We’re back! Wine Times, our award winning podcast, returns for another series full of laughter, lively conversation and interesting wine. So pull up a chair, pour yourself a glass and sit back as we pull the cork and twist the screw cap with a host of very special guests.
This series we’re joined by none other than the great Anneka Rice! While we can all agree there’s no replacing the hilarious Suzi Ruffell or the brilliant Miquita Oliver, I could not be more excited for Anneka to join me at the helm to talk (and drink!) all things grape related.
A brand new series means brand new guests and we have a Grand Cru line-up joining us in our new home in London Bridge. There’s fellow broadcast icon Clare Balding CBE, we embark on a vinous tour through Italy with comedian Angus Deayton, while Hollywood’s Paul Feig dropped by to explore the best California has to offer. Safe to say you’re in for a real treat.
So please do join us as we pop, pour and sip our way across the globe uncorking beautiful wines and decanting even better conversation. Wine Times is available now wherever you get your podcasts, listen to a new episode every Tuesday.
Oh, and did I mention we are up for an award? Very exciting! Series 1 caught the attention of the judges at the British Media Awards and Wine Times is up for ‘Podcast of the Year,’ we’ll be crossing our fingers that we’re successful when it is announced in May.
So please do join us for some good company, good wines and lively conversation as we go live on April 26th. And remember, you can listen to us through your usual podcast provider.
For 50 years, The Sunday Times Wine Club has been talking to people about wine. To begin with, it was wine trade folk sharing their knowledge and passion with us and, of course, our members.
With Club President, Hugh Johnson, at the helm, we began to spice things up over time by inviting a succession of well known personalities to discuss their love of wine and vinous culture over a glass or two.
These chats developed into ‘Wine Times’ – printed supplements edited by Hugh and mailed to members; they soon became part of The Club’s fabric. Of course The Club has changed as technology has transformed the world.
Hugh passed on the Wine Times baton to Club Vice-President and wine columnist Will Lyons, and Will explains how Wine Times moved into the digital age: “From Jilly Cooper, Prue Leith and Andrew Lloyd Webber to Michael Palin, all have been interviewed for the Club’s ‘in-house’ magazine, Wine Times. I enjoy good writing but there is also something uniquely appealing about the sound of a bottle of wine being opened, poured and discussed live on air. What about a podcast? We could talk to interesting guests, introducing them to some thought-provoking wines which hopefully inspire lively and stimulating conversations. Wine Times the podcast was born.”
The Wine Times podcast now runs to three 10-episode series (a fourth series is planned), but the overall format remains the same.
Will Lyons provides the wine knowledge in a light-hearted fashion, while co-hosts TV presenter Miquita Oliver (Series 1) and comedian Suzi Ruffell (Series 2 & 3) combine their enthusiasm for wine with an acknowledgement that they know very little about it.
Joining the co-hosts for each episode is a guest from the sporting, entertainment or literary worlds ready to enjoy a selection of wines and see where the conversation leads them.
Every bottle is carefully paired with the guest. When the author and actress Giovanna Fletcher, who is half Italian, came on, they started with a bottle of Gavi to make her feel at home, then introduced her to white Rioja and a red from the foothills of the Pyrenees. For comedian Ed Gamble, who is diabetic, Will Lyons chose a low-sugar Pinot Noir from New Zealand.
Over the three series, the Wine Times team have tasted their way along the Wine Route, chatted Bond and Champagne with singer Gregory Porter, and made TV chef Clodagh McKenna fall in love with the Hungarian wine Tokaji, while cricket commentator Isa Guha talked about the spirit of food and drink on Test Match Special.
By the time Jamie Cullum featured in the final episode of Series 1, Wine Times had a loyal following of wine-lovers – and their number has steadily grown since. So much so that by the end of the third series, the podcast had over 175,000 listeners. And its formula was a big hit with the critics too, with Wine Times being voted ‘Podcast of the Year’ at the British Media Awards in 2022.
If you haven’t already, come and join us. Pull up a chair, pour yourself a glass and enjoy our gently humorous, irreverent, and award-winning podcast Wine Times.
Wine Times is in the lineup of podcasts produced by The Times; it is available from your Podcast provider and on the Sunday Times Wine Club website, where you’ll also find a list of guests and the wines they tasted.
Fi Glover and Jane Garvey
The groundbreaking broadcasters, writers and podcasters taste their way through four wines from Italy, California and France.
Sauternes is France’s legendary sweet wine and this is from an elite Grand Cru Classé estate, which must remain anonymous as a secret-deal wine (the only way to get it at this price).
