#supermarket

Nov 29, 2016

A £12 Wine You Can Age For Two Decades

Grapes for Amarone drying on traditional bamboo trays After visiting Valpolicella last month, I was going to write about the current machinations and disunity in the region regarding the production of Amarone, a wine of which I’m very fond and one that has increased enormously in popularity, production and sales in the last two decades (that’s a large part of its problem). Instead I’ve decided to write about an individual wine that's closely related to Amarone, because it see

Nov 10, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Errazuriz Aconcagua Costa Sauvignon Blanc 2015, Aconcagua, Chile

£8.99, down from £11.99 until 6 December, Waitrose Shimmering brilliance and seamless layers of flavour – beautifully expressive Sauvignon from a vineyard less than eight miles from the Pacific Ocean. Maybe it’s auto-suggestion but I find a sea-salty tang beneath the vibrant citrus, greengage and smoky, flinty flavours. Errazuriz’s more everyday Sauvignons are reliably good value, but this is more than the equal of a good Sancerre or Pouilly-Fumé – and great value at the curr

Nov 2, 2016

Give Muscadet Some Love: five wines to try

Post updated with more recommendations and more about the crus communaux on 11 November 2016 Muscadet has been having a tough time of it for years – it's lost out to wines with more flavour and bigger personality – but this year it's also been savaged by nature in the form of four devastating frosts in the second half of April. The 2016 crop is expected to be down by 20 or more per cent in volume, but the good news is that, despite the frost, mildew hovering menacingly in Jun

Oct 20, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Tierra Y Hombre Pinot Noir 2015, Casablanca Valley, Chile

£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

Oct 6, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Bibbiano di Fattoria Chianti Classico 2014, Tuscany, Italy

£9.99, Co-op It speaks volumes both about the quality of this wine and the quality of the producers from which the Co-op sources its wines that the other retailer of a Chianti Classico produced by Bibbiano is Berry Bros & Rudd. Wine merchants don’t come with greater pedigree or authority than Berry Bros of London St James’s. The Co-op, in contrast, is a retailer to the masses, with 2,800 stores at the price-conscious end of the market. But the Co-op’s wine buyers care about t

Sep 8, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Beronia Rioja Reserva 2011, Spain

£9.99, Waitrose until 20 September (then £13.49); £9.99 for 6 bottles, Majestic; £14, Tesco and Ocado The winemaker of this multi award-winning Rioja Reserva says that it could be cellared until 2024, but it’s so deliciously drinkable now you would need to be impressively self-disciplined, or buy a lot of it, to keep it that long. That said, the current special offer price of £9.99 in Waitrose (25% off, until 20 September) and Majestic’s six bottle price (also £9.99) does mak

Aug 18, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Lyme Bay Shoreline 2014, Devon, England

£12.85, lymebayenglishwines.co.uk; £12.99, waitrosecellar.com England’s sparkling wines crowd the headlines, but the best still wines have a deliciousness all of their own and a knack of capturing summer in every mouthwatering sip. Shoreline, made from the aptly named Bacchus grape together with Seyval Blanc, is effortlessly light but captivatingly intense and zingy. If you think of elderflowers, grapefruit, lemon and nettles, you won’t be far off. It’s made from vineyards in

Aug 4, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Ad Mare Bandol Rosé 2015, Bandol, France

£13 until 9 August, then back to £15, Sainsbury's This is one of those ultra-pale rosés that looks almost like white wine but is anything but pale in character. It’s wonderfully aromatic – I smelt strawberries, pine trees, wood-smoke, orange and spices, but you might find other things – and it has a lovely silkiness and elegant roundness to the palate. Bandol is a small wine appellation within Provence, more or less on the coast between Marseille and Toulon (hence the name Ad

Jul 21, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Amalaya Blanco de Corte Torrontés Riesling 2015, Valle Calchaquí, Argentina

£9.50, Marks & Spencer Torrontés is to white wines in Argentina what Malbec is to reds: the signature grape variety, but the similarity ends there, as you might expect. Torrontés is one of the most aromatic of varieties, smelling of ripe peaches with a dusting of spice. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you like Gewürztraminer or Viognier that’s a good start. The clever thing about Blanco de Corte is that it has a small proportion of Riesling – just enough to give a

Jul 7, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Zalze Reserve Chenin Blanc 2015, Coastal Region, South Africa

£7, Sainsbury's (special offer price) This Cape white, from the excellent 2015 vintage, is always one of my favourite wines at Sainsbury’s tastings and at £7 instead of the usual £10 it’s one of best-value dry whites on the shelves at the moment. The low-cropping, old Chenin Blanc vines from Stellenbosch and Paarl give the wine its crisp apple and tangy lemon fruit with a hint of honey, while ageing for a few months in oak barrels gives a creaminess and delicate toasty flavou

Jun 9, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Cimarosa Estate Selection Sauvignon Blanc 2015, New Zealand

