#wine

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 23, 2016

Wines to Pair with Chocolate – and how to make them tango

Chocolate can be a tricky customer when it comes to matching wines, but it’s certainly not a no-go area. Believe me, after years of selfless testing, I’ve come up with winning combinations (below) for chocolate in all its forms. If you’re looking for pairings of your own, keep two things in mind. Firstly, even when it’s dark/bitter with a high cocoa percentage, chocolate is sweet. Secondly, it has a texture that coats your taste buds, so you need wines that can power through

Mar 17, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Stapleton & Springer Orange Pinot Noir 2014, Czech Republic

£13.75, or £12.50 in any 12-bottle mix, Lea & Sandeman This is one of the most unusual and delicious wines I’ve come across in ages (quirky wines can be more challenging than delicious). It’s named Orange because of its colour, but it’s not one of the so-called orange wines that have a bit of a cult following in fashionable London restaurants: those are made from white grapes where the juice, skins and pips have been fermented all together instead of just fermenting the clear

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

Feb 28, 2016

Blend it like Johnson... or making the most of leftovers

As I said a few weeks back, in what turned out to be my most popular Tweet ever @joannasimon, England’s chief medical officer and I clearly move in different circles. Dame Sally Davies says she doesn’t know many men who drink more than half a glass of wine a day. I don’t know many who drink less than half a… Tell you what: you fill in whatever measurement seems appropriate to your own circumstances. To continue from where I was before I threw the floor open, one of the first

Feb 26, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Allegracore 2014, Etna Rosso

£19.50, Tanners shops and tanners-wines.co.uk Who wouldn’t be drawn to a wine called Allegracore – happy heart, named after the spot where the vines are grown? I can think of all sorts of occasions when it would strike the right note, not least leap-year marriage proposals next Monday and, less limited in application, Mother’s Day a week on Sunday. Even without an excuse, this is a lovely winter-into-spring rosso from the super-fashionable (in wine terms) slopes of Mount Etna

Feb 18, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Seven Springs Vineyards Chardonnay 2012, Overberg

£13.99–£14.99, Dylans Wines, L'Art du Vin, The Square Wine Company There are times when only Chardonnay will do as far as I’m concerned. Sauvignon Blanc is there when you need a brilliant espresso-like boost, but good Chardonnay is there for you all the time – when you’re tucking into lemon- and herb-roasted chicken, seared scallops or roasted veg, or when you’re just chilling out with a glass of wine. This one, from English-owned vineyards pretty well within spitting distanc

Feb 11, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Oeil de Perdrix Rosé Champagne

£19.99, or £17.99 in any 6 bottles, Majestic Initially I resisted choosing this Champagne on the grounds that a) pink Champagne is too clichéd in its obviousness for Valentine’s Day and b) bargain-hunting isn’t quite in the spirit of the occasion – but who, in the end, isn’t won over by a spot of pink fizz in a pretty bottle? This, with its fine bubbles and delicate pomegranate and cherry fruitiness, is better than many a well-known, more expensive brand backed by the full fo

Feb 5, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Domaine Joseph Burrier Saint-Amour Côte de Besset 2013

£14.50, The Wine Society I’m not sure whether I’m killing two birds with one stone or multi-tasking, but this week’s wine doubles up as one of the best to choose if you want a red wine for Chinese New Year and/or one for Valentine’s Day. Saint-Amour (Saint Love) is one of the ten Crus, the top villages, of Beaujolais, so it bears the village name rather than the Beaujolais moniker and is made to stricter rules – on the amount of wine that can be produced, for example. It has

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 28, 2016

What I admire about wine: integrity, authenticity, purity and character

Stop Press! 14 April, 2016: I'm delighted to report that these wines are now available at £19.95 per bottle from winesensations.co.uk These two wines are not available in the UK or the US (stockist information at the end). I’m telling you about them simply because they express so much of what I admire about wine: integrity, authenticity, purity, flavour, character. Above all, even though I haven’t been to the vineyards or met the producers (we have corresponded and have a fri

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 10, 2016

Moderate Alcohol, Persuasive Flavour

If you know where to look, there are plenty of wines with modest alcohol but bags of character and flavour Prompted by the UK government's new alcohol guidelines, I've looked through my recent tasting notes for wines that have low to moderate levels of alcohol, but which certainly don't fall short in the flavour and character stakes. The dry whites I'm recommending are all 12% abv, or lower, and the reds are 12.5% abv or lower, but bear in mind that EU labelling laws allow a

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

Jan 2, 2016

Cool Grapes

New year, new grape varieties: ten grapes and wines for 2016 Remember Grü-V? Yes, the American moniker for Grüner Veltliner. The trouble was that by the time sommeliers and their customers were saying Grü-V it was anything but, er, groovy. Fashions come and go in wine as in all things and there’s always somebody out there trying to outdo everyone else by requesting the most recherché lesser-spotted grape variety, To help you keep ahead of the game, here are ten cool grapes an

Dec 31, 2015

WINE OF THE WEEK: Definition Viña Majestica Rioja Reserva 2009

£12.99, or £9.74 in any 6-bottle mix, Majestic Everything a Rioja Reserva should be and an ideal red with which to greet the new year: full and velvety with sweet berry, coffee, spice and cedar flavours wrapped in oak, but not swamped by it. Background: it was made at La Rioja Alta's Torre de Oña winery in the Rioja Alavesa area where it spent 20 months in oak, 70% of it French, 40% of it new. More importantly, it's a match for almost any roast or grilled meat, duck or game b

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

Dec 29, 2015

Quiz Time! A wine quiz with answers

The purpose of this blog is to provide you with some material for Christmas quizzes, longueurs in the conversation, one-upmanship with the family wine bore, charades (not the sort of charades I play –ed) and so on and so forth, perhaps leaving some leftover material for a pub wine quiz or two in 2016. Let’s do it with grape varieties – always rich pickings (sorry, terrible pun – just thinking of the Christmas crackers) and let’s focus on crossings and synonyms. · Cabest