£11.95–£12.99, Saxtys Wines, Quantock Abbey Wine, Adnams This is not a wine that's going to stand out on the shelf, but it deserves to. Behind the classically restrained label is an enchanting cool-climate Pinot Noir, with red cherry, cranberry and soft-spoken spice woven together with textbook purity, suppleness, freshness and elegant complexity. Pair it with fish such as tuna or prosciutto-wrapped cod or monkfish, with poultry (e.g. roast chicken or quail), meat such as por

My round up of red wines to take you through all kinds of festivities - major, minor and in some cases festivities for years to come. As always, wines are listed in ascending order of price, give or take differences in retailers’ prices and special offers (note that offers in stores and online are not always the same). If you're in the money, you'll know to scroll down and start at the end. One big retailer worth a mention is the Co-op: several wines I would like to have reco

£17.25, Yapp Brothers Alsace is renowned for aromatic whites and sparkling wines, but its Pinot Noir reds are also worth keeping tabs on. In cooler years – and we're getting fewer of those – they're better used in the sparkling Crémants (white and rosé) but, in a summer like 2015, producers of the calibre of Léon Beyer make compelling red wines. The Réserve Personelle is very pale, as only Pinot Noir can be, and has delicate but mouthwatering ripe red fruit and hedgerow berry

Tasting notes on another four impressive Italian recent releases, following on from my Caiarossa blog The four wines – San Leonardo from Trentino, Conte Vistarino Pinot Nero Bertone (awaiting its proper label) from Lombardy and the two Tuscans, Poggio Valente from the Maremma and Le Serre dell'Ornellaia from Bolgheri San Leonardo 2013, Vigneti delle Dolomiti, Trentino San Leonardo is the flagship wine of the eponymous tenuta (estate) in Trentino and is one of Italy’s iconic r

£20 on offer, Roberts & Speight In the spirit of the belt-tightening month, I was going to recommend a cheerfully cheap wine again this week and save the Pinot as a Valentine's Day suggestion, but I'm not going to hold back when there's a half-price offer around. I've always enjoyed La Masía's fleshy, fruit-rich style, but what I also like is the way it seems to have become a little lighter and less oaky, all the while keeping its defining cherry, pomegranate and cranberry fr

£10.99 (offer price), Waitrose Crowd-pleasingly approachable fizz with generous nutty, toasty, yeasty, fresh bread flavours wrapped around a fruity heart – the ideal bargain bubbly for New Year's Eve (down £4 until 22 January). It's made in the the same way as Champagne (known as the Méthode Cap Classique in the Cape) using Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, the two main varieties of Champagne, and it's aged on its lees for 15–18 months to give the generous creamy flavour and texture

The tasting of the first two vintages, 1995 and 1996, of Roederer's ultrarare Cristal Vinothèque When Louis Roederer released the first vintage of Cristal Vinothèque in September last year, the 1995, there was a launch for the press in France, but no tasting in the UK. When you know that the entire UK allocation is 48 bottles of the white (out of a grand total of 400) and 18 bottles of the rosé, you can see why. On Tuesday, for the launch of the 1996 (500 bottles of white pro

£21.99–£23.99, Ministry of Drinks, Mitchells Wines, Noel Young Wines California wines don't feature here as often as I would like, or as often as perhaps they should. There are any number of wines I'd like to recommend, but the problem is usually price – expensive compared to wines from elsewhere. But that's just the way it is: land is expensive, there's a ready domestic market, etcetera. That said, the price of this single-vineyard Pinot Noir from the cool, coastal Santa Mar

£29.95, Bluebell Vineyard Estates English Wine Week starts on Saturday. There's no guarantee of good weather, especially as there's a bank holiday involved, but there'll be no shortage of English wines on offer and more than 200 UK vineyards are now open to the public (you didn't know? Check out englishwineproducers.com). The producer of this week's wine, Bluebell Vineyard Estates on the edge of the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, is open Monday to Saturday 10am–4pm (bluebellv

£8.99, Aldi The Lot Series wines are smaller parcels of more expensive bottles – more expensive by Aldi's standards, but not by Central Otago or Pinot Noir standards. Cheap or not, it's smooth, light-bodied and lively and brimming with fragrant, cherry and plum fruit, sappy orange-peel freshness and a dash of spicy oak. You can drink it without food, but it goes with fish such as salmon or red mullet, simply roast quail or chicken, charcuterie, savoury tarts or other light me

