#France

4 days ago

WINE OF THE WEEK: Jacques Boncoeur Brut Réserve Champagne, France

£22 (on offer), Bon Coeur Fine Wines A timely reminder that in the season of the cheery Champagne deal supermarkets are not the only places to shop. Bon Coeur Fine Wines’ own brand Champagne is good value at its usual price of £28.60 and cracking value at £22, the offer price until the end of the year. And just like its price, it’s a really cheery Champagne – properly aged and with pretty fruit – so one with wide appeal, a useful attribute at this time of year, when you never

Nov 17

WINE OF THE WEEK: Olivier Coste Rare Carignan Blanc 2021, Vin de France

£13, Vino Gusto, Wine and the Vine, Strictly Wine, Great Wines Direct, Corking Wines and other independents* I’ve been waiting to feature this wine and even now I’m going ahead before all the, necessarily small, number of stockists has moved on to the 2021 vintage. Necessarily small because Carignan Blanc is so rare. Olivier Coste, 9th generation of his family at Domaine Montrose in Languedoc, believes there are only 250 hectares of Carignan Blanc left in the world, but I’m r

Nov 10

WINE OF THE WEEK: Gérard Bertrand Orange Gold 2020, Vin de France

£15, Ocado; Vinatis UK, All About Wine It's only four weeks and three intervening red wines since this slot was last occupied by an orange wine, but I can't resist this, not least because it's a very different expression. from the fragrant, hazy pink Greek Moschofilero. It's an amber-gold organic wine produced by Gérard Bertrand, a former rugby international who has built up an empire of 16 biodynamically farmed estates in the South of France since taking over the family doma

Oct 27

WINE OF THE WEEK: Big Beltie Cabernet Sauvignon 2021, Pays d'Oc, France

£9–£10.95, House of Townend, Lush Wines, The Grape & The Good, The Whalley Wine Shop, South Downs Cellars, Richardsons of Whitehaven I'll come to the name and the label in a moment but, in case you're jumping to conclusions, this isn't a big belter of a wine. It's medium-full and pulsing with Cabernet Sauvignon energy and rich, sunny fruit. Think plum and cassis lightly brushed with aromatic, woody herbs, supple tannins discreetly wrapped in oak, and a flourish of bay-leaf sp

Oct 6

WINE OF THE WEEK: La Cendrillon Nuance 2020, Vin de France

£13.20, Tanners Wines Wines rarely feature in this slot twice, but the 2018 vintage of La Cendrillon Nuance was my Wine of the Week in August 2019. I’m making an exception because when I tasted this 2020 last month I was as bowled over by its originality and deliciousness as I was by the earlier vintage. It’s richly textural and has some weight, but it's streaked with zesty, chiselled acidity – the energy and richness playing against each other perfectly. Flavours range from

Sep 15

WINE OF THE WEEK: Domaine Garrigue Grande 2020, Coteaux de la Cabrerisse, Languedoc, France

£7.99, in any 12 bottle mix Laithwaites I think this is a first for me – and likely to be for most wine drinkers – a Coteaux de la Cabrerisse. It’s the only wine sold in the UK from this tiny IGP (formerly Vin de Pays) and Domaine Garrigue Grande is one of only two producers using the designation (Château de Caraguilhes is the other). The producers are Anne and Xavier Volontat, the seventh generation to run their family wine estate, Château Les Palais, based in a 12th-century

Aug 10

Prime Time for Pink: Summer Rosé Round-up 2022 Part 2: Provence and the South

This second rosé round-up of the summer is devoted to Provence, plus five wines from the south of France. Why hive off Provence from the rest of the world’s rosés? In a large part it’s to make the two articles more digestible: there are 17 pinks reviewed below (a selection of the wines I tasted). But it’s also because Provence is in a league of its own, commercially as well as in the way it has set standards, benchmarks and a model for rosé worldwide. The vineyards, which str

Aug 3

Penfolds French-ish Launches, the New Grange, the Fabled Bin 60A and More

When Penfolds launches its 2022 collection tomorrow, Thursday 4 August, it will include two French, or French-ish, still wines for the first time. Not Penfolds’ first French wines, because it launched three vintage Champagnes in partnership with Thiénot in 2019, and not its first northern hemisphere still wines, because it launched a Napa-Australian red blend last year, but the first wines from Bordeaux. Or more or less Bordeaux. Clarification in a moment. The two wines are P

Jul 21

WINE OF THE WEEK: Taste the Difference Coteaux du Giennois Sauvignon Blanc 2020, France

£11, Sainsbury's If you fancy an alternative to Sancerre or Pouilly-Fumé that's close in both style and origin, this refreshing dry white from brothers Clément and Florian Berthier is spot on. Coteaux du Giennois not only makes its white wines from Sauvignon Blanc like Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé but practically rubs shoulders with both appellations on the banks of the Loire. Yet, while they’re two of France’s best known white wines, Coteaux du Giennois is little seen, despite

Jul 19

Prime Time for Pink: Summer 2022 Rosé Round-up Part 1

Update, August 12 I've just added two more wines to this, so it's now 12 appetite-whetting rosés. The additions, Ramón Bilbao Rosado and Señorio de Sarría Viñedo Cinco are both Spanish, from the neighbouring regions of Rioja and Navarra, and both are based on Garnacha, but they couldn't be more different in style. I haven't yet found a UK stockist of the 2021 vintage of the Señorio de Sarría, but look out for it if you're in Spain. Scroll down. Ten appetite-whetting rosés rou

