#red

Aug 18, 2020

The Phoenix Rises: Château de Pommard chez Carabello-Baum

Cork talk: is it an instruction? The strikingly branded corks used for all Château de Pommard and Carabello-Baum Burgundies However small, and the vineyards are tiny compared to the great châteaux and estates of Bordeaux, no parcel or domaine in Burgundy ever changes hands unnoticed. So, the sale of Château de Pommard and its 20-ha walled vineyard (clos) in 2014 was big news. Only four families had owned the domaine in nearly 300 years and Marey-Monge is the largest clos and

Aug 13, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Château Fabre Gasparets Corbières-Boutenac 2017, France

£13.74–£20.50, Drinks & Co, Cellar Selected, Mr & Mrs Fine Wine, Noble Green Wines, Kwoff, Hedonism A jewel not just of Corbières but of all Languedoc red wines, Boutenac was officially recognised as the premier cru of Corbières in 2005 and remains its only stand-alone appellation. The 220 hectares of vineyards fan out from the Aleppo pine and Mediterranean scrub-clad hills of the Pinada range at the heart of the huge Corbières appellation. Pretty? Is the Pope Catholic? Carig

Jul 29, 2020

Douloufakis Winery Dafnios Liatiko 2017, Dafnes, Crete

£14.50–£16.25, The Daily Drinker, Maltby & Greek, Strictly Wine Let's start by unpacking the name. This is a dry red wine made from the Liatiko grape by Nikos Douloufakis, the leading light in the Dafnes region, a PDO in the middle of Crete, in the Heraklio prefecture. What's interesting about it? Tell me what isn't. It's quite a pale ruby red, medium-bodied and has distinctly fresh acidity and fine, sandy tannins. That's the basic shape that wraps around one beguiling flavou

Jul 9, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: La Garnacha Salvaje del Moncayo 2018, Spain

£8.49, Majestic Maybe it's auto suggestion, but there's a lovely off-the-beaten-track mountain wildness (salvaje means wild) to this old-vine Garnacha (aka Grenache), one of six under the the creative Vintae's Proyecto Garnachas banner that showcase the grape variety from old vineyards in different areas of the Ebro Valley in northeast Spain. The Salvaje vineyards lie on rocky soils at 820m asl on the north face of the Moncayo massif, where Navarra and Aragón meet and the Atl

Jul 2, 2020

Wine from the Edge: New Zealand and Oregon Pinot Noir

Ready for the off – sample bottles of New Zealand and Oregon Pinot Noir lined up in order for the tasting This tasting, which replaced what was going to be a full-day event in London, was described as a deep dive into Pinot Noir from around the 45th parallels. I’d say it was more of a brief but brilliant plunge: a one-hour 20-minute Zoom tasting of six wines presented by Bree Boskov, an Australian Master of Wine who lives in Oregon and is education manager for the Oregon Wine

Jun 11, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Château la Canorgue Rouge 2017, Luberon, France

£15.95, Yapp Brothers I wasn't planning to do another Provence red as Wine of the Week so soon, but I can't resist this and it's altogether different. Despite not being all that far geographically from Château Vignelaure – around 60km to the northwest – it's a different region. This is Luberon, where Provence meets the southern Rhône and the grape varieties reflect the southern Rhône. Château la Canorgue's red, a blend of Syrah, Grenache and old-vine Carignan, is dark, powerf

May 14, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: d'Arenberg The Footbolt Shiraz 2017, McLaren Vale Australia

£12–£14.99, Tesco, The Wine Society, Great Western Wine, ND John, Winepig Unashamedly full-throated Aussie Shiraz from a family-owned and run winery that never seems to put a foot wrong. D'Arenberg produces a whole range of wines – white, red, traditional, innovative – and offers great value too. Hats off to the inimitable fourth-generation boss and winemaker Chester Osborn. The Footbolt is made artisan-style in open-top vats with foot-treading, basket-pressing and a mix of o

May 13, 2020

A Pit Stop with Pedro Parra in Chile

The genie in the pit: Pedro Parra in one of thousands of soil pits (calicatas) he has dug, but this one is special: it's amid vines in Itata that produce his own wines “Chile is a great terroir used in a very boring way.” You always know where you are with Pedro Parra, soil scientist extraordinaire. They weren’t quite his opening words when I met up with him in Chile for the first time in a while, but they weren’t far off. He had already summarily dismissed Carmenère and a fe

Apr 30, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Domaine des Tourelles Vieilles Vignes Carignan 2018, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon

£17–£21, Great Grog, WoodWinters, The Wriggly Tin Wine Company, Borough Wines Old vines, old winery – Lebanon's first commercial one in 1868 – but a new wine, Domaine des Tourelles' first Carignan made from vines more than 50 years old. They lie at over 1000m asl in the western Bekaa Valley and they're organic and unirrigated: the Mediterranean climate keeps them happy. Winemaking is oak-free and simple: hand-picked grapes with thorough selection in the vineyards, fermentatio

Apr 23, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Domaine André Colonge et Fils Fleurie 2017, France