£15.99, or £13.99 in any 6-bottle mix, Majestic This is a best of both worlds Pinot Noir – cherry and raspberry perfume and fruit, gentle earthy sweetness, almondy spice and supple texture, making it Burgundian in style but with a touch more of the sweet fruit and flesh you find in new world Pinots. In fact it comes from neither place, but is made by a Burgundian, Laurent Delaunay, in the region he thinks has what it takes to make the best Pinot Noirs in France outside Burgun

£22–£23, The Wine Society, Booths supermarkets I don’t normally do split vintages – i.e. recommend two at the same time – but 2012 and 2013 are both available and, although they're different in character, they're equally delicious. The 2012 is from a cooler year, but with an extra year’s age there’s a lovely suppleness and silkiness to the spicy, red cherry-perfumed purity and cherry cake and nutmeg elegance. The 2013 shows its youth with a more savoury, structured backbone,

Olivier Krug was in town last week for the launch of the 2004 vintage Krug. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t a spare seat in the house – a gem of a Georgian house in edgy Whitechapel, as it happens. Olivier charms everyone and a Krug tasting isn’t something you miss without a very good reason (death throes, exile, that sort of thing). I must say I do find that a Krug tasting at 10.30 in the morning puts a shine on the rest of the day. The rest of the week, in fact. The tasting tu

£12.95, Stannary Street Wine Co It would be hard to find a better value Pinot Noir than this. It's all the more surprising because California isn't known as a hot source of mid-priced wines in the UK (very good at the top end) and Pinot Noir is a notoriously difficult grape variety to get right in a warm climate. But Scotto Cellars has given us a star: juicy and supple with succulent strawberry and raspberry fruit against a backdrop of subtle, toasty oak and a bright, fresh f

£13, Sainsbury's Sancerre Rouge is the archetypal summer red wine – not that that should stop you drinking it at any other time, but it’s Pinot Noir at its most refreshing and elegant. This one, made at La Cave des Vins de Sancerre, has a raspberry, strawberry and pomegranate fruit quality and oodles of gentle charm. Serve it cool, but not so heavily chilled that you silence it. It’s one of the best reds to drink with fish, especially salmon, red mullet and cod or monkfish wr

£10.95, The Wine Society I’ve tasted seven of the latest Blind Spot Australian wines and it’s difficult to choose only one as Wine of the Week. They’re all good, good value and different, so it depends what style or grape variety you like, the occasion and what sort of food you’ll be having, if any. One general thing I can say about the style is that it’s much more about purity and elegance than brawn. The Pinot Noir I’ve settled on sums up the range perfectly. It’s made in a

I made the point in last week's Wine of the Week that Germany has never been short of red wines. More than one third of its vineyards are red grapes and it’s the third largest grower of Pinot Noir in the world. Yes, the world. Only France and the US have more Pinot and they both grow a significant amount of it for sparkling wines. New Zealand's Pinot Noir plantings are way behind Germany's. So Pinot Noir is well established in Germany, but what has changed is the style of red

£15, selected Marks & Spencer Hands up if you didn’t know Germany made red wine. Quite a show of hands, I bet. In fact, Germany has never held back on red – nearly one third of its vineyards are red grapes – but until quite recently the wines were aimed squarely at the domestic market's traditional taste for very lightweight reds. Now there’s a generation of winemakers making a riper, fuller, contemporary style that's somewhere between red Burgundy and New Zealand Pinot Noir.

£8.50, Marks & Spencer I was going to recommend Stepp Pinot Noir from Germany this week, but there's been a delay with the delivery and it has yet to reach the shelves, so I'm recommending the latest vintage of an old favourite from Chile instead. It's no exaggeration to say it has to be one of the best value Pinot Noirs in the world and each vintage is just a little better than the last. This won a gold medal in the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA is the world's largest and

This is the sort of piece I normally write at the close of the year, but I have more than enough material and deserving wines to mention already. Who knows how many more I may have by the end of the year? So, the next big thing in wine is? Well, goodness, don’t ask me. If I knew, I wouldn’t be sitting here telling you, I’d be making sure I was in on the action and the rewards. What I can say is that I seem to have had more frontier-breaking wines this year than ever. Admitted