Adventures In Wine

For their tenth anniversary podcast, Jason lays on six bottles of wine from one of the most idiosyncratic and legendary domaines of the world. Say the word ‘Trevallon’ and wine lovers and savants from all over the world will come running. Say it in a restaurant and you’ll find yourself £300 lighter. From Clinton to MacCartney, Trevallon’s relatively short history is a tapestry as rich as the one t...

In their Christmas edition, Jason Yapp comes over all sourcey to regale David with six almost apocryphal stories of how he unearthed several of Yapp Brothers' finest staples from the hills and valleys of his hallowed, happy hunting grounds in La Belle France. Follow him as he follows in the footsteps of Napoleon to tell the sparkling tale of St. Peray and thence to the Basin de Thau to pioneer Pic...

Just why do we drink so much prosecco and why is Victoria Moore, from the Telegraph, 'getting back into it'? What do Stanley Tucci and David Tennant have in common? How do you prounounce 'Roncaglie'? And is there any justifiably good reason why every pub' in the land wants to sell you a large Pinot Grigio? In this Italian edition of Adventures In Wine, Jason Yapp, our Godfather of the grape, turns...

Jason lines up six classic French wines that make an impression at the dining table without leaving a lasting one on the purse.

In this episode our two, garrulous gringos of the grape get a grip on Grenache, which makes the grade in a great many wines, though its graduation from the grottiest of gripe waters to the graceful grandiosity of Chateuneuf Du Pape isn’t greatly grasped. Grin with gruntled glee as our grandee of the grape, Jason, grows grandiloquent on Grenache’s greatness, whilst gregarious grasshopper, David, gr...

Following on from last episode’s climate-conscious look at wines grown beside the seaside, Jason assembles a flight (pun intended) of seven wines that hale from high places, where cool air and steep, free-draining slopes go some way towards mitigating the higher temperatures that otherwise put way too much bang in your Bourboulenc and vavavoom in your Viognier… First up; it’s creamy, it’s toasty a...

In this episode, Jason and David must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all they ask is a flight of fine wines and a corkscrew to open them by… With ABV’s on the increase and the prospect of even warmer weather to come, Jason has gone coastal and lined up a half dozen wines that reflect the benign influence of the sea and upon which, you can rely for years to come, even...

In an absolute first for this podcast, our wine-loving friends spend several minutes drinking something that isn’t actually wine. This deviation from tradition, though unthinkable under normal circumstances, is rendered unavoidable by the fact that Jason has decided to answer a question that David wasn’t even aware needed to be asked - unless in a past life, his name had been Marie Josèphe Rose Ta...

Jason's well-known for keeping a tight ship, but like the egalitarian oenophile we know him to be, he's not averse to granting other mariners of the wine dark sea an opportunity to take the helm and plot a course through the beneficent waters of the bacchanal either. In this instalment, no fewer than six of the U.K's finest sommeliers opine on wine that they would be more than happy to recommend a...

The Bordeaux region may be home to some of the most famous and long-lived wines in the world and play host to any number of celebrated appellations, but, says Jason, you can do it on a budget... But would you really you want to? With six sedulously selected bottles to work through, Jason and David hop from one bank of the Garonne to the other sampling everything from the humble to the most high wi...

In this episode, Jason and David sample a sextet of wines devoted entirely to one ‘grately’ underrated grape, prized by none other than Cardinal Richelieu, (l’Eminence Rouge of France) and Jason Yapp, (l’Eminence Rouge ou Blanc of Frome). They begin with a perfectly balanced, rose hip and mint, Chinon Rosé 2022 from Domaine Jean-Maurice Raffault, follow it with a peppery, yet gently fruity 2021 Sa...

Welcome to another edition of the podcast where Jason and David drink wine so you don’t have to! Time was when rosé, was like the viola of the wine world; a faintly embarrassing, Barbie-pink hybrid, neither red enough nor white enough to be taken seriously, and rarely music to anyone's ears. But times have changed along with the climate and what might once have been a lunchtime indiscretion on a h...

As far as David is concerned, it’s as German as wearing socks in your sandals and equally as appealing, but in this episode, Jason plies him with five compelling and zesty reasons why he’s just plain wrong about Riesling. From Alsace to Western Australia via the Mosel valley, these slender-shouldered, bottle-green beauties from Leon Beyer, Forest Hill, Willems-Willems, and Reichsgraf von Kesselsta...

