Henry Jeffreys

Henry Jeffrey’s recommends a selection of port for Christmas 2020
Before there were package holidays, there was port. This was the way British people shivering on their cold wet island could get a bit of sunshine. It’s a miracle drink, preserving the heat of the Douro valley in liquid form for decades ready to be uncorked and spread cheer. And don’t we need cheer more than ever at the moment? According to Adrian Bridge, CEO of Taylor’s, British port sales were booming during lockdown.
It took...

This article is taken from the December 2020 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering three issue for just £5.
Every so often one of the national restaurant critics will take a break from visiting the latest buzzy joint in Shoreditch to review a place where ordinary people go, like a Wetherspoons or a Harvester. It’s a great opportunity to shoot some fish in a barrel though the exercise often leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, and not because o...

“The juice of the carrot,
The smile of the parrot,
A little drop of claret,
Anything that rocks.”
Like Ian Dury, I have found a little drop of claret a reason to be cheerful in a year when such things were thin on the ground. Without restaurants, pubs or indeed the physical presence of friends, Sunday lunch with a bottle of Bordeaux in the decanter attained an almost sacramental purpose in my family. This year it’s familiarity of claret that I’ve been craving.
The historical pull of Bordeaux ...

What with the hottest July since records began, Covid and wild boars rampaging through the vineyards, it’s been a difficult vintage in the Douro valley. Nevertheless, Adrian Bridge and David Guimaraens from Taylor’s are confident that the Port industry has the tools to weather the storm.
We’re all still getting to grips with Zoom meetings so we can sympathise with one attendee at a Taylor’s event recently who forgot to mute her mic before saying: “This is just the boring webinar I’ve ever bee...

This year to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Johnnie Walker, a book has been published called A Long Stride: The Story of the World’s no. 1 Scotch Whisky. We talk to the author Nicholas Morgan about how a blend from a small shop in Kilmarnock went global.
Before I even knew what whisky was, I’d heard of Johnnie Walker. As a boy growing up in the 1980s, I remember seeing the famous Striding Man on the back of a magazine with the legend, “Born 1820 and still going strong,” and marvelling at ...

Porto’s hugely ambitious World of Wine will open this summer despite the global pandemic, says the force behind it
Words by Henry Jeffreys
It would, at any time, be seen as an ambitious undertaking: a wine attraction spanning 300,000 square feet, with more than 350 employees, six museums, five restaurants and an initial budget of €100 million. But this is not, of course, ‘any time’.
The World of Wine was, from the outset, slated to open in Porto (main image) in summer 2020. Work began in June...

On a cold winter’s evening, there’s no more welcoming smell than that of mulled wine wafting from the kitchen.
The air heavy with spices, fruit and alcohol, it transports you to those jolly Christmases from books or films.
The problem, however, comes when you taste the stuff. It’s often much too sweet, bitter with overcooked spices or, worst of all, lacking in alcohol from being boiled. Some of the worst I’ve tried are at Christmas markets, where they’d been stewing for hours.
There are plent...

Sherry can be a difficult wine for the uninitiated. We’re used to fruity wines like sauvignon blanc and pinot grigio, and sherry is not primarily about fruit. You have to alter you perceptions and accept that sherry does not taste like any other wine, and then you can start to enjoy it.
The crispest, freshest styles are fino and manzanilla sherries. Richer, darker sherries are amontillados, olorosos and palo cortados. These are all made from the Palomino grape and are normally totally dry. Th...

The winner of the AA Gill Award for Emerging Food Critics, Jemma Paek, was announced in The Sunday Times today. Gill, who died in 2016, came late to writing after a long-lost period as a chronic alcoholic.
The idea of the award is to find similar undiscovered writing talents (though there was some controversy that the winner of the inaugural awards last year wasn’t exactly an unknown). What tickled me when I was looking through the list of rules, I entered and didn’t win, was that Gill himsel...

Just landed at MoM towers, some extraordinary Cognacs including one that spent 110 years in cask! We thought an article might be in order to tell you all about them.
Before we start, let’s get one thing out of the way, these Cognacs range from the expensive to the very very expensive but, we’d argue, none of them is absurdly priced. We’re talking about spirits that have spent decades, in one case 110 years, in cask. These are rare rare bottles of extraordinary quality that people have investe...

This is something I wrote for Root + Vine magazine, the vinous off-shoot of Root + Bone magazine (which is always worth reading).
I tend to base family holidays around wine much to my six year old daughter’s annoyance. On a recent visit to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, we spent a wonderful (for me) afternoon at Hidalgo La Gitana. Fermín Hidalgo (below, stopping for a restorative plate of jamon and a copita at 11am), oblivious to my six year old daughter’s increasingly sulky antics, gave me sherry af...

Like a lot of wine writers, I have a particularly soft spot for Oporto and the Douro valley, possibly the most beautiful wine region in the world. Here’s something I wrote for Boisdale Life magazine on just this subject:
After three days in Porto, the true reason for the ancient alliance between the English and the Portuguese dawned on me. Yes there’s wine and having a common enemy in the Spanish, but it’s really about a shared love of stodgy food. The city’s most famous dish is called a Fran...

Today marks one of the least celebrated anniversaries in American history, the 100th anniversary of the day when the 18th amendment “to prohibit intoxicating beverages” came into effect. That day, after many years of campaigning, Prohibition had arrived.
Some sensible folks were prepared: the Yale Club laid on enough booze for its members to last 14 years. For normal people who wanted a drink, however, it meant liquor that made you go blind, mobsters and non-stop Charleston competitions. Pret...

Drinks expert Henry Jeffreys shares his top Malbecs from Argentina and beyond. He picks wines for any budget, with blowout bottles and plenty under £10.
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A wine merchant once let me into a secret about or...