#wine

Aug 30, 2016

Drinking history

45 years old and still in perfect health Drinking history: there are times when only a well-worn phrase will do. I’ve just had one of those times with, as you can see from the photo, a 45-year-old Pinot Blanc. You may be able to see that it’s a Spätlese and be able to make out other clues to its origins but, as I’m (all too obviously) going to tell you, there are no prizes for identification. Before I go on, there are two important things to say. First, I wouldn’t waste your

Aug 25, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Te Mata Gamay Noir 2015, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand

£18.75, Harvey Nichols; £14.75, Hawkshead Wines There are a lot of red wines I don’t want to go near in a heat-wave but this one is a dream if it’s lightly chilled – soft and juicy with strawberry-like fruit and a refreshing twist of cherry kernel and damson skin. It’s made from Gamay, the grape of Beaujolais, and it’s the hero red variety for chilling (though be careful not to numb it completely). It’s not an easy grape to grow outside the Beaujolais region, despite the sunn

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 11, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Maquina & Tabla Laderas de Leonila 2013, Bierzo, Spain

£14.50, or £12.95 in any 12 bottles, Lea & Sandeman I don’t begrudge Rioja any of its success, but I wish it didn’t overshadow the exciting happenings in Spain’s other regions, especially new-wave wines like this glorious red. Made by a new producer, Maquina & Tabla, from old Mencía vineyards in Bierzo, it’s full-bodied but light on its feet and slips down in a cascade of cherries, delicate spice and soft tannins. The label is as attractive as the wine (there’s a long story a

Aug 9, 2016

Playing with Fire: Ekstedt restaurant in Stockholm

Cooking over fire at Ekstedt (clockwise from top left): wood-fired oven with loaves of bread waiting at the side to go in, smoke box and grill at the pass, cooking oysters using a flambadou in the fire pit, wood-fired stove It’s always easier to write a critical review, or one where there are a few oddities you can highlight to entertain your readers. A review where there’s nothing wrong, where there are no quirks and the author just loves the whole damn thing can threaten to

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

Aug 2, 2016

Basque dreams: Ametsa with Arzak Instruction

For some reason 2016 is turning out to be a great year for eating. I seem to have had more, more than usually exciting restaurant meals already and we’re only just over half way through the year. The three most thrilling to date, in chronological order, have been Ametsa with Arzak Instruction in London, Ekstedt in Stockholm and The Man Behind the Curtain in Leeds. I’ll be reviewing them in that order, so today it’s, yes, Ametsa with Arzak Instruction. Much as I’d like to glos

Jul 28, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Wakefield Estate Shiraz 2014, Clare Valley, Australia

£11.99, or £8.99 in any 6-bottle mix, Majestic Most red wine is drunk too warm, but people are reluctant to put it in the fridge for the 30 minutes or so that would bring it down to a more flattering 15–18ºC, rather than around 22ºC (restaurants and bars are even worse – don’t let me start on that). The fear is that the wine will emerge unpleasantly cold or somehow damaged. In 30 minutes it won’t unless your fridge temperature is exceptionally low, but the label of this suppl

Jul 27, 2016

Stock up while you still can at The Wine Society's shop in Montreuil

I joined The Wine Society as a student. Without doubt it was the wisest expenditure of my three undergraduate years (OK, the only wise money-move of those years). Yet it took me until the end of June this year to visit the Society’s French outpost in Montreuil – still charmingly called Montreuil-Sur-Mer even though it has been marooned inland for centuries, following its heyday as a port from the 10th to the 13th century. I’m kicking myself now for wasting so many opportuniti

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 14, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Maison Roche de Bellene Bourgogne Pinot Noir Vieilles Vignes 2014, France

£16, Oddbins There are lots of misconceptions about red burgundy, two of the most glaring being that it’s a full-bodied wine and always costs an arm and a leg. The best red burgundies are fascinating and complex in flavour but never heavyweights. They can’t be cheap, not least because of the tiny quantities they’re made in, but there are alternatives to the hallowed names. From the right grower, burgundies bearing the simple Bourgogne designation can be beautifully pure and g

