A decent red wine at £10/12 a bottle

Apparently Aldi have a selection of 'Fine Wines' for around the £10 mark . By all accounts they are very good. 

I am very fortunate to have a fantastic local independent Wine shop 5 minutes walk away . For anyone in the west London area Askewine on Askew road W12 is superb , they have a great selection of wines at great prices and some fine cheeses too . 

Peter.

I can think of a few French winemakers you might have upset there Frank! In fact, oak chips (a largely Australian development originally, along with staves à la 'plank tank') was only legalised in France a couple of years ago (just when the results were going out of fashion in almost every export market). Not many people do it in France, probably more in Spain in fact (not Rioja of course, nor any other DO region).

Chemicals used in winemaking, and there will be more the lower down the price spectrum you are, include some or all of:

Copper Sulphate

Nitrogen based fertilisers

Sulphur Dioxide

As necessary: various herbicides, fungicides and pesticides.

In Rioja, whose soils are largely limestone, some vineyards may have had iron and various acidity regulators ploughed in.

In the winery, a vast array of things are permissible, and for cheap Rioja the most likely would be:

Sulphur Dioxide (again, and then once more at bottling, and when else necessary)

Pectinising enzymes

Cultured yeast(s)

Di-ammonium Phosphate (go to Australia at harvest time and the wineries positively ring to the sound of people saying "DAP that would you mate?!"

Acidification (tartaric acid)

they can also add tannins and a whole pile of other things, although unlikely for a Joven wine.

The most extreme additive is Potassium Ferrocyanide (yes, that cyanide) in a process called 'blue fining', but as this is used rarely (and only under the supervision of a suitably qualified licenced chemist) to remove iron in wine, so would not happen in Rioja, where iron deficiency is more of an issue.

Bentonite clay or egg albumen, gelatine or isinglass to fine (remove protein particles) the wine.

It will be subjected to cold stabilisation (flash chilling to precipitate out tartrates) and possibly flash pasteurisation, and/or depth filtration to ensure microbiological stability.

And then some more Sulphur Dioxide.

All of the above are avoidable, with the possible exception of SO2. 

Entirely Sulphur free wines simply are not stable against oxidation and the few that are made this way have an awful lot of bottle variation and spoilage (a price worth paying for some of the 'natural' wine aficionados.) In fact even these wines will have some sulphur, for the slightly prosaic reason that yeast produces it - 'farts' - just as much as everyone else does.

Machine harvested grapes always involve quite a lot of "MOG" (material other than grapes), and sorting becomes essential, although you'd be surprised just how much makes its way into the fermentation vat when budgetary pressures are high. 

To the other questions. Yes, the Co-op buying team are excellent. I shall tell my friend Xenia that nice things got said about her on a hi-fi forum and she will laugh. The team used to be headed by the ludicrously mis-named Paul Bastard, who in one of those twists of irony was probably the most charming supermarket buyer in the business, but Paul has moved on now. He remains not-a-bastard though. The Co-op were the first to pioneer Fair Trade wines, and various other very laudable initiatives (especially in South Africa and Chile). Given that vineyard workers in the fomer were once paid in brandy (and ofter only in brandy) it would not be beyond reason to suggest that the Co-op's buying policy has actually saved lives. However, they remain a supermarket with the quantity demands, and need to compete against both other supermarkets and discounters, that this entails, so the range runs the risk of being a bit lowest common denominator-y.

I just paid £2.90 to go two stops on the London Underground, after having been relieved of £3 for a cup of coffee. I really don't think that £10 for a bottle of fermented grape juice that has involved farming and the hard physical work of dozens of people, and at least nine months of processing and storage, coupled with elaborate and heavy packaging, shipping (often intercontinental) and at least £4 of tax, is unreasonable to regard as a decent minimum for the contents to be worth consuming. But I live in France (no alcohol duty) and I have certainly derived great pleasure from lots of cheap wines, so hopefully I'm not a snob.

Ken, I am (reliably) informed that you should repair to Christopher Piper Wines, as your nearest top Independent merchant. But they are in the wonderful-sounding Ottery St Mary rather than Taunton itself, I'm not sure how far/convenient that is.

Cheers, or perhaps in the week that Chinese vinyard plantations overtook those of France, Ganbei!

Rod

Ken,

I think you might be seeing the price and not the wine. I think you might be thinking that if you've paid £10 or £12 it's going to be good or decent. I'd argue that it might be.... one day.

I'm not a writer so I'll keep it pithy: decent wine is available at all prices, decent wine being wine where fruit, acid, alcohol and tannins are in balance. If it's reds your looking at, I'd look for wines that have been made traditionally, ie. some ageing in oak barrels, and from respected makers. Buy them. Then leave them on your shelves for a few years. There, that's the easy part over.

The hard part is that if you want to drink them now, you are going to have to pay a premium for someone else to have aged them, say, the 2008, for you. Unless that someone happens to be Tonym's Co-op.

Chris

Ken, I am (reliably) informed that you should repair to Christopher Piper Wines, as your nearest top Independent merchant. But they are in the wonderful-sounding Ottery St Mary rather than Taunton itself, I'm not sure how far/convenient that is.

Rod Thanks, I will check it out.

Ken

Thanks guy, I will look into it.

Ken

I've recently been hugely impressed with the Batturica Tarragona Grand Reserva 2007/8 stocked by Lidl.  Everyone I have introduced to it has been astounded how good it is for £4.99.  It quite honestly blew some far more expensive wines off our Christmas tasting table.

For £4.99 at Lidl, well worth trying!

Jonathan

Hi,

i buy buy wine from http://www.stonevine.co.uk, have done so for just shy of a decade, Good prices for great wine, and the guys know their grapes.

Not sure if WSJwine from The Wall Street Journal is available in the UK, I am a member of this club, and they regularly ship me good selected 12-bottle cases with roughly $10 each bottle.