Another pre-dawn awakening as we shuttled up a fog-bound Autoroute de Soleil to make our first appointment in Côte Rôtie at 10.00am. We found gregarious patron Joel Champet talking up the merits of the 2010 vintage as well as the prospects of ‘Les Bleues’ in this weekend’s Rugby World Cup Final: "they have nothing to […]

(This blog is re-published from the website of our friends Claud The Butler) There is a little corner of Wiltshire that will be forever France... Claud is beside himself with excitement at the prospect of a whole day spent in the Yapp Brother’s yard in Mere alongside his buddy, the Yapp blue Citroen H delivery […]

It’s our final day in the Rhône valley and we are beginning to flag a little as we wend our way out of Orange once again at 8.30am. We’ve long since given up trying to convince friends and family that tasting wine is an arduous task, but you can have too much of a good thing. We […]

Back in March we finally fulfilled a long-held ambition, to order a portion of Quenelle de Brochet au Salpicon de Homard, at Condrieu’s legendary Beau Rivage restaurant, right beside the Rhône in the middle of the town. This is not a venture for the faint-hearted (at 38 euros as a starter) especially if it is […]

On Day 2 of our Rhône trip, we schlepped north to Côte-Rôtie for a protracted barrel tasting with our old chum Patrick Jasmin. Harvesting here was a tough job in 2008 and Patrick had to pick his grapes in 3 different stages to obtain optimum ripeness. An early sampling of Patrick’s 2008 revealed a lightish, […]