#supermarket

Nov 26, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Santa Tresa Rina Russa Frappato 2019, Terre Siciliane, Italy

£9.99–£10.75, Ocado, Vintage Roots I recommended an earlier incarnation of this organic wine a few years ago as a perfect spring red. In August this year, in searing heat, I had the 2019 and thought it was the ideal summer red. I've just had it again on a dark, chilly November evening and come to the conclusion that it's a delicious all-seasons red. With its gem-bright, pale colour and medium body, it doesn't have that hearty winter look, but trades it for suppleness, freshne

Nov 18, 2020

Festive Fizz 2020: Anything But Champagne

It may be a festive season unlike any other, but we'll still need wine of all sorts –perhaps more than ever. The first of my 2020 round-ups is, as always, any kind of sparkling wine except Champagne, which gets its own show. This year there's a red, as well as white and rosé, and some pretty unusual wines: a Frappato, an Albariño and a stunning biodynamic wild-ferment English sparkling wine. I don't know what I was expecting when I tasted the English biodynamic natural wine,

Oct 8, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Waitrose & Partners País 2019, Maule, Chile

£7.99, Waitrose A juicy, soft, low-tannin, pale red with strawberry and white pepper flavours, a swish of orange and a stony mineral burr. Delicious. It could stand in for good Beaujolais, or Pinot Noir or Etna Rosso, although it's made from a grape variety that has no connection with any of them: País. No need to be surprised if you're not familiar with País. Most people aren't. What might surprise you is that it has long been Chile's second most planted variety. Where has i

Oct 1, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Vasse Felix Classic Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2020, Margaret River, Australia

£12, Tesco I can't quite believe this is my first Wine of the Week from the 2020 vintage. So much has happened this year, the southern hemisphere harvest seems aeons ago. Even Champagne started picking seven weeks ago... But enough musing, let's get on with the wine. A zingy, citrus-facing white might not immediately seem a match for the current weather, but Semillon (70% of the blend) has mouthfeel – a delicate, oily roundness and suppleness that gives substance to the vibra

Aug 27, 2020

Yalumba Organic Viognier 2019, South Australia

£7.49 (on offer), Waitrose I had scheduled Yalumba Samuel's Collection Bush Vine Grenache 2018 this week, getting in ahead of International Grenache Day on September 18, but this luscious Viognier, which missed out a couple of months ago, is now on offer (down from £10), making it even better value – cracking value, in fact, and a great wine buy for the bank holiday. You can't go wrong with a Yalumba Viognier. It's been one of the Hill Smith family's specialities since the 19

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 7, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: El Viaje de Ramón Garnacha Rosé 2019, Rioja, Spain

£7 (on offer), Co-op A pale, dry, easygoing rosé that should be a dream for anyone who loves both Provence rosé and Rioja. It's light on its feet, fresh and supple with a spice and rose-oil fragrance and delicate red apple, cherry and redcurrant fruit. The producer is Ramón Bilbao, whose winemaker Rodolfo Bastida is an aficionado of Garnacha (aka Grenache), of pale dry rosados and of high-altitude vineyards: the grapes for this grow at 550–700m asl in the Alta Najerilla area

Apr 16, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Brokenwood Thompson's Road Hunter Valley Semillon 2018, Australia

£8.99/£9.99, Waitrose Hunter Valley Semillon isn't like Sémillon from anywhere else (and I'm not talking about the absence of the accent). The classic Hunter style is dry and light-bodied but intensely flavoured with an electric current of citrus zest and a smooth, lanolin-like texture. With age it develops toasted, honeyed complexity, as if aged in oak – and all delivered at naturally low alcohol levels: in this case 11%. Thompson's Road 2018 is still young, so doesn't have

Apr 2, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: The Doctors' Sauvignon Blanc 2019, Marlborough New Zealand

£8–£10, Tesco, Waitrose, Ocado, Booths The name of last week's wine of the week translated as "no fuss". This week it's The Doctors. It could be a metaphor for what's been happening in some parts of the world in recent weeks, but neither wine was chosen for its name. I've had this Sauvignon Blanc lined up for a while but was waiting for warmer weather (I've given up on that) and for the 2019 vintage to be well stocked (no need to spurn the 2018 if that's what you find). At a

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 16, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Chateau Changyu Moser XV Cabernet Sauvignon Blanc de Noir 2018, Ningxia, China

£11.99 on offer, Ocado This is an obvious choice if you're celebrating Chinese New Year next week, but it's so much more than that: a true original, a Cabernet Sauvignon rosé of real concentration and character, initiated and produced under the close supervision of well-known Austrian winemaker Lenz Moser in the Ningxia region, 1300km to the west of Beijing on the fringes of the Gobi desert. It's bone dry, yet opulent in texture with succulent fruit (suggestions of strawberry

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

Dec 19, 2019

The Festive Sweet, Sticky and Fortified Guide 2019

‘Tis the season for sweet and fortified wines, for entertaining, for communing with quietly, or giving as presents. Fortifieds, in particular, are often bargains and the Riesling, Tokajis, Sétubal, Madeira and single quinta port I’ve chosen can all be cellared. So can the Noval LBV, but that’s not the norm. Deciding on the order of wines in this guide is always problematic and this year I have reverted to ascending order of price, but within three categories: Sweet, Dry Sherr

Dec 13, 2019

The Festive Champagne Guide 2019

Writing my annual Festive Champagne Guide is, as you can imagine, no hardship, not least because I have tasted everything in it recently. As always it has been difficult to whittle down the numbers, but one way is to exclude most of the Champagnes recommended in last year's guide (however painful some exclusions are) and those featured in my blogs on Drappier and Bruno Paillard. Even whittled down, there's a spectrum of styles, ages, producers and retailers, presented in asce

Dec 12, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: The Best Marqués De Los Rios Rioja Blanco Reserva 2015, Spain

£13, Morrisons Made for Morrisons' The Best range by Baron de Ley, one of Rioja's commendable, big players, this combines the best of traditional white Rioja in its oak impact and the best of the modern style in its fruit and freshness. After 14 months' maturing in American oak, there's plenty of oaky, spicy, almost resiny richness, all neatly balanced by the intensity and zing of preserved-lemon fruit and a silky, rounded texture. If you don't like oaky wine, then it's not f

Dec 11, 2019

The Festive White Wine Guide 2019

My round-up of white wines from around the globe to cover Christmas and all the other festivities from simple supper to a big splash that demands something like a smart white Burgundy. It's always more difficult to find cheap white wines with something to say for themselves than it is to find inexpensive reds with some character, but the ones below should do the trick and I've also thrown in a keenly priced pale rosé from New Zealand. Wines are listed in ascending order of pr

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

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