Sophie Duker
Comedian Sophie describes wine as “super delicious” and shares a Portuguese red, luscious Sherry and semi-sweet French fizz.
Stunning bottle, gorgeous fizz. This semi-sweet Crémant d’Alsace is from the 300-year-old Cattin estate and is made exactly like Champagne. Brimming with ripe orchard fruits and honeyed sweetness, with a refreshing acidity.
Marcus Wareing
The multi-Michelin-star chef and broadcaster talks decanting and says his relationship with wine is as strong as his relationship with food.
Madeleine Angevine is an early-ripening grape that’s perfectly suited to the English climate. This Gold-medal stunner hails from Sharpham Estate in Devon. Full of peach, apricot, a hint of spice and citrus, this is wonderful with chicken or crab.
Adam Kay
The comedian, writer and former doctor samples three varied French bottles and recalls how he first got into wine while at school.
Black in the glass, intensely flavoured, dense and chiming in at 15% ABV, La Fé is the definition of hearty – and that’s the type of food it pairs with best. Made from sustainably grown Tannat grapes in Madiran, southern France.
Join The Sunday Times award-winning wine columnist Will Lyons as he takes you on a vinous journey to some of the world’s most picturesque wine destinations.
Known for his discerning palate and down to earth approach, Will will take you on your very own journey down the wine route over a few glasses of wine at Destinations, The Holiday and Travel Show.
Talking at Olympia London on Thursday 2nd February, he’ll explore the wine, history and culture of wine country sharing his inside knowledge on the best places to visit in France, the spectacular, wild nature of northern Portugal’s Douro Valley and the coastal scenery of New Zealand.
Come and wander through the vineyards with Will as he shares his tops tips from more than a decade writing and adventuring along the wine route and reveals some of the best places to enjoy a holiday in Wine Country.
The Sunday Times Wine Club Vice-President will be pouring the following fine wines at the Meet The Experts Theatre from 2.15pm:
Not so long ago the head of a major wine company stated that “there is no Coca-Cola of the winemaking world. We certainly intend to be just that.”
Good luck to them, I suppose, but at The Club we believe wine’s appeal is about extraordinary variety, not uniformity. Wine’s an agricultural product made from over 10,000 grape varieties – each comes out differently every vintage.
(Jancis Robinson wrote a book about the main 1,368 grapes … if you’ve a spare week.)
Yet a scan of a supermarket shelf suggests ‘Coca-Cola-isation’ is afoot.
Sure there’s Malbec, Cabernet, Shiraz, Merlot, Pinot Noir … but then we start to run dry.
In whites, well it’s Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio and, er, Chardonnay, and then what?
The wine trade spends a lot of time talking to itself. One of the things it wonders is “What comes after Sauvignon Blanc?” But if the big retailers mostly want Sauvignon, and winemakers are encouraged to do what sells today, then maybe nothing comes after Sauvignon? Imagine that.
10,000 grape varieties whittled down to a dozen or so? Perhaps it’s time for that to stop.
Thankfully, Club members have always liked plenty of the unusual along with the familiar. Last year we saw a sell-out for a lovely Viorica from Moldova. A case of Viorica? Sounds itchy, you should probably see the nurse … and it’s too obscure even for Jancis’s book. Delicious though and try getting that in Tesco.
“Is it any coincidence that proper winemaking and what we call civilisation began at about the same time?”
The oeno-archeologist Patrick McGovern (the Indiana Jones of grapes) believes early humans probably collected grapes in animal hides. After natural yeasts set to work, before long their pre-historic world would have seemed a lot more fun. The juice would have soon turned to vinegar, but an interest in cultivating and collecting grapes had begun. Homo Grapiens, you might say, had arrived.
Is it any coincidence that proper winemaking and what we call civilisation began at about the same time roughly 8,000 years ago? There’s an argument to be made for “which came first” …
During the time of the pharaohs, 3,000 years ago, we see the first ‘labels’, complete with names of wineries and vineyards … and ‘vintage dated’ with the face of the current pharaoh.
The Romans later spread vines across Europe, following trade routes and the great rivers, using a wide variety of cuttings and seeds. Perhaps they found that wine pacified as effectively as swords.
The Greatest Grapes You’ve Never Heard Of
Until quite recently, bottles didn’t specify the grape variety. It wasgeography that counted. Towns or villages. So you were into Sancerreor Nuits-Saint-Georges, not Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Noir.
