From today and until the end of March, Farr Vintners will be participating in Wine Relief and raising money for Comic Relief by donating £20 for every case that we sell from a specially selected list of some of our favourite and best value wines. Farr Vintners selling prices will remain unaltered with the £20 donated directly out of our profits. With the generous help of our customers we hope that this will enable us to donate over £100,000 to an exceptional cause.
Phillip Schofield, Will Lander and Jancis Robinson
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Wine Relief is the brainchild of Jancis Robinson MW and her husband Nick Lander. The idea behind the venture is for those involved in the wine industry to contribute towards the incredibly successful Red Nose Day campaign, which has raised over £750m for Comic Relief since its inception 25 years ago. Since 1999, Wine Relief has played its part, contributing an amazing sum in excess of £4m, and as every year passes, Wine Relief goes from strength-to-strength. You can find out more about Wine Relief here.
Once we had selected the wines that we would like to feature in our Wine Relief offer this year, we thought that we should get together with Jancis and our old friend and loyal customer Phillip Schofield to taste through the wines.
Mark Ross and I met Jancis and Phillip for lunch a couple of weeks ago at The Quality Chop House. This historic, grade II listed restaurant that was established in 1869 has recently been re-opened by the dynamic partnership of Will Lander (son of Nick Lander and Jancis Robinson) and Josie Stead who has worked previously at The Ivy, Sketch and until recently was the manager of Heston Blumenthal’s “Dinner”. It now operates as a Dining Room, Wine Bar and Wine Shop and is situated on Farringdon Road just around the corner from Exmouth Market. The restaurant serves fabulous food carefully sourced from artisan producers and has already received rave reviews from Tracey McCloud of “The Independent” and Giles Coren of “The Times” amongst others. You will find a large selection of Farr Vintners wines on the list here, offered at very modest mark-ups.
Phillip Schofield and Josie Stead
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The wines that we have chosen for Wine Relief 2013 can be found here and if you click on each wine you will find a tasting note from Jancis and Phillip.
We feature some of our favourite and most popular wines including these:
Pol Roger Champagne – both the reliable and consistent non-vintage and the outstanding 2002.
Great value Burgundies from Michel Mallard’s home estate. Michel is also the wine-maker at Domaine de Eugenie and is affectionately known at the Chop House as “Mike Duck”.
Classic whites from New Zealand – bio-dynamic Sauvignon Blanc from Churton in Marlborough and the legendary Kumeu River Chardonnay
White Burgundy from “the World’s greatest Chardonnay wine-maker” Jean-Marie Guffens – both from his own Domaine and Maison Verget.
Great Rhones from Pauillac producers
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Rhone wines from Chateau Latour President Frederic Engerer’s new Domaine Fontbonau and the Cazes family’s Domaine des Senechaux.
Outstanding and modestly prices right bank Bordeaux from L’Eglise Clinet owner, Denis Durantou – Montlandrie and Les Cruzelles
Two of Bordeaux’s finest second wines – Segla and Les Hauts de Smith
Outstanding Saint Juliens from Chateaux Gloria, Lagrange and Léoville Barton
An amazing fifty year old Vin Doux Naturel – Rivesaltes 1963 from Domaine Les Gorges du Soleil.
There should be something for everyone on the list and remember that for every case of wine that you buy we will give £20 to Wine Relief!
With many thanks to Phillip and Jancis for all their help.
