Wine Tip

Rod

Thanks - bought the last few at the local Safeway

It would be interesting to see what the final wine range will be at Safeways - as you said there are a lot of special offers.

Derek

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Cheers Derek

The final range at Safeway will be exactly the same as that of Morrisons - i.e. "100 wines at under £2.99". Good grief!

Gordon Brown's cut alone on a £2.99 wine is £1.42 duty and 52p VAT. After bottles, labels, boxes, shipping and profit margins, just imagine how much has been spent on the liquid...

I do know that much of the Safeway sell-off is being priced at less that the trade purchase cost. It will take six months to clear it all, and Matthew, the head of buying is keeping me abreast of the greatest bargains.

quote:

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Thanks - bought the last few at the local Safeway

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Which local Safeway would that be then Derek?

Not Gamston I hope!


Steve B

The Safeway not far from Gales Brewery - so a long way from the East Mids

We will take a sip of the Chilean special tomorrow evening - can only try it on Fraim and not on Mana<g> so it will not be a full test

The future of wine at Morrison nee Safeway is really sad - damn cheeky bring northern customs and standards to the south - but typical of the dumbing down of the UK under Bliar - next we will all have to give up using paper tissues and revert to using our sleeves and only having a bath on Friday nights.

Derek

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Just got back from Safeway - no luck.

Steve B

Steve, have you got an Oddbins near you? I notice, alas, that it has already disappeared from oddbins.com. It did get a big write-up in the Daily Mail of all places.
Gluck's column in the Guardian can shift 20,000 cases on the day of publication. But he wouldn't know a good wine from a bad one if it hit him on the head. IMHO. Actually no, in every wine person's not-so-humble opinion...

Another tip - Majestic have a 1997 Gran Reserva from Valdepeñas (Senorio de los something) at 5.99 which puts many a Rioja at three times the price to shame.

Rod,

Thanks for the tip - white wine always a bit of a pain for me to buy as I never drink it and know b*gger all about it.

6 bottles acquired today for a birthday party I'm having soon.

Cheers!

Richard.

Bought 11 bottles from Safeway today. I will try it tonight with a starter of prawn cocktail.

Count D

11 bottles in one night?

Steve B

Steve,

I could have had the whole 11 tonight.

It is beautiful.

It's light, but satisfying, delicately fragranced with May picked Elderberry flowers and a hint of newly opened Lemon blossom adds a touch of Citrus spice, but without the acid bite.

There's definately a hint of Oak, but not only that, the Oak bark that has laid on the damp, shady forest floor has some how infused itself into the darker depths of the barrel. As it swirls around the tounge, this brings back distant memories of tree climbing in the woods. Being clean and fresh, this is an ideal wine for the summer.

Rod,

Your advice was excellent and I hope you start a thread where only you are allowed to give your personal recommendations and no one else is allowed to add thiers. I look forward to your next choice.

P.S. Could you keep the wines under £5?

Lawks!

Your surname isn't Goolden, by any chance?

I am glad you enjoyed it...

Rod

PS best sub-£5 red IMO is "Da Luca Primitivo Merlot" from Apulia, Italy. Available in Sainsbury's, I think. You could check www.western-wines.com for other stockists. Santé.

Sorry for editing - how DO you do URLs on this?

Just had a glass of the wine - superb - agree with Count D - a wine that makes one exclaim with pleasure - I will be back at the shop tomorrow

Thanks for the tip

Derek

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The wine is really too interesting to drink with food - it is really a 4 pm drinking wine instead of having a cup of tea - a refreshing interesting experience.

Derek

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Derek and Tom,

I agree with you both, it's a perfect wine on it's own and it has a Apricot hint. I wasn't joking about the Lemon blossom taste. I have a Lemon tree which is in flower at the moment and the wine picks out this fragrance beautifully.

Well, you are all obviously exceptionally good tasters, because you have described the "stereotypes" of Viognier wonderfully.