Then the Aussies started putting grape names on the labels, aimingto help new wine drinkers feel more confident in their choices. Australia also didn’t have hundreds of grape varieties like, say, Italy.
But this had an unintended consequence. People started navigating all wines by grape as much as place. The supermarkets noticed and here we are with NZ Sauvignon,Australian Shiraz, Chilean Merlot and Argentinian Malbec.
That suits many consumers, but not everyone. Club members tend to be inquisitive by nature. It’s why they joined. The ‘thinking drinker’ knows there’s always more to the story. So much more … from classy Greek Agiorgitiko to Austria’s most planted dark-skinned grape, Zweigelt.
There isn’t, as far as we know, an official phobia for choosing wine in a restaurant, but there should be. For most, it rates somewhere between ‘dinner with the in-laws’ and ‘shark wrestling’ on the enjoyment scale.
The fear is understandable. You’re choosing for an entire table and at a time when value is to be celebrated. Nothing takes the shine off your chef ’s special better than knowing you’ve saddled your fellow diners with an expensive bottle of something that might have been produced by a dyspeptic racehorse.
Margins matter
Wine helps restaurants to make money. If every diner ordered a carafe of tap water, many would go bust pretty quickly or the food would become astronomically (gastronomically?) expensive. With the exception of Champagne, which is lower, most wine lists work on what’s known as a 75% Gross Profit margin – so a bottle listed at £32 would have been bought for around £8. This is a useful rule of thumb to help you work out what you can expect for your money, though most wine lists are a bit more nuanced than that.
Generally, the more expensive a wine is on the list, the lower the mark-up. So a £48 wine might cost the restaurant £12, but a £100 wine might have cost it £35. In that scenario, by paying twice the price you could be getting three times as much wine for your money. At the top end most will operate a cash margin – adding on a flat fee per bottle. The price at which this kicks in, and the amount added, will vary massively from venue to venue but it does mean that if you’re on a celebration and not counting the zeroes too closely it can pay to go big.
Here be dragons
But even at the most affordable end of the wine list, there are differing price strategies, and this means there are very definite areas to look for and very definite areas to avoid. In a nutshell, the kind of wines that get ordered uncritically tend to attract a bigger mark-up. So well-known or popular wine styles like Rioja, Chablis, Malbec and Pinot Grigio might be reassuring, but they’re also proportionally more expensive. The same goes for the ‘second cheapest’ slot. Ordered by people who worry that they’ll look cheap if they order the house wine but don’t want to spend too much or ask advice, it’s the Here Be Dragons bit of the wine list. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one sommelier admitted that he paid less for this wine than his house wine, even though he charged more for it. “Basically, if they don’t care that much what they drink, I’m happy for them to subsidise the people who do,” he said.
Fast facts for best value
DON’T
DO
Pick the second cheapest.
Be prepared to go ‘off piste’.
Go for cheap examples of famous name.
Look for specialities.
Order Burgundy unless you’re going big and money is no object. It’s usually terrible value.
Enlist the help of the sommelier or waiter.
Here be bargains
So much for the areas to treat with caution, how about those that offer the best value for money? Generally, in the same way that ‘safe and familiar’ usually equals ‘higher margin’, so less-common regions or grapes tend to be better value for money to encourage you to try them. So this could be the time to branch out. Choosing unusual wines is easier if the restaurant has arranged its list by style rather than by country – Fresh Light White, Rich Oaky Red etc. If your choice splits the table, then you’ll get some good discussion out of it – handy if conversation is flagging. If you unearth an interesting, well-priced gem then you will awe your dining companions with your confidence and chutzpah. It’s a quicker, easier way of earning respect than running a half marathon or building a patio.
“One sommelier admitted to me that he paid less for this wine than his house wine, even though he charged more for it on the list.”
Look out, too, for areas of enthusiasm. If a restaurant has a whole page dedicated to Portuguese red wines, or a highlighted selection of sherries or wines from the Alps, it probably means that whoever is putting the wine list together absolutely loves these styles. They’ll have researched them carefully and – if you ask – should be knowledgeable and passionate and want to share that knowledge. That can be a great way of sniffing out expertly-picked unusual wines at a good price.
Here comes the somm
Finally, don’t be afraid to enlist the help of a sommelier or dedicated waiter. As the urbane sommelier at a Michelin-starred Mayfair eatery put it, “Be honest, tell them your budget and don’t pretend you know what you’re doing if you don’t.” In other words, unless you’re one of those annoying people who tries to tell everyone from doctors to mechanics how to do their job, park your insecurity, lay off the vin-splaining and let the professional do their job. That way, you can relax and enjoy your meal, free of in-laws (and dragons).