£5.79, Lidl I recommended a cracking New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc – Churton – a few weeks back. Now I’m giving you the bargain-basement version. Cimarosa is obviously a lighter, simpler wine than the complex, rich Churton, but it’s textbook Marlborough Sauvignon all the same, with elderflower, nettle and gooseberry flavours and lots of lemon-lime zing. It’s better and more refreshing than many an example at £2–£3 more a bottle. No surprise that it makes a reviving aperitif, bu

May 13, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Tim Adams The Fergus 2012, Clare Valley, Australia

£10, Tesco I hadn’t planned to recommend this juicy, round, oak-matured red this week, although it’s a perennial favourite, but the latest vintage, 2012, has just arrived and the price, far from increasing, has dropped £2. It’s mainly Grenache, which gives the easygoing spicy raspberry succulence, but don’t underestimate it: it has some backbone, so if you have somewhere cool and dark you could lay it down for four or five years. The name Fergus comes from Fergus Mahon, the o

Mar 24, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Torres Salmos Priorat 2012, Penedès

£13.86, Waitrose (on offer at this price until 29 March) The classic matches for Easter roast lamb are claret or Rioja, but I’m going slightly off piste by choosing a Priorat. It’s as Spanish as Rioja, but comes from the dark slate hills of Penedès, Barcelona’s local wine region, and is made from the more robust Mediterranean grape varieties Cariñena, Garnacha and Syrah. These give a more powerful wine, but Salmos, matured in French oak, is at the more elegant end of the Prio

Mar 10, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Foremost Syrah 2015, Hawkes Bay

£8.99, Lidl This is from Lidl’s Easter wine cellar collection and is worth snapping up before the limited stocks disappear – even if you’re not a Lidl regular. It’s proof positive that there’s not only far more to New Zealand wine than Sauvignon Blanc, but more to the country’s reds than Pinot Noir. It’s typical of the Syrah style emerging in Hawkes Bay on the North Island: much more like a French Syrah from the northern Rhône than a typical Australian Shiraz (which is why th

Mar 3, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Terres de Moraines Madiran 2012

£7–£9, Marks & Spencer Madiran from southwest France is definitely one of France’s wilder, more rugged red wines. If you’ve bumped into it before, you’ll know that it can be a bit of a bruising experience, but this one has been tamed just enough to make you feel you can drink it rather than carve it. It has the tannic grip to keep it real, but it’s been smoothed down around a core of rich, dark fruit and spice. The grape that gives Madiran its distinctive character is the loc

Jan 28, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Trizanne Signature Shiraz Grenache 2013, Swartland

£9.99, Waitrose With changeable weather and diets swinging this way and that, you may easily want a crisp, reviving wine one minute and something much bigger and more solid the next. This oak-matured Cape red has a comforting roundness and smoothness, with dark-berry fruit, delicate toast and peppery spice, but it’s elegant and sleek, rather than a heavyweight that makes you slump in your chair and wonder whether you’ll ever feel like getting up again. If there’s a chill in t

Jan 21, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Heavenly Sauvignon Blanc 2014, Côtes de Gascogne

£5.99, Wine Rack and Bargain Booze I wasn’t planning to wax lyrical about a Sauvignon Blanc this week. I’d been thinking along the lines of big, chunky reds to go with robust, warming casseroles, but this Sauvignon came along and it has such revitalising elderflower, passion fruit and pink grapefruit flavour that I can’t resist choosing it. Plus, it’s a bargain! It’s from the gentle, rolling Gascon hills in south west France, a haven of ultra-light, fresh whites, but because

Jan 14, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Domaine Mas Barrau Cabernet Franc 2014, Pays du Gard

£7.89, Booths supermarkets and independents This flowing, soft red from Languedoc ticks all sort of useful January boxes. It’s made from Cabernet Franc, a grape variety that should be on every trend-spotter’s radar this year, but it’s not one of those niche wines with achingly challenging flavours. Its suppleness gives it an instant, cold-weather comfort factor, but at the same time it has a refreshing red-berry juiciness. And it’s easy to match to food: it won’t overwhelm ch

Jan 7, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Barossa Riesling 2015, Eden Valley

£8, Marks & Spencer If you’re going for the complete January detox and diet, you have my sympathy – and more usefully a recommendation below – but my wine this week is proper wine as usual, a dry white with a median 12% abv that goes brilliantly with seared or chargrilled seafood, Thai and Vietnamese salads and other healthy, light, spicy dishes. It’s a classic, Eden Valley dry Riesling packed with snappy, crisp, lime and apple flavours pulled along by a refreshing, stony, mi

Dec 30, 2015

Cheap, Cheery Party Wines

Still and sparkling wines that are easy to drink, don’t need food and are available on the high street – five of them at under £7.50. For more ideas, especially if you want to aim a bit higher, check out my festive Champagne, Red and White Wine guides and my Wines of the Week. Wine Atlas Côtes de Thau 2014, Languedoc, France Breezy, light (12% abv), southern French blend of Sauvignon, Grenache Blanc and Vermentino. Zesty grapefruit and nettle flavour with a suggestion of whit