Had a great weekend with Charles and Ruth on their vineyard just north of Beziers about a month ago. They have had a relatively successful harvest so far, despite the weather for the Vendages in the French South being generally awful. We had lunch with James Herrick, who I think I can embarrass by dredging up this review of his Chardonnay where he is pimped as “a very sexy, attractive Englishman”. Hahaha. When Charles asked what he should do if the rain started to cause problems for the harvest, James’ sage advice came back “Drink!”. Wise words from a man who knows. Here’s a picture of Charles pontificating about wine in his kitchen….

Click here for an interesting interview with Herrick (possibly a bit of an old interview!), a.k.a. “The Wine Prophet” (name of his consultancy company in Languedoc), and click here to buy some of Charles and Ruth’s first vintage.

For a classy wine site on the Internet, you can’t do much better than Jancis Robinson’s site – she’s the wine critic for the FT.