For re-inforcement see http://www.bbr.com/GB/db/grape-variety/VI?first_product_F=1&ID=33X6BCZ5M2C00BM

It's a difficult variety and cheap(er) examples often taste like liquefied apricot jam and have all the subtlty of a bomb scare in a primary school.

Berry Bros' site is a wonderful source of vinous information by the way, although there is a slight, er, premium on their prices...

All the best

Rod

Ok, Now for the souring of the thread.

I bought 3 bottles on Friday and drank one Friday Night, and Although I quite like it, my wife couldn't drink it, and I think I prefer our usual Rosemount Estate Chardonay. My wife typically doesn't like very oaky wines, but I don't think that's the problem here, there is only a slight oaky hint. The main issue is the very flowery nature, there really are a lot of things going on in this wine and its not quite as smooth as what we're used to.

Anyway thanks for the tip, and I'd certainly be interested in any others (especially cheap <£5 everyday white)

I'm very sorry you didn't like it Greeny.

I resisted trying to describe specifically how it tasted (apart from like Condrieu) because I think that can prejudice people. But as you show, it is all a matter of taste and Viognier has a floral, blossomy flavour.

I'm sure that wherever you purchased it will be prepared to take back the other bottles (and possibly the offending one if there's any of the contents left) - this is standard policy.

What to take from this is that it will be worth your while, and your wife's, avoiding the whole family of floral grape varieties (Gewurztraminer, Muscat, Riesling). Never order a bottle of Condrieu - as it will prove to be an expensive disappointment. It cannot be oak, because Rosemount Chardonnay has some.

The "smoothness" you describe - I hate to alarm you - is sugar. Warm climate wines, especially those from the New World, leave residual sugar in routinely (partly to avoid excess alcohol, partly for the smoothness factor). Rosemount Chardonnay has 9 grams per litre of residual sugar, I happen to know (bit sad that, I admit). However, Sauternes and other sweet wines have circa 100g/L, and coca-cola has 220 (!).

We may all of us like to think we only like dry wines (probably as an anti-liebfraumilch et al gesture), but in practice this is far from the truth. I'll wager that as a generalisation your taste is more for the wines of the New World than those of Europe.

Sorry, and all the best

Rod

PS Argento Chardonnay from Argentina is very similar to Rosemount (a little oakier perhaps) and at 4.99, better value. This is for wholly non-wine reasons - they want hard currency and much of Argentina's wine is superb value presently.

Rod,

Thanks for the reply and the info. As you say we can't all be expected to like the same things, and I won't be taking this back, I'll happily drink it myself as a change now and again.

Rosemount Chardonnay is about as Oaky as my wife will drink, which is a shame as I quite like a bit of Oak, in fact we often resort to their Semillion Chardonay which is a bit less Oaky. You are quite right however that we do have a strong leaning to New World Wines, and this could well be the Sugar content (I did not know that). In fact it took me several years to ween my wife from liebfraumilch to what we now drink, it would take a little longer to get her to some of the drier French alternatives.

It's all good fun though, And please don't let me discourage you from making recommendations, after all it appears that there are several here that really like your choice.

I read the post rather quickly and bought 4 bottles of Cassilero Del Diablo Shiraz form my local Oddbins on Saturday. Still it's really quite nice and good value at under a fiver so no harm done.

Matthew

PS Oddbins do a 2001 Lost Valley Shiraz for about £15 which is fab. I know it's not cheap but as I only drink about 1 bottle a week these days I tend to go for quality (at least as far as I am able to judge) rather than value. I bought six with some vague notion of cellaring (i.e. leaving it with my Dad so I can't drink it) but have basically glugged most of it away and have one bottle left.

Greeny,
Try to find the Argento Pinot Grigio, (Majestic certainly, maybe elsewhere). Still a fiver, oak-free and not floral. Excellent value.

Matthew,
Nothing wrong with the whole C d Diablo range I think. The Merlot is particularly good value, I haven't tried the Shiraz recently. Lost Valley is as rare as rocking horse sh*t, you were lucky to get some (from memory they only make 1000 cases). If you have any left it's probably going up in value.

