Wine Tasting & Events

Tom and I were delighted to attend a dinner in honour of the august ‘Academie Internationale du Vin’ in the majestic setting of Vintner’s Hall last Monday evening. We had been invited by our good friends Christian and Birgit Imbert, from Domaine de Torraccia in Corsica, making a rare but welcome visit to these shores. […]

In December 2011 a Swiss journalist called Rolf Bichsel published a creditable (if slightly sexistly titled) book called ‘Tavel – des Hommes et des Vins’ that ran to 151 pages and weighed in at 840 grams. While it is unlikely to top the best-sellers charts (with the possible exception of a small hot spot 10 […]

Twice yearly Yapp Brothers enjoys the great privilege of taking over the entire restaurant at Le Gavroche for our annual Spring and Autumn lunches. A fringe benefit of this is that approximately 2 weeks beforehand I convene with my old friend Silvano Giraldin under careful supervision from maître’ d Emmanuel Landre and chef-sommelier David Galetti […]

Winston Churchill’s predilection for ‘Pol Roger’ Champagne is well-documented not least by Pol Roger themselves who escort visitors to their H.Q. in Epernay to a room bedecked with Churchillian memorabilia lest anyone might forget about it. Less well-known is the great man’s appreciation of the wines of Château Simone which he encountered when painting landscapes […]

If one were guiding a tourist to the quintessential English village, Teffont Evias in the Nadder valley 15 miles west of Salisbury would be right up there in my UK top ten. Approached from the Salisbury direction, one descends past sheep grazing on the terraced fields, the impossibly picturesque church and you arrive among 17th […]

Les Grands Jours de Bourgogne is a 5 day wine tasting extravaganza that takes place every other year in March. It begins on a Monday morning in Chablis and descends southwards to Macon passing through swathes of France’s most illustrious viticultural real estate. Amazingly it is free for wine trade professionals to participate in and […]

We used to do this sort of thing a lot B.C. (before children). Jason would be booked in to give a wine talk and I’d accompany him for a luxurious night out. Work for him, play for me. Our lives are busier now and the headache of farming out kids with hectic schedules and needy […]

I was delighted when my old friend Ronan Sayburn (www.ronansayburn.com), the wine and spirit director of the Hotel du Vin group, invited me to present a Rhône Master Class to their full team of head sommeliers at the Hôtel du Vin in Birmingham last Sunday. Fortunately talking about Rhône wines is my stock in trade […]

You may expect that, given the title, these musings will be full of subtle enterprising mentions of Bones, Spock, Kirk and co boldly going where no man has been before, but actually, that is pretty much the extent of my “trekkie” knowledge. However, by courtesy of a wonderful offer by Westbury Communications and Inter Beaujolais, […]

After another early departure, we touched down at Nîmes Garons airport in bright sunshine and a biting Mistral. By 10 o’clock we had zipped past flamingos feeding in the Basin de Thau and we were tasting with Roland Géraud from Côtes de Thongue at the Parc des Expositions in Montpellier. Vinisud is a big and […]