Red Wine

Rod,

What's your opinion on the "Cano Cosecha Toro - 2004" at Tesco. You can buy it for £2.50 at Tesco.com at the moment.

There were a couple of good reviews on this wine. I bought a load. It tastes nice, but with no body.

Hi Count D

I haven't tried it so cannot pass comment on its quality, but I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Spain is certainly furnishing the best value European wines IMO at the moment (although similar applies to Apulia and Sicily in Italy)

However, I can say with all confidence that someone is making a loss on a sale at £2.50, and it isn't Tesco (apart from anything else that would actually be illegal). So who is? Well I happen to know that this is the co-operative in Toro, a northern Spanish Rioja-alike region which produces some very good wines and often provides excellent value. Sometimes the wines can be a bit, er, rustic I suppose.

I imagine that they are selling this wine for less than it costs to produce, package and ship in order to facilitate selling something else. I think, (and I have to say it is only an educated guess) that they may provide the fill for Tesco's own "Big Juicy Red".

Personally I think such mechanisms of doing business are as bad for the local Spanish wine producers as paying less than the cost of production is to struggling British farmers for milk and meat etc because they get subsidies from the EU (and I doubt that most farmers live the Ambridge-esque idyll that perhaps we like to think they do).

It's all down to buying power I suppose and the consumer reaps the rewards, certainly at the beginning, but eventually choice becomes the main casualty.

However on a positive note, the world is in wine over-supply and maybe the producer just needed the space in the winery. So, make hay while the sun shines, why not?

It's certainly a truism that inexpensive red wines are usually better than inexpensive white wines where faults and weaknesses show more easily.

Enjoy!

Rod

Thanks Rod.

quote:

Originally posted by rodwsmith:

[...].

Personally I think such mechanisms of doing business are as bad for the local Spanish wine producers as paying less than the cost of production is to struggling British farmers for milk and meat etc because they get subsidies from the EU (and I doubt that most farmers live the Ambridge-esque idyll that perhaps we like to think they do).

It's all down to buying power I suppose and the consumer reaps the rewards, certainly at the beginning, but eventually choice becomes the main casualty.

[...].
Rod

Dear Rod,

You make a point I am all too aware of. I grew up on a farm, my brother is a farm manager in Norfolk, and I still have friends in farming, and, particularly Diary farming.

If I made the point it would be considered partisan, but it is entirely true. But when we have finally put the British Dairy Industry out of business, (and if a large familly farm with no paid staff and no over-draft cannot make money at at it who can?), then we shall have to import it, like Russian gas, from countries who have their own (different, and lower, perhaps, standards of hygiene), which, in a supply crisis, will always put their own interest first. Personally I have my milk delivered by a producer, as my contribution to keeping this vital industry alive. What the super-markets are doing is no less criminal than what the commodity traders have done to coffee and chocolate producers over the last 100 years. Maybe no one cares, but why buy Fairtrade coffee, and then auguement this with super-market milk produced at a loss?

If any one reading this is wondering why a farmer would not give up forthwith, the answer is simple. To breed a herd of good cows is a lifetime's work. None of us has two! There is real pride in the work, and there has been till now been a certain optimism that the price would come right again. Now the position is one of deep pessimism about the future, not because of the loss of subsidy, but the rigged super-market depressed price that is forced onto all but a tiny minority of producers.

I know this is off topic, but it is important, even if the result will be that getting Bristish milk in three or four years time is going to be rather difficult I imagine, or rather expensive, as it will become a niche product.

Regards, Fredrik

Well I managed to get to the Barossa while working in Adelaide and got myself a magnum of 2001 Rockford Basket Press Shiraz. They were out of standard bottles, and this years bottling is due in a few weeks, so I hope to be back at the end of March to grab a case....

Also got some D'Arenburg Dead Arm Shiraz - great drop. And discovered a great new winery - a young guy (Justin) who left Tatachilla a while back and set up himself - 'Samuels Gorge', on Chapel Hill next to the Chapel Hill Winery...

Well worth a try, great Shiraz!

Phil

Wow, a magnum of Basket Press. Please let me know what you think of it.

Steve

Basket Press Shiraz is surely a stupendous wine, try not to drink it just yet!

Yesterday I gave a seminar at my company's annual portfolio tasting and in the audience were 4 MWs including someone who had written a book about the same subject (Chenin Blanc) and Jancis Robinson. How intimidating is that? It was like trying to sell a car to Jeremy Clarkson...

Tesco really do some good wines,have to say. Pizza and Rose......oh boy every Friday night.
In fact right now in front of me..Paul Masson Rose. Hahahahahaa Ive just slagged off a few people on the padded cell, its all this bloody wine,well second bottle anyway.

On Chianti
In 1990 I had a roommate for a year who was Italian, his family came over for a visit and stayed in my small townhome. The father brought some bottles of chianti and I had 2 of them while they visited, Very nice. He gave me the last one as a present it was an 88 Colombaio Chianti Classico and has Siena on the lable. Another friend who visits Italy yearly told me to hold on to it for a while as it was quite good. It has a red label with black rooster on the neck and an ID number. I kept it alright, I moved often and put my things in storage for a few years and finally ended up in an apartment in LA where I'm quite happy. The bottle I stored under my sink in the kitchen. A few years later a good friend came to stay, he was an architect and had made several great meals for me when I was in San Francisco years before. One rainy Sunday he wanted to go see the Getty museum up on the hill, it was his last day of the trip. I thought it awful, but by the time I"d made breakfast and drove to the west side of LA the clouds were just dark and rained out. Some good art was had and great spaces seen and experienced, Lastly I took him to the south side and on the top balcony you could see for miles. Easily 20 miles and the whole city was washed clean, it was really spectacular. And a great day had by all.

Went home and I hadn't prepared so all I had that afternoon was some pasta, a salad and this last bottle of Chianti. Well, who better than to celebrate it with. Wow! was that a wonderful wine, it was now 11 years old and had such depth and richness to it's age. I honestly hadn't had anything as spectacular, but then I"m a novice. I kept the bottle and the cork as a memory.

Recently I had a chance in a small specialty grocery store to pick up 2 bottles of another chianti El Tarocco 2003. I don't know how good it is, but the rooster is on the neck and it also has a registration number. I went back a week later to the same store, but it was sold out. I don't think I can wait 11 years, but I've tucked it way back in the cupboard hoping to not use it too soon.

How many years do most people give their wines to age? I try to have a few stashed away so they can age about 5 years or so. Some are had quite young, usually the cheaper ones.

glenn