From celebrity chefs to international crime writers, food critics and comedians; A-list musicians and Shakespearean actors – you name it, they have all dropped in to share a glass or two on our now award winning podcast – Wine Times. Yes, you read that correctly our irreverent but I hope informative podcast Wine Times has picked up a gong at the prestigious British Media Awards. And it goes without saying we’re delighted!
The judges praised the podcast for helping encourage a younger audience to engage with the club. I’ll certainly raise a glass to that! As I have always maintained, it doesn’t matter what wine you like (we certainly won’t judge) it is liking wine at all that is the main thing.
Over the course of two series, co-hosted by the brilliant Miquita Oliver and the hilarious Suzi Ruffell we have sipped, slurped and tasted our way along the Wine Route – through the vineyards of England, France, New Zealand and many more – even travelling (vicariously) to far off places such as Romania and Moldova.
At Universal Music Studios we opened Bollinger with the Grammy award-winning jazz singer Gregory Porter, enjoyed Claret with Ian Rankin in Prestonfield hotel up in Edinburgh and enjoyed a glass or two from Down Under with former England player turned cricket commentator Isa Guha. It’s been a blast and now we have a second series underway with the outspoken food critic Grace Dent sharing her top tips on how she deals with snooty sommeliers. Marcus Wareing revealed his dislike of screwcaps and I told Angellica Bell what it is like to taste wine from the 19th century. The comedian Tom Allen recounted his worst ever wine experience in Tenerife and the ice-wine we shared with broadcaster and DJ Shaun Keaveny slipped down a treat.
Huge thanks must go to all the brilliant people who made it happen from the outstanding team at Wireless and the Club, our editor Ben Mitchell, and of course you the listener for tuning in and enjoying a glass with us, wherever you maybe.
Vineyard Partner or not, we urge you to ‘tune in’ and hear what four of our Vineyard Partners have been up to. They give us a fascinating, wide-ranging insight into life as a vigneron in today’s climate. Pour yourself a glass, pull up your armchair and listen in to the latest.
Introducing our participants, we have Jean-Marc Sauboua, winemaker for both Bordeaux’s Château La Clarière and Altos de Rioja, Norrel Robertson, our Flying Scotsman and the mastermind behind the fabulous, old-vine Garnacha Sierra de los Sueños from Calatayud, Paolo and Anna Rita Masi from Tuscany’s Il Corto, and Tony, with news from Windsor Great Park Vineyard.
Topics are wide-ranging – conversations you’d never find in ‘books’, virtual or for real. They talk about the pros and cons of the 2021 vintage and the wines you can expect when they’re released. Each explains the tasks currently underway in the vineyard or the cellar, how they are adapting to climate change and the considerable challenges it brings with it.
We hear about new projects, new vineyards, experimentation with clones, grape varieties and methods … these winemakers are really top of their game and always looking to push new boundaries in the name of exceptional quality, authenticity and uniqueness in their wines. You’ll also get a taste of what dishes they might enjoy with each of their wines.
Pulling the crackers, lighting the candles and eyeing up the mince pies for our Christmas special is none other than the super talented jazz musician – Jamie Cullum.
Jamie, who has just released his ninth studio album, ‘The Pianoman at Christmas’, recorded where else, but at the at the temple of music recording – Abbey Road, is not only an interested wine lover but also an old friend of Miquita’s, so it’s a very happy table at our Christmas get together.
The jazz route has taken Jamie to some spectacular venues which at times have coincided with the wine trail, such as the music festival held in the northern Rhône.
Jazz à Vienne takes place just a short distance from one of the most famous white wine producing villages in France, Condrieu, home to the heady white made from viognier, a wine that can smell of anything from apricot to May blossom. It was the scent of this wine which first opened the singer’s eyes to the complexities and layers of flavour that can be achieved in a glass of wine.
He says it’s wines ability, like reading great literature or listening to beautiful music, to open another world and expand your imagination which appeals. ‘When you taste a beautifully made wine, you are tasting thousands of years of developed expertise,’ he says. The analogy is with music, where you are taking in ‘hundreds of years of culture.’
Jamie is of course married to the model Sophie Dahl and they both share a love of food and cooking, so we start Christmas Day with what else? A glass of bubbles, not from Champagne but from the Limoux in the South of France and a club favourite the 2019 Roche Lacour.
