#red

Dec 4, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Purato Siccari Appassimento 2018, Terre Siciliane, Italy

£7.99–£8.99, Ocado and Majestic Organic, vegan-friendly and sustainable (vegetable ink, recycled paper, glass and cardboard), but there’s so much more to this Sicilian red than ticking boxes. It has Christmas written all over it. Dark, rich, spicy, warming and velvety, with layers of ripe red cherry, candied orange, toast, coffee, Christmas cake and Persian spice flavours, and it’s not too dry, giving it the wherewithal to stand up to cranberry sauce, spicy stuffings, herby s

Dec 2, 2019

The Festive Red Wine Guide 2019

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

Nov 28, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Château Puygueraud 2011, Francs Côtes de Bordeaux, France

£20.95 / £19.25, Lea & Sandeman The 2011 vintage in Bordeaux tends to be dismissed with faint praise – if that. Certainly, it was uneven and not a patch on 2009 or 2010, but some good wines were produced by the right people in the right place. Some very good. Step forward Château Puygueraud, made by Nicolas Thienpont in the tiny (by Bordeaux standards) northeastern appellation of Francs Côtes de Bordeaux (previously Côtes de Franc). The 2011 – Merlot with 20% Cabernet Franc a

Nov 14, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Dominique Piron Morgon La Chanaise 2017, France

Waitrose, £14.99 Good Beaujolais can be so enjoyable on its own that even lifelong devotees don't always realise just how versatile the wines of the ten Crus are with food. These are the individual appellations clustered in the north of the region and made, like all Beaujolais, from Gamay but each with its own character and name – Morgon, Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Brouilly, Régnié among them. The wines of Morgon, more or less at the centre of the ten, are some of the most power

Nov 7, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Taste the Difference Western Australia Shiraz 2018, Australia

£6.75, Sainsbury's I thought the price must be an error when I saw it in the tasting booklet. Whoever heard of a red from Western Australia at this price, not least a blend with a Margaret River component? When I tasted it and saw who the winemaker was, I did double-take mark two. It’s bright and pure with spicy red berry fruit, earthy sweetness and a touch of chocolate – easy to drink, unforced and wearing its alcohol lightly. The man behind it is David Hohnen, who in a form

Oct 24, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Castello Collemassari Montecucco Rosso Riserva 2015, Tuscany, Italy

£14.99, Waitrose This is the perfect wine for people who like the thought of Chianti but sometimes find the reality too lean and tangy. It has Sangiovese's earth-sweet tobacco and autumn-forest flavours, but it's plump and fleshy with a velvet texture and perfumed cherry fruit. It's polished and structured but slips down effortlessly – in other words, the flavour of Sangiovese but none of the potential pain. The Montecucco wine region is in warmer southern Tuscany, sandwiched

Oct 3, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Along Came Jones Lledoner Pelut Hairy Grenache 2018, Vin de France

£13.50–£16.99, The Wine Society, Flagship Wines, Fareham Wine Cellar, The Oxford Wine Company Domaine Jones is no stranger to my wine blogposts, so I'll concentrate on the wine, rather than tell Katie Jones's story again (which you can read here and here), but I will just say that she is an inspired, sensitive and meticulous winemaker specialising in wines made from plots of old vines around Tuchan in Languedoc-Roussillon. This wine is from a parcel of 70–80 year old vines an

Sep 19, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Wirra Wirra Church Block 2016, McLaren Vale, Australia

£9.99 (on offer) Waitrose; £10.11 (on offer) Ocado I've just done a captivating and illuminating tasting of 12 wines chosen as Australia's future icons*. Running freely across region, grape variety and style, themes emerged nonetheless: a focus on specific sites and vineyards, Australia's old-vine heritage, and low-intervention winemaking among others. There was an orange wine and other new-wave wines, but there were also some classics, which is where this week's wine comes i

Sep 12, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Vigneti Tardis Martedi 2018, Paestum Rosso, Campania, Italy

£19.50, Berry Bros & Rudd I love southern Italian Aglianico and this is as authentic as they come, although it's not wholly Aglianico: it's a blend with Aglianicone. The producers, Bruno Conciliis of Viticoltori Conciliis and Jack Lewens, sommelier and owner of Leroy wine bar/bistro in London's Shoreditch, say Aglianicone is a forgotten clone of Aglianico, one with larger, thicker-skinned berries. Wine Grapes, the bible on the subject, is not a fan, saying that it's not a mut

Aug 29, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Domaine de la Grosse Pierre Chiroubles 2018, France

£14.45, Haynes, Hanson & Clark Chiroubles is one of my favourite Beaujolais Crus (the 10 jewels in the Beaujolais crown that go under their own appellation names), but it’s never been one of the most popular in the UK. It’s one of the smaller Crus, admittedly, but I think the problem is more to do with pronunciation: the likes of Morgon and Fleurie look so much easier to say. Apart from being small (under 400 hectares), Chiroubles is the highest, has the highest proportion of

Aug 22, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Finest Peumo Carmenere, Valle del Cachapoal, Chile

