied reds – Fred Filliatreau's old-vine Saumur-Champigny springs to mind. For […]

Yapp HQ does have a penchant for classic modes of transport and we are proud of our own fleet of cars and vans that wouldn’t look entirely out of place in the Wacky Races. So when we had a call earlier this week asking if we’d be a pit stop for a classic car club […]

My official party line is that personalised car number plates are inherently naff and it is far better to have a cool car such as the 1960s Aston Martin DB5, immortalised by James Bond in Goldfinger, that a Yapp Brothers customer parked in our courtyard the other day and I couldn’t resist posing alongside, with […]

Like many in the wine trade, I’ve been following the Rudy Kurniawan case for some time with interest. For any reader not aware, on 4th August, in a Californian court, Rudy Kurniawan (aka ‘Dr Conti’, in reference to DRC) was sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison and ordered to pay $20m in restitution […]