MY LIFE IN DRINKS

When I was four or five, I used to go round to my granny’s house for Robinsons Barley Water.

My grandad had an allotment and we’d look after it together. He would always leave a little bit of barley water in the bottom of the bottle and fill it up from the outside tap.

I burned my mouth as a young kid, so I can’t drink hot drinks. Every time I try to drink out of a cup, I want to throw up – it’s just one of those reactions. I never drink tea or coffee, and if I want soup, I need to have it with a spoon. It’s really weird.

One of my favourite beers is Schiehallion, a Scottish lager from a brewery called Harviestoun. Itwas recommended to me by the woman who looks after the PR for my restaurant chain, as her husband does the PR for the brewery. He gave me a bottle to try out and I thought it was amazing. Now we’ve got it in all our restaurants, and even my local village pub stocks it.

I don’t drink cocktails. Ifi’mat a bar, I’ll go for a classic gin and tonic. Monkey 47, if it’s available, otherwise Silent Pool or Cotton Gin, with Fever-tree tonic water and a bit of lemon. I don’t like anything else floating in it; I think that might be a chef’s thing. A kir royale is nice, too – a little bit of crème de cassis liqueur in the bottom of a glass with a brown sugar lump and topped with champagne.

I got given a barrel of whisky for my 30th birthday by the gentleman who owns Edradour Distillery, one of the smallest in Scotland. I’m not allowed to open and taste it until I’m 60 – so when the whisky is 30 years old. Obviously the older it gets, the less I have because a small amount evaporates through the wood and into the atmosphere. That’s where the term ‘angel’s share’ comes from [according to folklore, the angels drink their share of the whisky].

I own a vineyard in the South of France. Igot approached during Covid to invest and it’s been great. Looking at it from a chef’s point of view, blending wine is similar to creating recipes. That area of Provence is very traditional but we’ve got a young winemaker out there and we’re producing modern, quaffable red, white and rosé.

Coravins are amazing. We use them in the restaurants but we’ve got three at home too [James lives with his girlfriend Louise Davies in the countryside]. Usually, if you want a glass of wine, you have to open the bottle, which limits the amount of time you’ve got to finish it. With a Coravin, there’s a little needle that goes through the cork, wax sealing and tin top that pulls out the wine, while filling the top with gas so the wine inside keeps for another few years.

Michel Roux Snr and I opened a £1,500 bottle of La Tâche [one of the finest red wines in the world] to celebrate life, about four or five months before he passed away. We drank it at my house with a good cigar. I told him he’d done so much for me that he could have whatever he

them skin-side down, feeling for the joint between the bones and cutting through it. Rub the harissa paste all over the chicken and arrange skin-side up on top of the onions. Roast for 35 minutes.

Take the roasting dish out of the oven and lift the chicken on to a plate. Stir the spinach into the dish with the onions and any cooking juices (you may need to do this a little