£15.20, Tanners Wines It's not just a beguiling name for a pretty wine. Good Fleurie has hidden depth, often ageing well for four or five years, sometimes more. Not exactly an iron fist in a velvet glove, but more to it than you might suppose at first sip. This one, from the Colonge family's 7ha of vineyards at the foot of the village, is perfect at two and a half years old: enticing floral and strawberry perfume, succulent summer-pudding fruit, delicate spice and Gamay's min

Apr 9, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Domaine de Mourchon Séguret Tradition 2017, Séguret Côtes du Rhône, France

£14.99–£16.95, Averys of Bristol , Black Dog Wines (UK) I’m often surprised by the wines I find I haven’t featured here before. This estate-bottled red Séguret is a case in point. I blame Domaine de Mourchon’s Loubié Rosé, the release of which is always one of the early delights of the new rosé season. Judging by the number of the times I have recommended various vintages (here and here for example), the rosé seems to deflect me from the very good Mourchon reds. Not this time

Apr 7, 2020

The New Order at Luce: New Wine, Winemaker and Winery and a Retrospective Tasting

Looking across the Luce vineyards to Frescobaldi's Tenuta di Castelgiocondo in southwest Montalcino in the November sunshine The text of this article was first published in The World of Fine Wine issue 63 There must have been no shortage of potential candidates for Lamberto Frescobaldi to choose from for the newly created post of technical director and oenologist at the new, all-singing, all-dancing, no-expense-spared Tenuta Luce winery in Montalcino. It was surely a red-hot

Mar 26, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Pas d'Histoires Le Rouge Syrah 2018, Pays d'Oc, France

£14, Red Squirrel Wine The name of this wine, "no fuss", may seem oddly inappropriate right now, but it's the kind of mellifluous, carefree red – what the French call a vin de soif – that's so comforting to have to hand at times like this. None of us, after all, is going to be hopping across the channel and speeding off to the south of France to buy our own any time soon. I bought it as part of an excellent-value mixed dozen (the Home School Reds case at £90) but it's availab

Mar 12, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: L'Arpenty Chinon 2018, Loire, France

£14.75, Yapp Brothers I've enjoyed a lot of vintages of the Desbourdes family's l'Arpenty Chinon over the years, so I'm surprised that it hasn't featured here before. High time it did – and just the wine to anticipate some slightly more spring-like weather. The summer of 2018 was strikingly hot and sunny in France, so this is darker, riper and more velvet-textured than usual, although still reassuringly fresh and moderate in alcohol. Depending how you like your Chinon Caberne

Feb 27, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: De Bortoli Regional Reserve Pinot Noir 2018, Yarra Valley, Australia

£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

Feb 20, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Altano Organic Douro 2017, Portugal

£10.50–£11.80, Booths, Waitrose, Davy's Wine, Tanners Wine, The Wine Shop (Knaresborough) I'd like to think that my venture into mouthwatering dry Riesling for last week's wine lifted the putative winter gloom. It certainly did nothing to improve the weather, so this week I'm back with a full-on winter red, although that doesn't mean it's not suitable for summer. It's an excellent barbecue red, but it's a bit cruel to mention summer and barbecues in current conditions. Altano

Feb 6, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Finca Constancia Entre Lunas Organic Tempranillo Moon Wine 2017, Castilla, Spain

£8.50 on offer, Sainsbury's The name of this wine is so long I couldn't fit in its designation, Vino de la Tierra, but that's what it is: a Tempranillo from an estate in the Vino de la Tierra (IGP in eurospeak) of Castilla, south of Madrid. As well as being certified organic, the vines are cultivated biodynamically – the various vineyard tasks timed according to the phases of the moon (hence Entre Lunas – 'between the moons'). It's a full-bodied, velvety red that has been age

Jan 30, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Vachnadziani Saperavi, Kakheti, Georgia

£9.59–£11, Fintry Wines, Vineyards Wine Shop, The Solent Cellar, Noble Green Wines What took me so long? Georgia has been making wine for 8,000 years, but this is the first time I've recommended one here. My excuse is that it's new to the UK, or at least new last autumn, together with six other wines being imported by Hallgarten Novum Wines from the Vachnadziani winery in the Kakheti region in eastern Georgia. While I would love to have recommended Vachnadziani's Qvevri red,

Jan 2, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Les Nivières Saumur 2017, Saumur, France

£7.49 on offer, Waitrose A red wine that's all about blackcurrant and currant-leaf fruit and freshness and soft-textured graphitey mineral flavours – textbook Loire Cabernet Franc, in fact, and an alternative to all the heavyweight reds that get trotted out in winter. It goes well with grilled/pan-fried lamb, especially flavoured with rosemary or thyme, with cold meats, tuna steaks and goats' cheeses and is best served on the cool side, but not chilled right down except in ho

Dec 23, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Cap Royal Bordeaux Supérieur 2016, France

£8 (on offer), Tesco I'm posting this week's wine three days ahead of schedule because it seems a lot more useful to highlight it when there's still time to buy it for Christmas, rather than leave it until Boxing Day (when some people will be more focused on Alka Seltzer than wine anyway). It's made with some input from the technical director of Château Pichon Baron and is the kind of red that gives everyday Bordeaux (aka claret) a good name. The fruit is nicely rounded and f