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 […]

Our recent archive release of older vintages from the Rhône has been a spectacular hit, particularly with restaurants looking to get exciting, great value wines on their list for the Autumn. Trade magazine 'Drinks Business' reported as follows:   "According to Yapp's Bianca Ford, there has been keen interest from the on-trade. 'I think these […]

I’ve never been sure why I was blessed (or is that cursed?) with a need to see patterns in everything. Clearly sometimes they just don’t exist but this fact sadly doesn’t stop me from looking. One of my favourite paintings (Jackson Pollock, Blue Poles 1952) intrigues every time I see it – there’s patterns aplenty […]

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 […]

Fortified by a superb dinner at Guy Julien’s truffle-orientated restaurant ‘Le Beaugravière’ in Montdragon (which has a legendary Rhône wine list) we arrived in Châteauneuf-du-Pape on Wednesday morning greeted by a blue sky and southern sunshine. At Le Vieux Donjon Marie-José Michel and her daughter Claire gave us a warm welcome and the happy news […]

(Continuing the voyage down the Rhône valley this week, to catch up with vigneron friends and get an insight into the Rhône 2009 vintage). Domaine Jean-Louis Chave is a key reference point for the entire Rhône valley, and securing an audience with Jean-Louis himself is never easy. Space precludes going into too much detail here, but […]

Tom and I are making a whistle-stop voyage down the Rhône valley this week to catch up with vigneron friends and get an insight into the Rhône 2009 vintage, of which we have heard great promise. After driving south from Lyon in heavy rain on Sunday evening we started tasting bright and early on Monday in […]

Earlier this year there were attempts within the UK wine trade to ‘talk up’ the 2008 Rhône vintage – as noted on our blog entry on March 10th. Although some perfectly decent wines were made in the Rhône valley in 2008 it was not an outstanding vintage. Fortunately as our vineyard visits and tastings to […]