Wine Knowledge

On the eve of Bunch Wines Group Press tasting, all six members traditionally enjoy a dinner that also serves as an informal AGM. This year the chosen venue was the excellent Medlar restaurant on the New Kings Road. Unfortunately, Medlar (a) isn't close to a tube station, (b) it was raining heavily and (c) Chelsea […]

With the recent bicentennial of the battle of Waterloo a lot of people have been banging on about Napoleon Bonaparte being a tactical genius who never lost a battle to a weaker force which is all very well but hardly anyone touches upon the more interesting topic of what he liked to drink.     […]

It is a sad fact that most of the wine served and consumed in the UK is not drunk at its optimum temperature. We tend to drink our white and rosé wines too cold and our red wines too warm. Pubs and bars are complicit in the case of over-chilling as the colder a wine […]

  In response to a barrage of queries from an American wine journalist I have been rifling through our cellars, my old note books and photograph archives as well as grilling my father for arcane facts about the Champet family's vine holdings and our trading history with them. We first shipped wines from Emile Champet […]

Ullage is a great old British word referring to the ‘amount a vessel lacks in fullness’ or to put it another way how much is missing. In wine terms there should always be a degree of intentional and expected ullage as bottles are never completely filled. Even a newly-bottled wine should have a gap of […]

As etymologists love to point out 'flotsam' is material that is found floating at sea whilst 'jetsam' is stuff that is jettisoned off boats and gets washed up on shore. Those distinctions are immaterial here as I deploy them collectively and metaphorically to describe the oddments that have found their way into my cellar during […]

There is much excitement here at Yapp H.Q. in Mere as our keenly-anticipated, new own label bottlings have just arrived. One could argue that we have been slow off the mark here but, in mitigation, we do have a long and proud history of commissioning some great bespoke labels such as our magnificent Muscadet label […]

I was hosting a tasting for WSET diploma students last week and an inquisitive attendee from Korea asked me what the embossed crossed keys on the bottle of 2011 Châteaunueuf-du-Pape from Le Vieux Donjon symbolised. I was able to elucidate with a degree of professionalism that Avignon-based Clement V had been installed as the first […]

Bright eyed and bushy tailed after a good night’s kip we were now ready for the Northern part of our Rhône foray. First stop was a visit to long-standing Yapp supplier and Rhône ‘royalty’ Jean-Louis & Erin Chave. On the way we dropped into the 4 hectare Clos Florentin vineyard which is where the Chave’s […]

  By the time we arrived in Châteauneuf-du-Pape on Monday, morning mists were clearing to reveal a vista of vines in golden Autumn sunshine. Our first port of call was at Le Vieux Donjon where a smiling Claire Michel told us she was relieved to have completed the complicated 2014 harvest. Hot on the heels […]