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

Jul 2, 2016

Top, Top Tuscans: on the Masseto Merlot trail

Ornellaia and Masseto are close siblings but very different wines, as I discovered on a recent visit All planted to Merlot – the Masseto hill near Ornellaia Two of my wine drinking, as opposed to tasting, highlights last year were Ornellaia 2000 and, from the same Frescobaldi stable in Bolgheri, the all-Merlot Masseto 1989. I’d resolved at the start of 2015 to open some of my most treasured, mature bottles with friends and family, instead of waiting for elusive, supposedly ri

Jun 30, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Domaine Lagneau Morgon Vieilles Vignes 2014, France

£13.50, Cadman Fine Wines I was going to recommend a Rioja from Cadman Fine Wines this week, but I tasted this Morgon on Saturday at a Wine Gang Festival and was bowled over. Along with Moulin-à-Vent, Morgon is the village that produces the deepest, most Burgundian of Beaujolais wines and the Lagneau family has the advantage of a small parcel of 60-year-old vines for this particular wine. It has an alluring perfume of violets and cherries, dark, rich fruit and hints of spice

Jun 23, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Domaine de Mourchon Loubié Rosé 2015, Séguret Côtes du Rhône Villages, France

£9.50, The Wine Society, £12.95 The Black Dog Wine Company I loved this dry rosé when I tasted it newly shipped in April and I liked it even more when I tasted it recently in a gargantuan ‘blind’ tasting. Not being able to see what you’re tasting (the bottles are masked, not the tasters) is the ultimate test: all you can see is the colour – in this case a very pale pink (paler than it looks in the photo). It smells and tastes just as pretty and fresh as it looks, with the fra

Jun 16, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: F'Oz Dão 2013, Portugal

£9.99, Laithwaites I was going to recommend this velvety Portuguese red a while back but it was out of stock everywhere. It’s now available again and every bit as good as it was, and Laithwaites has a next-day delivery option (£8.99 – only £1 more than their standard delivery charge) should you need it for Fathers’ Day or a weekend barbecue. People are sometimes surprised to hear that Portuguese wines are some of the best value around, but it’s because there’s a wonderful arr

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

Jun 2, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Loma Larga Lomas del Valle Cabernet Franc 2012, Casablanca, Chile

£11.95, Berry Bros & Rudd Polished, bright, blackcurrant fruit, herby, currant-leaf freshness and plush, cocoa richness – a lovely example of a grape variety that rarely got a look-in on wine labels until recently. Now wine growers who have Cabernet Franc can’t shout loudly enough about it. It’s always been in Bordeaux, playing third fiddle to Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and in red Loires such as Chinon and Saumur, but suddenly it’s rocketed up the wine-grape charts. With

May 26, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Henners Brut 2010, East Sussex, England

£22.99, D Byrne; £27.99, Corks Out, corksout.com English wine week starts on Saturday – a great opportunity to visit an English vineyard or simply to drink an English wine. I’ve chosen a sparkling wine because it’s what we do best, growing the same grape varieties as Champagne in similar soils and climate. There are so many good ones it's hard to choose – Nyetimber, Hambledon, Wiston, Hattingley, Gusbourne, Exton Park, Ambriel and Ridgeview were all in the running – but in th

May 20, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Domaine de la Grange Patrimoine Blanc 2014, Touraine, France

£13.50, joiedevin.co.uk I fall in love with too many wines, but this was love at first sip. It’s a dry white from the Loire Valley based on the Chenin Blanc grape, but rounded out with a little Chardonnay and fermented in oak barrels to give a creamy softness to the spicy pear fruit and preserved-lemon zesty freshness. It’s a good match for savoury dishes in cream sauces, but can partner simpler fish, seafood, pasta, grain and chicken dishes too. There are just two options fo