#supermarket

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

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 31, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Alheit Vineyards Limited Release Chenin Blanc 2018, Western Cape, South Africa

£14.99, Majestic Welcome back, Majestic. After we nearly lost the pioneering wine warehouse chain altogether earlier this year, it’s good to see it not just hanging on but bouncing back with a revitalised wine range that recalls its heyday. Stalwarts such as the gorgeous Inama Soaves have been joined by old favourites that had been dropped, among them Château Caronne Ste-Gemme, and boosted by a raft of captivating new wines, of which this Chenin is one and the light, lip-smac

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

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

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

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 20, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Litmus Orange 2016, England

£14.99, Waitrose I've had to wait weeks for this unusual and delicious wine to be on the shelves before recommending it. It's now in selected stores and online later in the month, coinciding neatly with some discussion in the trade/on social media about whether Bacchus, the grape from which it's made, is a one-trick pony and/or should be pushed as the UK's signature white variety. Here's my two pennyworth: Litmus Orange is proof that Bacchus is capable of more than one expres

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

May 2, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Moss Wood Semillon 2016, Margaret River, Western Australia

£16.99, waitrosecellar.com and 8 stores Sémillon is in decline pretty well all over the world, often losing out to the more aromatic, feisty Sauvignon Blanc. Sémillon is still big in Bordeaux, of course, giving the world exceptional botrytis sweet wines, but as a dry wine it's just not in vogue. And yet it can be wonderful, with flavours not unlike Sauvignon, but more muted, and a distinctive, rich, lanolin-like texture. With age, it often develops a nutty or toasty character

Mar 28, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Descendientes de J Palacios Pétalos Bierzo 2016, Bierzo, Spain

£15.99/£17.99, Majestic; £18.50, Berry Bros & Rudd, WoodWinters Álvaro Palacios of Priorat and Rioja fame and his nephew Ricardo Pérez are the dynamos behind this Bierzo, but more than that they’re the people who spearheaded the 21st century renaissance of this northwest region and its Mencía grape (white Bierzo – not much more common than hens’ teeth – is also well worth tracking down). The key to the red wines is the old vineyards – a patchwork of steeply inclined, schist/s