At Yapp Brothers we are blessed with a spacious boardroom which is used for many meetings but few of them are as convivial as last night's dinner for Accenture and Vodafone Business Intelligence. Our old friend Clive Greenhalgh, patron of the Ambassador restaurant, cajoled us into opening our cellars after hours while he set up […]

Somewhat to our chagrin it is Bordeaux that sets the public perception of whether a vintage is good, bad or indifferent. This isn't a major problem in vintages like 1990 or 2005, which were excellent in Bordeaux and most of the rest of France but in can be frustrating in years that weren't so good […]

If you should find yourselves in the midst of the Médoc, in the village of Lamarque, waiting for a ferry to cross the Gironde to Blaye you could do worse than while away an hour or two on the terrace of L'Escale - a refreshingly basic restaurant that is the best place to dine hereabouts. […]

Every September on the eve of our annual press tasting the principals of the Bunch [www.bunchwines.co.uk] gather to break bread, discuss topics of mutual interest, such as the Ashes, summer holiday destinations and potential new members, and sample some interesting wines. We have been convening thus for many years now so this is a less […]

My father-in-law is the proud owner of a rural retreat in the wilds of Périgord and so most summers, from a combination of financial, social and gastronomic incentives, we end up spending a week or two lost in La France Profonde far from the digital distractions of the Modern Age. Family tradition has it that […]

On a recent holiday to the United States, I had the opportunity to visit the Napa Valley where wine has been produced, in what many consider as America's premium wine country, for over 150 years. The first commercial winery in Napa was established in 1861. An early boom and growth in vineyards was curtailed with […]

If the assembled wine-tasters from Baltimore-based asset management company, T Rowe Price, would rather have been in the park on the finest summer evening this year, they weren't letting on.  Instead, shoe-horned into an upstairs room in this traditional City boozer, they proved to be a model audience and even threw in some tricky questions […]

There is a widely held belief that while the red wines of the Northern Rhône will age almost indefinitely the reds of the South don't make old bones. This is a bit of a generalisation and, of course, is rather vintage dependent but it is true that by and large the Syrahs of the Northern […]

A couple of weeks ago, Tom and I convened for an informal bring-a-bottle (actually bottles) lunch at Andrew Edmunds' eponymous restaurant on Lexington Street. While waiting for our guest, Stephen Browett, of fine wine brokers Farr Vintners, we toyed with a bottle of white Corsican vermentino from Domaine Saparale in the 2008 vintage. This is […]

9.00am on Monday 20th July and I found myself sweeping through the most northerly outpost of the named Côtes du Rhône Villages, Rousset-les-Vignes. Eighteen villages are entitled to add their 'handle' to the Côtes du Rhône Villages moniker, marking them out as superior to generic Côtes du Rhône. As I swept past gnarled vines and lavender fields I […]