If there's one thing David has learned from Jason during their many Adventures In Wine podcasts, it's that you simply can't have too many favourites. Favourites are Jason's life-blood; favourite regions and appellations, favourite vineyards, growers and restaurants; favourite sommeliers, even and of course, favourite grapes. Not as fruity as some reds or as tannin-rich as others, Pinot Noir defies...

With Valentine's Day very much on their minds, Jason and David get fizzical with no less than eight Crémants from the eight Crémant regions of France: Bourgogne, Loire, Alsace, Bordeaux, Limoux, Rhône and Savoie. After such a record-breaking, horizontal tasting, other wine enthusiasts might feel inclined to adopt a similar position, but Jason's and David's enthusiasm for the 'fizz areas' (technica...

Caught up in the Christmas rush? Of course you are! Need wine? Of course you do! In this seasonal edition, Jason and David selflessly taste six wines that have been picked by the press as wholly appropriate for the holiday season so you don't have to! Kicking off with the cream of Crémants from Domaine de L'Idylle (to mollify the peelers and preppers imprisoned in the kitchen), our doughty duo (wi...

In this brutally honest edition, our aging adventurers in wine, in acknowledgement of their advancing years, doff their battered pith helmets to Jason's son, Will, who happens to be in the first flush of adulthood, rather than David's and Jason's busted variety. But the question on Jason's mind is, 'Do young people even drink wine at all?' while the question on David's is, 'When is Jason coming ba...

This time, Jason's and David's oenological explorations centre upon one small and very special area of France; the 209 hectares around Condrieu, that are home to the legendarily tricky to grow and hard to vinify, Viognier vine. The effort, though, produces a uniquely aromatic wine that has become one of the great gastronomic wines of France. What else, you might ask, pairs so well with that classi...

For this special edition of Adventures in Wine, David hunkers down with Tom Ashworth over a single (yes, you read that correctly, 'single') bottle of wine: an investment grade Pauillac, Grand-Puy-Lacoste that has lain unopened since 2005. It's a perfectly sumptuous sip, of course, but leaving your wine to languish in the cellar, when it could be fulfilling its destiny in your glass doesn't just im...

Glass is getting more expensive, cardboard's getting costlier, fuel prices are going through the roof and labour is hard to find... On top of that, in 2021, French wine-makers were hit with a Spring frost that wiped out a significant part of their crop. What's left, may hardly make a dent in the market and be markedly more expensive to boot, but if the half dozen appellations that Jason and David...

Rather than blockbuster wines for the main event, Jason’s focus for his Christmas 2020 selection is that stalwart behind the scenes, who’s on kitchen duty while everyone else is on the Jenga and the gin. These are wines, he says, that you should have ‘knocking about it the kitchen’; wines that won’t break the bank and will ease those long hours over the brussels but also segue nicely onto the tabl...

As bars and restaurants across the U.K. empty, thanks to COVID-19, the recycling bins of the population fill up and none could be fuller than those of Jason and David both, coincidentally, returned from holidays in more benign climes and obliged to quarantine at Her Majesty's pleasure in their respective domiciles. But rather than spend their house arrest staring holes into the air, our bibulous p...

As temperatures (and tempers) heat up during lockdown, we've all learned that wine isn't the only thing that's gotta breathe. For this second socially-distanced wine tasting, however, Jason has lined up a flight of reds, that after a cool start, will simply warm up in your glass. Each made from a single variety grape, they're perfect for summer time drinking, for kitchen table lunches, picnics or...

In what can only be described as a technological breakthrough for our bibulous pair, Jason and David zoom their way through their first socially distanced wine tasting, pulling off the unprecedented feat of opening the same white at the same time for a spot of synchronous sipping. The pandemic aside, with two woke sons on his quaranteam and climate change an ever pressing issue, vegan wines have b...

In this big, bonging, New Year edition, Jason introduces David to the Rhône Septentrionale (or Northern Rhône)and the handful of rare and characterful white wines that are teased into existence alongside the ever abundant rows of generic Cotes Du Rhône AOC. While David's head is still spinning with percentages, hectares and Olympic-sized swimming pools (not to mention the vestiges of this year's f...