A slovenly Sunday evening… some terrible food, some indulgent telly and just the wine to match. The year’s first naughty pizza delivery saw the opportunity to get stuck into a few episodes of ‘The Night Manager’ with an appropriate, similarly brooding, similarly intense, similarly splendid red; Le Carré with Le Cayre? Well then, what's not to like?

Mid January and the bleakest of the bleak of the midwinter. There’s nothing else for it - turn the heating up as much as you dare, hunker down with a book or a box set, and wait patiently for it to all blow over. A fireside red always adds extra balm to the haven of home but if you get through as much telly as we tend to at this time of year, the chances are you’ll be going through a few more glasses in the moment than you’d rather as well… 

We indulge New Year’s Day as bonus time to wring out the last dregs of the Christmas festivities while also ringing in the new year. Breakfast omelettes were washed down with a glass of the utterly magnificent Rathfinny Blancs de Blancs while watching the annual Philharmonic concert from Vienna before heading out into the crisp Bedfordshire air for a long walk, the obligatory pub stop and then home for the rest of the bottle and some topical telly.

Where to start? Festive bubbles first up for us, to be savoured while cooking and enjoying the late breakfast.

Fish and chips; a dish, an institution woven into the fabric of this country like many other monuments, traits and truisms. Something to celebrate and embrace and enjoy, be it at the start of a telly-laden Saturday night, at the end of a seaside Promenade after a long promenade or just, well, because you can. And pretty much anywhere, any time, and on any day.

Barbera is a widely planted variety grown across Italy but best known as being the ‘other one’, after Nebbiolo, of Piedmont’s signature red grapes. Originating from the Monferrato Hills in central Piedmont, where the best examples of Barbera still come from, the grape is widely planted across this important wine region in great density, including several notable areas Alba, Asti, Nizza and, indeed, Monferrato as well as the rest of Piedmont, Lombardy and beyond.

Opulent, rich white wines start to come into their own this time of year. One of our favourites is the ‘Folie d’Ines’ from Domaine St Andre, a wine estate deep in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in the South of France on the banks of the Étang de Thau.

The new season brings in new wine and fresh offers. Find out more.