WINE OF THE WEEK: Finest Floréal 2023, Vin de France
£8, Tesco
This is a delight – breezy, bright, light and rounded with a plume of grass, gooseberry, floral, citrus and white peach. Not only that but it's a really significant new wine.
The euphonious Floréal is a new white grape variety, a hardy hybrid created as recently as 2018 and now available commercially. The vineyards for this wine, produced by Maison Lacheteau, are in the Loire Valley.
It's significant because only a few years ago hybrids were still a dirty word in the wine world – thought to be incapable of producing wines of the quality and flavour of pure vitis vinifera varieties. But concern for the environment and the effects of climate change got people thinking again about creating resistant hybrids.
Floréal is is one of the success stories. It’s highly resistant to oïdium, black rot and mildew, resulting in 80–90% fewer vine treatments, fewer tractor passes through the vineyards, lower CO2 emissions, less soil compaction and greater biodiversity. A sustainability win-win.
It's ideal as an aperitif and makes a crowd-pleasing party wine with nibbles, but it also works with salads, including tomato, and with spice blends such as ras el hanout. It was good with dried peppers with a punchy rice stuffing that included black olives, sundried tomatoes, ras el hanout, mint, cinnamon and pomegranate molasses. 11%. Empty bottle weight: 417g.
Tesco Finest Floréal 2023, Vin de France
£8, Tesco
I find the sustainability angle particularly interesting here. It is easy to focus only on the price and tasting notes when looking at a supermarket wine, but the story behind a product can also influence how consumers perceive the retailer. When brands give customers useful information and something distinctive to remember, they create more opportunities for people to explore other products from the same range. This is particularly relevant for retailers thinking beyond individual transactions and looking at the longer-term relationship with their shoppers. A customer lifetime value guide can be useful in that context because it shifts attention from the value of one purchase to the broader pattern of repeat buying and customer engagement over time. Small details in product…