Jul 7

WINE OF THE WEEK: Petite Immortelle 2018, Côtes du Roussillon Villages, France

£10.90–£12, Gorey Wine Cellar, lovewhatyoueat, Bath Road Beers, Beckford Bottle Shop, Cork of the North, SW Bottle Shop, Red & White An approachable, fruity red that's just right for the season. That's not to say it wouldn't go down well in winter too, it's just that it's really refreshing drunk lightly chilled on a warm evening. In terms of flavour, think sun-dappled raspberries plucked straight from the bush, mulberries, peppery spice and a whiff of garrigue herbs. The blen

Jun 23

WINE OF THE WEEK: Pierre Jaurant Saint-Chinian 2020, Languedoc, France

£5.99, Aldi Saint-Chinian is an appellation I look out for in restaurants. The wines – white and rosé as well as the more abundant reds – are usually better value than more familiar names. More than that, it’s a region where quality-focused estates are doing interesting things and in both the appellation’s soil types, the higher altitude schists in the north and west and the limestone and clay in lower areas to the south. And it's one of the regions I look to in supermarkets

Jun 2

WINE OF THE WEEK: Château des Fougères La Raison 2012, Graves, France

£16, Tesco I was planning to choose something that shouted summer more obviously this week, but along came a timely reminder that you don’t have to pay a fortune to get good, mature red Bordeaux. Where else do you get impeccable 10-year-old red wine at this sort of price? In fact, if you can get a delivery slot by June 6 and buy six on-line, you’ll get it at £10.50 a bottle, or £14 by the bottle for delivery by June 13. As far as summer goes, far from being a heavy red, La Ra

May 26

WINE OF THE WEEK: A de Château d'Arche Bordeaux Blanc Sec 2020, France

£13.50, The Wine Society This is the debut dry wine from a Sauternes Grand Cru and it's delicious. Fresh herbs, grass, dried flowers, chamomile and nectarine on the nose meet a succulent, creamy palate with refreshing notes of green tea, grapefruit peel and acacia honey. It's a great advertisement for Bordeaux Sémillon, which accounts for 85% of the blend and often goes uncelebrated in favour of fashionable Sauvignon Blanc. And, while no one wants to see Sauternes disappear,

May 11

Moët's Luxury Cuvée MCIII and the Enigmatic Non-Appearance of its Successor

The text of this article was first published in The World of Fine Wine issue 68 (June 2020) LATEST, April 12, 2022: I asked Moët to give me an update on the release of MCIII 002. Here's the reply: "There isn’t any update to MCIII yet." When Moët launched its sumptuous and pioneering MCIII in 2015, the first release was described as “the ultimate expression” of Champagne and was named 001.14. It sounds slightly James Bond, but the numbers simply refer to the chronology: cuvée

Feb 8

You Have to Go Back to 1865 at Domaine de la Romanée Conti to Meet a Vintage Like 2019...

Perrine Fenal and Aubert de Villaine, co-directors of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, at Corney & Barrow's offices in London. The photo of Perrine was taken at the tasting on 3 February, and the photo of Aubert, her uncle, was taken at the previous tasting, pre-pandemic, on 29 January 2020. (I didn't catch him in time last week.) Domaine de la Romanée Conti releases its wines en primeur a year after the rest of Burgundy, so the estate's 2019 wines got their first UK showing last

Nov 18, 2021

WINE OF THE WEEK: Château Bouissel Fronton Le Beau Vin 2016, Fronton, France

£8.95, The Wine Society I'm always delighted to find a red Fronton to recommend. We don't see many wines in the UK from this small appellation in southwest France (about 30km north of Toulouse), but they're always worth a look. The best are deliciously supple, round and fruity, and yet with their own distinctive flavours thanks to the Négrette grape, which has to be the principal variety in any Fronton wine, red or rosé (there's no white). It's a grape variety almost unknown

Nov 17, 2021

The Lowdown on the World's Most Mysterious Liqueur: Green Chartreuse

It has a centuries’ old history, a cult following and has given its name to a shade of green and so far no one has succeeded in replicating it. Welcome to the world’s most mysterious liqueur Chartreuse but not as we know it: a small Chartreuse bottle, or, as it says on the label "Une Tarragone" and on the metal base Une Chartreuse. It was made in Tarragona and, when given to me in 1988 at the distillery in Voiron, it was thought to date from around 1935. Below is the back of

Nov 11, 2021

WINE OF THE WEEK: Calmel & Joseph Saint Chinian Blanc 2018, Languedoc, France

£11.99 on offer, waitrosecellar The rocky, arid Saint Chinian appellation in Languedoc is much better known for its red wines, but its whites – just 5% of production – are always worth trying. Witness this captivating example with its late-summer orchard fruit, dried flower and hay aromas and full, yet elegantly mineral, spice-edged palate – a wine bound by energy, texture, structure and freshness. The grape varieties are Grenache Blanc, Roussanne, Vermentino and Viognier (40

Oct 14, 2021

WINE OF THE WEEK: Roc Cuvée 2020, Bordeaux, France

£13.99/£12./59, Laithwaites A red Bordeaux in a Burgundy bottle without a capsule and label graphics showing a love-you hand squeezing a bunch of grapes was never going to be a conventional Bordeaux. Stand by, then, for generous, bright fruit (sweet plums, blackberries and blackcurrants), fleeting whiffs of parma violets and spicy tobacco and a gentle undertow of refreshing leafiness. Tannin? There's not an elbow or an angle in sight, just glossy curves and mouth-filling, ve