Yapp Travel

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

A few years ago I was on a Winter wine-buying trip with 3 colleagues (2 male and 1 female) and completely overlooked the significance of the 14th February when booking our hotel rooms in Sanary-sur-Mer. The receptionist had diligently asked me if I would like to reserve a table in the hotel’s restaurant and I […]

We left chilly and snowy England at the crack of dawn on Monday by EuroStar to find ourselves in chillier and snowier France. The frosty weather and frosty economy have undoubtedly thinned visitor numbers at the annual Salon des Vins de Loire, but it is still one of France’s best regional wine fairs with a […]

I inherited from my father a passionate interest in wine and an almost complete disregard for any sort of competitive team sports. We’ve enjoyed many fine bottles together but have never bonded on the terraces. Needless to say my own sons are avid football fans and in the absence of any paternal motivation have become […]

The end, I hope, will be celebrating in the spa town of Bagnères-de-Luchon on Saturday 14th July, Bastille Day. However, the substantial Ying for that Yang is that I aim to have cycled 197km over the Pyrenees’ finest climbs after leaving Pau that morning. Along with several pals and around 7,000 other riders, I have […]

Regrettably I find myself increasingly shocked at the cost of modern living particularly when entertaining my children. You practically have to take out a mortgage to go to the cinema these days never mind 10 pin bowling or a restaurant. My sons aged 13 and 10 will only tolerate galleries and museums in small doses […]

December is a particularly hectic time for wine merchants, so much so that at Yapp Brothers we (self) impose a ban on taking holidays until we’ve closed the doors on echoing cellars on Christmas Eve. So don’t tell my colleagues, but I managed to slip away to Barcelona for a long weekend to attend a […]

It is not often that I embark on a 500 mile round trip to visit a single hostelry but such was my anticipation at the reopening of this lavishly refurbished and lovingly revived inn that I was prepared to schlep all the way from south-west Wiltshire to northern Norfolk last week. The Gunton Arms (www.theguntonarms.co.uk) […]