This is a very quick post to say that I have started a Substack and from now on most of my booze-inspired meanderings will be found here: henryjeffreys.substack.com World of Booze is dead, long live Drinking Culture! Please sign up as it will make me feel important and you’ll get lots of good things to read. I’ve also started a monthly drinks column for The Critic magazine which is worth subscribing to. And finally my forthcoming book Vines in a Cold Climate: the people behind the English wine revolution is in the final stages of edits and will be available in August. You can order a copy here ..read more

As I’ve been drinking so much English wine in researching my book Vines in a Cold Climate, I thought I’d round-up some of the most interesting, unusual and delicious ones I tasted this year. It’s traditional at this time of the year for wine writers to do a round-up of the best bottles they had in the year. These are often parades of rare and expensive wines usually, if Instagram is a reliable guide to other wine writers’ lives, consumed over long lavish lunches. My end of year round-up is going to be a bit different because a) I don’t get invited to these lunches b) it’s a bit boring for read ..read more

A plug for the excellent wines imported by Patrick Matthews plus some budget high street choices for Christmas. When I had a weekly column in the Lady magazine, Christmas was always a bit of a mixed blessing. It was good because I got to write more rather than being restricted to 300 words but it was always difficult trying to come up with a way of making it fresh – I remember doing a Victorian Christmas, a New World Christmas and even a Richard Nixton Christmas. So festive! I only had the job for five years, I have no idea how long-term wine columnists manage it. And it was all lies! I wasn’t ..read more

With Father’s Day coming up, I thought I’d post this thing I wrote a while back. Originally it was meant to run in Noble Rot magazine but was rejected for not being irreverent enough. For years afterwards I used to flick though the magazine seething at all the reverent articles about Burgundy etc. I’ve got over it, especially as the Spectator‘s Life supplement took it up and paid me in money rather than cool tokens. But sadly the Spec Life is now defunct and its website has been memory-holed taking with a load of stuff I wrote hence why I’m putting it up on my blog now. It may be a cliché but ..read more

With the sad news of Anthony Barton’s death this week, I’m posting something I wrote a few years ago for the Wine Society on the old Anglophone families who used to dominate the wine trade in Bordeaux, Oporto, Jerez, Madeira and Marsala. Last year my wife and I were fortunate enough to have lunch with Anthony Barton (below) and his wife Eva at Chateau Langoa-Barton. As we ate the wonderfully old-fashioned French food served to us by a silent retainer and drank the impeccable wine (1982 and 1986 Leoville-Barton just to make readers extra jealous) I imagined that this is what the wine business u ..read more

Now that our betters have decreed that we will be allowed to see relatives this Christmas, I thought it a good idea to publish my guide to surviving the festive season without excessive drunkenness. I used to approach the Christmas party season like Homer Simpson approaches a buffet. I’d start in early December and drink heartily right through to New Year’s Day. I wouldn’t have a dry January either. That would suggest I had a problem.  The revelry would reach a peak on Christmas Eve. I’d meet up with old school friends, we’d stay in the pub until closing and then go to someone’s house unt ..read more

This is something I wrote for The Fence’s newsletter. A friend described this new magazine like this: “The Fence seems a new and rare original voice in the magazine world, it’s good nature and high spirits rather reminiscent of Spy magazine in the 80s.” High praise indeed, it’s well worth signing up to the newsletter and subscribing to the magazine itself.  I know what you’re thinking, what with all these queues for petrol and bare supermarket shelves, it’s about time I started a wine cellar. There’s no shortage of information out there on the subject but the best advice I’ve had comes fr ..read more

When visiting large trade tastings, it’s always good to go with a plan. Otherwise you’ll find yourself floundering about, tasting old favourites, and leave feeling tired and emotional. It was particularly tricky at the WineGB tasting at the Lindley Hall in September because it seemed to be the first tasting where everyone was back. There was an air of jollity mixed with relief and some trepidation. It was hard to concentrate on the wines. Nevertheless, I came with a plan: no traditional method sparkling wines, and no bacchus. Considering they made up about 90% of the wines there, this narrowed ..read more

Today, I am delighted to have one of my favourite drinks writers on the blog: Victoria Moore, the Daily Telegraph’s wine columnist and author of a new book on wine and food called Fried Eggs and Rioja There are wine books that I refer to again and again, like Wine Grapes, and there are books that I read and reread for enjoyment like Patrick Matthews’ Wild Bunch. But Victoria Moore’s Wine Dine Dictionary is one that not only have I used for reference perhaps more than any book, but it’s one that I dip often for sheer pleasure. The book is in two alphabetical sections: the first part is food, ju ..read more

This is something I wrote for the Telegraph a few years back about going clubbing, for the first time in years, with a club fixer called Richard Walker-Smith. The nightclub dream is that scene in Saturday Night Fever where Tony Manero (John Travolta) and his crew jump a long queue and walk straight into 2001 Odyssey greeted by everyone on their way in. That has happened to me only once. It was at a nightclub in Leeds called Speed Queen. This was a funky house night with a ‘mixed’ clientele which is code for gays, girls and men who don’t look too straight. Because it was so popular with glamoro ..read more