£9, Tesco Carmenère is something of a Marmite wine. It has a leafy, herbal note that some people don’t like, especially in red wines, but I’ve always liked a fresh, sweet green element (if green sweetness doesn’t sound too contradictory) as long as it’s more like freshly picked bay leaves than green capsicum and, more importantly, as long it doesn’t dominate. In the case of Carmenère, the signature flavours include plummy, ripe, blackberryish fruit, a savoury, smoky soy-sauce

Aug 1, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Kellerei Kurtatsch Lagrein 2018, Alto Adige, Italy

£15.65, Haynes Hanson & Clark A wonderful example of northern Italy's Lagrein grape – deep coloured and bathed in black cherry, spice, violet and slightly ashy mineral flavours, all carried by nimble tannins and Alpine freshness and energy (Lagrein's tannins can be a bit coarse, so the velvet-smoothness here is all the more welcome). It's a variety with fascinating origins: a natural cross of another north Italian grape, Teroldego, and an unidentified variety, it also counts

Jul 15, 2019

Zeroing in on Zweigelt - the wine behind Bin #002

The second in The Wine Society’s new Bin Series is an Austrian red made from Zweigelt by Familie Mantler in the Weinviertel region, who do everything themselves, from looking after their 12ha of vineyards to ageing the wine in old acacia casks to delivering it to local restaurants. As for the wine, it could hardly be a better summer red because it’s best served cool or lightly chilled to emphasise its juicy brightness and smoothness. It’s hard to imagine how you could get mor

Jul 11, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Domaine Yannick Amirault Bourgueil La Coudraye 2017, Bourgueil, France

£16.95/£14.95 Lea & Sandeman Bourgueil is made from a grape variety that, until recently, the rest of the world regarded as little more than a minor player, a support act for Cabernet Sauvignon and/or Merlot in blends. Now Cabernet Franc is right up there with the grape fashionistas, used as a solo star by winemakers as far afield as Chile and Argentina, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand and Languedoc and appreciated in these warmer climates for the leafy freshness and spicy

Jun 26, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Finest Saint-Chinian 2017, Saint-Chinian, Languedoc, France

£7.50, Tesco I’ve got a soft spot for Saint-Chinian, Minervois’ less well-known northeast neighbour, and always look for it on restaurant wine lists (usually in vain, it has to be said) and if I need to grab an impromptu bottle of red in a wine shop or supermarket. It’s usually good value, whether cheap like this or a more expensive single-estate wine, but more important is its characteristic flavour: sometimes intensely stony and savoury, sometimes more obviously fruity and

Jun 24, 2019

A new Tuscan superstar?

After a career steering many of Tuscany's top wines into the limelight, Carlo Ferrini, the consultant to so many glittering Italian estates, is now making wine from his own 2.5ha of Sangiovese in southeastern Brunello di Montalcino. I have only tasted the 2013, his fourth vintage, made from 12 year-old vines, but on this showing there seems no doubt that the exceptionally elegant and intense Giodo is one of the fine wine world’s new stars. Ferrini searched for years, apparent

Jun 6, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Louis Latour Pinot Noir Les Pierres Dorées 2017, Coteaux Bourguignons, France

£17.89, TheDrinkShop.com This Burgundian Pinot Noir is both unusual and classic. Classic because it has the sweet, delicately spicy, red-cherry fruit, forest-floor, earth-fresh mineral notes and fine texture of a Burgundian Pinot Noir. Unusual because it's from 18 hectares of vineyard in the Beaujolais region – not in the north among the famous granite and schist soils of Crus such as Moulin-à-Vent, Morgon and Saint-Amour, but in the south, source of simple Beaujolais. What b

May 23, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Balla Geza Blaufränkisch 2017, Minis, Romania

£11/£9.90, The Daily Drinker This jewel-like, fruity red is a great way to embark on a Blaufränkisch journey if you haven’t tasted the grape variety before, and an equally good way to continue if you have. It's a high quality variety, essentially of Central and Eastern Europe. There's not actually much of it in Romania (where it's called Burgund Mare) – Hungary and Austria have far more – but it’s very much at home in the warm Minis region in the far west near the Hungarian b

May 20, 2019

Bowled over by a Bobal, Spain’s other red grape

A new wine range makes its debut with a stunning Spanish Bobal. Bin #001 Altolandon Bobal 2017, from vineyards farmed organically at 1100m in Manchuela in Valencia, goes on sale on Monday – and when it’s gone it’s gone. It’s the first in The Wine Society’s new Bin Series - one-off parcels introduced as and when a Society buyer finds one. The Bobal* is Head of Buying Pierre Mansour’s discovery. The idea is that the range should fulfil one of the stated aims of the Society’s fo

May 9, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Cosme Palacio Rioja Vendimia Seleccionada 2016, Rioja, Spain

£14, Sainsbury's This has been aged in oak – and not any old oak but "lightly toasted, hand-cleft French new oak barrels from the very best cooperages in France," according to the bodega – but as it spent only eight months in the barrels it isn't either a Rioja Crianza or a Reserva, both of which have to be at least a year in oak. It's certainly none the poorer for that. What the oak provides here is a lightly oaky backdrop and polished texture to support the glossy blueberry