Category Archives: All posts

Ruthie’s demanded a picture of their new baby eilidh be displayed on the website. Well OK then, if I have to.

Here’s one from Eilidh’s third day, and here’s one of Eilidh and Isobel, Ian and Cath McDonald’s little girl.

This posted from my brother’s place in Perthshire, on the way up to Ullapool. I’ll see if I can take some pictures up there – it’s the most gorgeous Scottish Autumn day. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you should get yourselves up to Scotland in October. Pure dead bodgic!

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.

Some pictures from a trip up to see my brother, his wife and their two boys in Stirlingshire. The wee one is none too interactive yet, but the elder one Hamish is a right little tearaway. We’ll have him down to the fleshpots of London in no time….

Ballyjim and his two boys

The latest addition to the family

Hamish guarding his gear

Hamish after I slipped him the Glenfiddich

Family Ballyjimduff