For an even more intense version of a similar style, and yet more money, try searching for "Langmeil 'The Freedom' Shiraz". Only Adnams (www.adnams.co.uk) in the UK have it. From a tiny vineyard planted in 1868, I think it's £25, but frankly it's better than Grange.

Tom,
I've racked my brains, and no joy I'm afraid. Perhaps that's why Grand Cru Chablis is £20 - 30! Closest I have ever come across was a wine from Mission Hill in Canada. Most of their Chardonnay is barrel-fermented but an "un-oaked" wine I tried was very Chablis-esque, must be the climate.
If there's any in the UK, then Fareham wine cellars will have it. Unfortunately Mission Hill's website is down at the moment. Their 1992 won "Best Chardonnay in the World" (in France!) so £6 is probably way off, but I don't think it's more than a tenner.

Best Chardonnay I have had (with value taken into account) was from Willi Bründlmayer, who is in Austria. It'll cost about £20 and you'd probably need to buy a case, but it is truly sublime, and in an elegant style - more Chablis than Meursault for sure. PT me if you're interested and I can try and find the agent/importer for you.
Austria's wines are generally astonishingly good, clean, pure, minerally and delicate. But hard to find, courtesy of The Sun newspaper in 1985 getting something very, very wrong. But that's a different story.
Best Chardonnay I have ever tried was 1992 Le Montrachet from Leflaive. But it wasn't worth £300, frankly.

How about this then? Nyetimber Brut out Bollingers vintage Bollinger. It's £19, and guess where it's from?

Sussex.

Alas, the palace purchases most of it for state affairs, so direct from the winery, or www.bbr.com (& maybe Harrods) are the only options. If (god forbid*) the pixie and I ever walk down the aisle, that's what will be drunk afterwards.

Rod

*The shoes alone would, I fear, necessitate the sale of my new 82.

Majestic seem to be stocking Mission Hill, their latest rag arrived today.
Thanks for the Viognier tip Rod, I picked up the last 5 bottles from the local Safeway on Friday - very nice it is too. Actually prefer it to the (admitedly limited) Condrieus we've had.

Cheers

Simon

I´d like to second Jancis Robinson´s tip on the Cepa Gavilán 2001. It has the fruity potency of a Ribera del Duero, but is well balanced with the oak. The tannins are very polished for a €7 wine.

Cheers,

Steven

Buy it all and flog it for a £10 a bottle to all these people who love it and thinks its as gooda s bottles at twice that.

Matthew

I wonder why I didn't think of that ... d'oh.

I led a wine course tonight, and used for the first time C de Diablo Carmenere. A monster, but a great buy at £4.99. This was a variety exported from France to Chile centuries ago and never re-imported following the blight of the phylloxera aphid in the 1870s. For hundreds of years it was believed to be Merlot, but courtesy of the geneticists, we now know otherwise. So now it is "Chile's grape". But, tellingly, the French are planting it these days. Worth a look.

Cheers Cliff, I haven't tried that one, but I will.

I led a Bordeaux Workshop tasting session today and amongst many gems, we tasted:

Mission Haut-Brion 1995
Palmer 82
Clos Mazeyres Pomerol 82
Coutet Barsac 96

For £100 you could've been there...
But I got to taste them, and paid for it to boot! Only downside, I had to drive'n'spit.

Mission HB 95 is just as stupendous as everyone says and just inching towards maturity.
Of the two 82s the Palmer was majestic, still vibrant with plenty of life left for a wine with a relatively high% Merlot, I think during the 80s this property eclipsed Ch Margaux pretty much continuously. The Pomerol was getting towards the end of its life, but still oozed class. Whilst the Sauternes was too young, I am always impressed by this property, very well balanced sugar/fruit/acid/oak, no wonder tis the Queen's fave...

All of which has fortified me for the task of soldering two new BNC plugs on to the turntable lead. One fell off yesterday and I feel sure it is advisable to match the plugs so will need to change both. Wish me luck.

Rod

Loving my new 82 to excess. Great vintage, great amp...