As much as I like Tannat, you don’t often see much of it around as it’s among the more obscure grape varieties to have originated in Bordeaux, but it is making something of comeback. Not only have the big French strongholds of the grape (Madiran, Saint Mont) in the south west of the country, been…
I love wines made with Tannat and those from Madiran especially… they’re typically inky, weighty, earthy, beasts that serve as a separate food course entirely; they’re the Guinness of the wine world! If that sounds like a good thing to you then read on… otherwise I’d skip this, however good a wine it may be,…
Trentino in north-eastern Italy is an area mostly renowned for unleashing ‘Pinot Grigio’ on an unsuspecting world. However, it’s also the heartland for the ‘Teroldego’ grape variety, which makes dangerously moreish fruity wines. In the glass this has a deep ruby with purple rim, black cherry (Morello), Blackcurrant and purple flower (Violets) aroma. On the…
The Spanish wine region of ‘Castilla y Leon’ is fast becoming one of my favourite go-to areas for good quality/value inventive wines. Technically it covers most of north western Spain including ‘Ribera Del Duero’ and ‘Toro’, but wine makers are able to use the wider ‘Castilla y Leon’ region to label wines made outside of…
If you find the average price tag of wines from Burgundy alarming, then travel a little further south and the wine’s still good but a whole lot cheaper in comparison… with the emphasis on ‘in comparison’. Wines from the ‘Côte Chalonnaise’ aren’t cheap by any definition but they are more so than their posh northern…
(Or… “Is it just me or this article taking forever!” You’ll notice from the remaining grapes being covered in this part of the article that only one of them is white. If you look at the selves at your local supermarket and you’ll find the white wine section is predominantly composed of three major varieties:…
Argentina, heartland for the Malbec revolution, has one aspect going for it above all other new world wine regions, altitude… lots and lots variable altitude. As a country, Argentina’s on the smoking hot side of the Andes, whereas Chile gets all the cooling ocean influence on the other. However, what Argentina has going for it…
‘Cotes du Rhone Villages’ are a whole step up in quality from entry level ‘Cotes du Rhone’ and this example from Waitrose hales solely from the village of ‘Massif D’Uchaux’. In the glass it has a medium purple/ruby colour, with bramble blackberry and black currant fruit and a soft vanilla, pastel like minerality. Inky black…
Cheap Chianti, like Valpolicella, was exported to the UK in droves throughout the 60’s and 70’s, becoming synonymous with ‘plonk’… so it’s no wonder its taken a while for that reputation to fade enough for it to be taken seriously again. After a period of exile from our shelves, Chianti has started to make a…
(Or… “So they’re the same… except for when they’re not… huh?) There are a lot of different grape varieties out there and it can be a headache at the best of times trying to sort through what’s what. I can handle different names for different grapes varieties, but when they start giving different names to…
Another benchmark staple of The Wine Society is ‘The Society’s Claret’. Like their White Burgundy reviewed here, it’s a blend made up each year with the assistance of the Society’s wine buyers from recommended parcels of wine provided by Mason Sichel. Unlike the White Burgundy, however, this is non-vintage wine as some of the parcels…
This great value un-oaked Chardonnay from southern Burgundy’s Macon region is something of a calling card for The Wine Society. Each year one of their wine experienced wine buyers travels down to the region to oversee the selection of wines and the overall blending process that goes into creating this classic icon of their range.…
I found this bottle in a small independent wine shop in Bicester and thought it would make a good contrast to the ‘Bouchard Aine et Fils Pays D’oc’ I reviewed recently, so I’m going to give a little more background on this one than I normally would in a Quickie review. Both of these producers,…
Just because the Bas-Médoc region of Bordeaux sits to the north of the larger and more prestigious Haut-Médoc, doesn’t mean fantastic wines aren’t to be found there. If anything far better wines can be found at a lower price point than from the south, as this wonderfully earthy, inky, complex wine shows. It has a…
One of the best Portuguese white wines I’ve tasted to date. It has a pale lemon colour with clean fresh lemon, apple/pear and cream aroma upfront; developing more tropical fruit aromas as it warms a little. Clean acidity, ripe Lemon, grapefruit and pineapple on a textured palate. The finish is long and complex with layers…
(Or… “Since when is the opposite of Dry, Sweet? I thought it was Wet!”) One of the difficulties in talking about wine is in trying to communicate effectively what you’re trying to say. We all think differently, which is hard enough, but we process tastes differently too. The character in a particular wine that for…
A one off bottling for the Wine Society, blended together after a good harvest in 2014 left the producer with plenty of high quality wine left over. It has a deep ruby colour with Purple rim; intense inky aromas of bramble blackberry, blackcurrant and a lick of vanilla with a faint edge of brooding minerality…
Sometimes French Pinot Noir, especially from Burgundy can be designed to accompany food so much they become tangy by themselves… thankfully not so with this one! Pale ruby colour and a garnet rim full of red cherry, strawberry, Raspberry compote and soft vanilla aromas that join with the faintest hint of earthiness developing. On the…
Budgens is something of a Chimera on the high-street as far as supermarkets go… independently owned, varying wildly in what you can expect from store to store, with pieces of other high-street stores bolted on for good measure. The store I worked in for time as a teenager was on the lower end of their…
I have a soft spot for wines from the south of France and although the quality of wines can vary wildly in a region like Minervois (compared to more well know regions like the Rhone), when they get it right they come the closest to bridging the gap between old world wines and new. This…