This was soon followed by the classic 2020 Julien Bouchard Bourgogne Chardonnay, before finishing in Tuscany, a region where Jamie first experienced a sophisticated foreign holiday experiencing not only how delicious food can be but also what a ceremony there is surrounding the meal.
‘It was a time of coming of age,’ he says. ‘Where I started reading Kerouac, Hemingway. Getting into art and starting to love jazz … going off into a sort of private world.’
We sip our Governo and think of the ordered landscape of Tuscany with its perfect hills and tended rows of vines. ‘It feels like there should be a part 2 to this podcast,’ he says taking a sip. ‘Recorded in Tuscany…’ I’m already persuaded.
It was an absolute delight to explore the world of plant based food with the charming Yorkshire duo, Henry Firth and Ian Theasby aka BOSH!
With Veganuary upon us and the inevitable call for abstinence, it’s probably not a bad idea to enjoy a couple of days off meat and dairy a week– a flexitarian approach if you will.
But did you know that you might have to keep a close eye on the wine too? A lot of winemakers use animal products to ‘fine’ their wine such as fish products, gelatines and egg whites.
Fortunately, there are a swathe of wines that avoid the use of these in their production although you will need the club to do the sifting for you as it probably won’t say on the label.
Keen to learn more and to improve my plant based wine matching skills I picked out three French wines whose traditional pairing you might describe as being either meat or dairy. How did we get on? Well, we started in the Loire Valley with a glorious Sancerre from Domaine Michel Thomas, which the lads suggested pairing with their Cacio e Pepe, a sort of Italian mac and cheese which, (as they describe) should be obliterated with plenty of pepper. I can see that working and what I do like about their cooking is they are men from my own heart, in other words they are not ashamed to go for simplicity or in their words, keep it ‘unashamedly basic.’
From Sancerre we headed East to Beaujolais for a silky and floral Fleurie, Les 3 Madones, which they described as ‘super easy to drink and tutti fruity’. Mushrooms, a vegan platter and even a tofu sandwich were all suggested.
Now, for the biggest challenge of them all. What does one pair with a full-bodied Claret from Bordeaux’s Left Bank? In this case Chateau Roquegrave. For meat eaters, it is of course roast beef so what did Ian and Henry suggest? The ‘Impossible Burger’ of course! A vegan burger I first tasted, entirely by accident, in Napa Valley – we didn’t set it up honest!
And with that it was time to go; with our new friends describing it as ‘genuinely the best podcast we have ever done.’ We’ll certainly raise a glass to that!
We met in the sumptuous surroundings of Edinburgh’s spectacular Prestonfield hotel for our episode with the best-selling crime writer Ian Rankin.
Although his lead character, Inspector Rebus, is better known for enjoying a pint of real ale in his beloved Oxford Bar (or a dram of whisky for that matter) his creator has a passion for wine.
With Ian having ‘trod the grapes’ in arguably the most famous post-war vintage in Bordeaux, 1982, nor far from Château La Clarière in Castillon, we did of course enjoy a glass of red Bordeaux.
As Ian pointed out, Edinburgh has a rich history of drinking claret. We know from the memoirs of Scottish judge and literary figure Lord Cockburn, expertly summarised in Billy Kay’s vinous history “Knee Deep in Claret” that in the 18th century a cargo of claret would arrive in the port of Leith to the north of the City. A hogshead would then be carried through the town in a cart with a horn. Anyone who wanted to have a little taste could stop the cart and fill up their jug for sixpence.
But our vinous journey began across the border, in Oxfordshire with a Club favourite – Wyfold rosé, which we agreed would be absolutely ideal with a simple plate of smoked salmon and buttered bread on Christmas morning.
Throughout it’s nearly 50-year history the Club has always been good at sniffing out interesting new wines from undiscovered wine regions. In that vein, we journeyed to Moldova for the perfumed and summery Viorica from Château Vartely. As Tony once said, many club members would be forgiven for not knowing where Moldova is, let alone that it made wine. And good wine too!
We ended with a brief discussion on blind wine tasting and wine clubs. Ian once joined me for the 20th anniversary of the Edinburgh v St Andrews match. I did think he might be a crack blind wine taster as on the Edinburgh street on which Ian used to live, there was a wine circle, where they would meet and sample various wines. However they didn’t learn much – after years, Ian admitted they were no further forward in trying to discern what the wines were. Somebody would host it and at the end they would say: ‘more research needed.’ Which was a bit cheeky as I gave them a tasting a few years ago!
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