In a series of blogs Simon, Jeremy and Jenny look forward to our favourite highlights of the year to come in 2025.
Read what Jeremy is looking forward to in 2025
The New Year is a good time both to look forwards and to reflect. This year, I’m anticipating several adventures that will be new and nostalgic.
In March we celebrate our 15th anniversary, a happy milestone that we will mark with our first English tour. English wines have developed dramatically during our 15 years and with a nod to the guest of honour at our 10th anniversary Steven Spurrier (and his Bride Valley wines from Dorset), we are delighted to explore and uncover some fine and historic wineries, oasthouses and wines in Kent, Sussex and Hampshire. This includes the oldest commercial winery in England at Hambledon, located where the first ever cricket match was played. We will have many friends to welcome, toast and celebrate and will start in London at the Farmer’s Club in Whitehall which my grandfather made a home from home on his travels in the 1950s.
We’re back to Ireland in June for a trip we’ve not done for a while and this year, we have a few exciting new stops to add to our familiar favourites. Our welcome dinner at Cellar 22 in St Stephens Green features our gregarious honorary Burgundian Raymond Blake and as a few of our travellers know Raymond from our Burgundy tours, I’m sure we’ll have a mighty night. We expect my daughter Laura to join us on the Northern Irish leg of the tour and hope to hear a song or two from her and Simon along the road. Laura and I are very excited to finally be including a brief Derry Girls and city walls tour on or way to Bushmills and hope that our antics and (mis)adventures don’t quite match any of the episodes of the show. Above all, it’s always very special for us to bring travellers to our home venues and embrace the Giant Spirit of Northern Ireland!
I always love our tour to Portugal and Galicia and this year we have 2 very good friends of mine joining the tour, who travelled with me across the north of Spain for the very first time in 1993. Although a more rustic adventure, that was the time I discovered the allure of Green Spain and the special magic of Galicia, from its misty valleys and ancient rivers to its stunning and jagged coastline. It’s very special to be returning with the original trio of explorers and in particular I always love returning to the Parador in Baiona, a stunning and historic location where the first of Columbus’s ships made landfall back in Europe to report on what they’d seen.
I will celebrate 15 years of wine travels throughout 2025 and reflect that however good the food, locations and wines are, the extra special memories come from the people we share the journey with and the friends we make on the wine roads.
