episode seven of the second press podcast is a look at the broader, often weirder, world of wine media, professional splurging, and the career of matthew jukes, a man who has quite literally seen it all.
we start this week with a masterclass in how to spend four and a half million dollars in winnings at golf. rory spends £45,000 on his celebratory wine dinner. we’d all spend 1% of our earnings on a list of unicorn wines if we could, too. salon 2015 to start, domaine leflaive batard-montrachet, lafite 1990 and d’yquem 1989. dan and brad weigh in on the list, noting that while it’s thoroughly classic, it shows a specific kind of taste. it’s a fifty-grand bill that actually makes sense to those in the know.
then there is the bbc audience. they ran a piece on albury vineyard in surrey, framing their biodynamic practices as “unusual.” for those of us in the trade, hearing cow horns and lunar cycles described as “unusual” is counter-intuitive. biodynamics is the norm for hundreds of top-tier estates globally, yet the mainstream media still treats it like a strange idea.
brad’s first proper sit-down with matthew jukes, a man who has spent forty years navigating every corner of the wine world. matthew’s story is one of accidental brilliance and a total lack of pretension. he started in brussels, born to foodie parents; his mother was a professional cookery teacher who worked with prue leith. matthew was tasting german riesling at age seven and developed a “proper foodie knowledge” before he even knew what the wine trade was.
he was three months into a physics degree when he realised he’d rather be around booze. after hearing a wine lecture that he realised he could have given himself, he decided that the wine trade was a much more interesting route and was directed to a wine shop in barnes. he cycled there on april 10, 1987, and has been in the trade ever since. for matthew, the shop floor remains the foundation. he spent decades doing physical stock checks, even while he was a world-famous writer, because he wanted to see what was actually moving and talk to the people drinking it.
we talk through a slightly accidental transition into media. he spent years doing radio at 7:20 am, tasting amazing wines live with gideon coe and fi glover. this led to a saturday night tv series with ant and dec. hold on tight and say yes to everything and apparently the wine trade pans out quite well.
since 2004, matthew has championed his “100 best australian wines” initiative. when he started, australia was viewed as the land of cheap supermarket wine. he saw the potential for serious, site-specific wines from only the best producers. he helped change the narrative in the uk, proving that australia could produce world-class wines that rivalled the finest old-world estates.
finally, we touch on jukes cordialities. matthew saw a gap in the market for a non-alcoholic drink you could drink on your booze-free days. using an apple cider vinegar base and an old recipe called the ‘haymaker’s punch’, he created something complex and food-friendly for his own days off, which has since become an international success.
dan wraps things up with a look at the corkscrew restaurant in norwich. sam has his parents doing the pots while he’s doing front-of-house and cooking an ever-changing, mostly foraged menu.
brad also brings up a blind tasting with xanadu wines from margaret river. pipping the london somms at their own game, proving margaret river is producing some of the most technically accomplished and exciting wines in the world right now.
and finally we’ve had some reviews in. mostly positive, except the ones on spotify perhaps. even if you’re just here to tell us we’re wrong about rory’s wine list, or whether bordeaux is better than burgundy, we’d love you to get involved.
like matthew, stay marinated.
feel free to share with a friend
https://www.matthewjukes.com/product/100-best-australian-wines-2026/
https://jukescordialities.com/
‘believe’ by jukes is designed for everyday enjoyment.
https://jukescordialities.com/products/believe
bruno rocca, barbaresco riserva, ‘rabajà’ - a perfect 20/20
https://www.libertywines.co.uk/our-portfolio/RO311-barbaresco-riserva-rabaja
https://store.lismore.co.za/shop/white-wines/2018-lismore-chardonnay/
https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/products/325523985
https://www.hnwines.co.uk/wine-detail/1196
“i suppose i write about wines that i would like to drink myself, not just those that happen to hit a price point. they’re all wines that i absolutely adore for whatever reason. i can see myself pouring them for people i love and explaining why. i think that’s important, isn’t it?”
“we clinked glasses and let them talk for ten minutes and then they could bugger off and go and do some proper work. i could just sit there and talk to fi and gideon and choose the next track. that was the job, believe it or not.”
“you could actually meet a person whose name was on the label, meeting vanya cullen and her mother, di cullen. they’re my superheroes. i’d far rather meet them than film stars.”
“the australia top 100 best is a polaroid. it’s literally what’s good for the next couple of months, hopefully a year. you’ve got to grab them while they’re hot.”
“even the richest margaret river chardonnays, when you look at the label, you go, god, it’s only 13%… it tastes like a big fatty, but it’s still on its tiptoes.”
“wine is for drinking.
it’s a drink, you moron.
buy it, drink it.
you can keep some as well to show it down the line, but drink it.
it’s booze. it’s yummy. it’s fun.”
“i was absolutely infuriated by the concept of de-alcoholising anything. it’s a misery to make something and then kill it and then bring it back to life like some weird frankenstein’s monster with sugar.”
https://wineindustrydigest.com/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgj08pl24p8o
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