Which wine are you drinking today?

Richard,

i still don't know if i like the Zinfandel or not, the Bogle i have open is 100% [from California], tried another glass of this tonight but it tasted ghastly, it went down the sink.

IIRC the previous two bottles of Bogle were not finished and got poured down the sink.

Starts off tasting strange, doesn't keep til next day, just goes off with big hints of dead badger road kill.

The remaining 3 bottles in my cellar had better go back to the shop for refund... @ £13.80 each : (

Hope yours is okay : )

Debs

Excellent  for everyday drinking. I'm not so keen on white wine but the rioja is quite mellow and surprisingly soft on the palate. They usually cost around £8.50 but are on offer at the moment @ £6.00 per bottle from the 2012 taste the difference range.

Tony,

I only caught the tail ending of the programme, but someone on BBC Radio 4 today was talking about UK wine drinking habits, and in particular we [we as in UK people] don’t generally like to spend over £6 a bottle.

A common reason for this is all too often, including my own experience, when buying wine priced say £10 - £20 find it don’t taste any more enjoyable and can often be less so.

I really enjoy my supple of Chilean Vicúna [ @ £6.95 per bottle ] far more than any of the assortment of reds from £9 - £13 that i wasted by money on at the last order.

The recommendation from the beeb person was Chilean reds for around six quid a bot : )

Debs

I wont show the other half this wine dispenser,or she may well go and order one.

Chaps

When I started to seriously drink wine back in the late seventies, Spanish wine was usually plonk. Times have certainly changed in recent years.

The Spanish wine industry is investing heavily and is rapidly growing and exporting like mad. The quality of its wines are now world beating thanks to the inbuilt advantage of endless sunshine and a warm climate.  The average price of wine in a Spanish supermarket is around two and a half euros.  

Yesterday I drank a bottle of 2010 Tempranillo reserve and paid the outrageous price of 5 euros. It was simply superb and very memorable. It went very well with a lamb stew.

The strange thing being that despite the low price and high quality of Spanish wine, the locals still prefer beer.

Regards

Mick

Pierropan Soave: £14 p.b.: Sublime.

As I am of Greek descend. Here on of the best Greek white wines.

Similar impression to my previous tasting but this time the yeasty element seemed to me somewhat more pronounced, so the bottle needs to settle down for a couple of months to get rid of it. Left overnight in the fridge, and the next evening it was singing. Juicy orange peel, grapefruit, tropical scents like guava and green scents on the nose. Medium-bodied yet mouthcoating with bright fruit, vibrant acidity and a long, somewhat bitter aftertaste adding in food-friendlyness. This is not better and not worse than the 2012, just totally different: less opulent and punchy but more savory and food-friendly, paired ideally with smoked salmon. Give it time to breathe if you intend to open it now, or wait until the summer when the wine will reach its peak. 92 Points RP

CP62 I visited Alpha last year, and I must say we were very impressed, although (even) more so with the reds, Makis Mavridis is doing things with Xinomavro that no-one else is managing, certainly in Naousa.

Greece, the cradle of the wine industry, has produced some of the world's best wines for millenia, but historically they kept and drank the best (and recently exported the duff, especially to Germany, and in particular Retsina [not all of which is horrible by the way]). Nowadays of course the ready market among the chic and well heeled of Athens and Thessaloniki is somewhat diminished (although there are still a LOT of very wealthy Greeks - they just aren't showing it off like they used to), so some of the best estates are making concerted efforts to export. Which, unlike most places in Europe, means printing entirely different labels with a different alphabet, so is an effort. Well worth searching out. The UK market however is "like trying to move sand uphill. With a fork" as one commented. Greek Macedonia has a climate entirely like that of Bordeaux and Piedmont (regular cold winters - skiing even) and moderate sunny summers - perfect.

I firmly believe that some of the best wines I have ever tasted were made by Vangelis Gerovassiliou, and I have tasted an awful lot of wines in my time.

Assyrtiko from Santorini is one of the world's truly great dry white wines - Greek wine is ridiculed only by the painfully ignorant. 

Selling them, however, is not easy.

Last night, a propos of nothing much, I opened a gem from the stash. A 1990 Block 6 Shiraz from Kay's Amery in Australia's McLaren Vale. I very much doubt that the wines being made in Australia today will have the longevity of these traditional styles (not, arguably, that they need to). This was youthfully juicy fruity but with the mature wine texture of velvet and beeswax, that only age can lend a wine. Delicious.

Rod,

You forgot to mention where we can buy this wine and how much we might expect to pay...........

Meanwhile..........

a really smooth, delicious tasting wine. £9 from Waitrose. Probably cheaper at Tesco or Morrisons.

2013 version, I didn't buy the Vintage version, just the ordinary 2013 version

A quick search suggests the 1990 version is not readily available.

As with so many wines, the 2002, 2006 or whatever year(s) are available, vary in price, and presumably taste. At £20 - £50 a bottle, are these other vintages worth a punt ?

2013 is a vintage, just like any other. 

(And quite a good one in Australia, although complete pony in France [ex Champagne])

To answer your other question, you can't buy it any more. You'd have to buy a recent vintage now and keep it. Something not enough people do.

The oldest shown as being for sale (in Australia) would cost you £110.56 apparently, although you'd have to pay for shipping and import taxes. 

Source: the very helpful wine-searcher: 

http://www.wine-searcher.com/f.../world-wide-delivery

I imagine the one I opened was 'worth' about £150 (1990 was a great vintage in Australia). I paid around AUD$ 30 (about £12 at the time) when I bought it. 

It wasn't worth £150 by the way.

(although this depends how you define 'worth')

But it was definitely worth £12 and a wait.

Hello Rod,

You are right alpha Estate is doing great things with Xinomavro and again you are right with Vangelis Gerovassiliou. Both are great winemakers and leading man in Greek wine. Greek wine is expensive compared with wine of others countries. Spain had really good wines and for good prices. But as I said I am from Greek descend so I am into Greek wines. My father was born in the area near Alpha Estate. And as you could see on your trip the area around Kavala is quite rich. I know many Greeks who have money but they are hiding it now. Else they are afraid the government will take everything. of course the Greeks make many mistakes  but their government really made big mistakes. And now ordinary people are the victims. The rich not. White wines of Santorini are also in the 90 till 92 RP points. Some sweet wines from Santorini are 96 RP points. So yes Greek wines belong to the top of the wine world. I know the guy who imports Greek wines and food stuff from Greece to Holland. And I buy my Greek wines from him. The wine I am talking about is Alpha Estate - Alpha Estate Sauvignon Blanc 2013 - Price 14.95 Euro.

Greek wine maker to watch out for is this guy:

Thymiopoulos - Thymiopoulos Earth and Sky 2009 – price euro 19.99. Started with 93 RP points. 

Hope you all enjoy your glass of wine and in good health.

http://www.grieksewijnen.com/ 

This guy looks like a good host......proper wine glasses.

Lidl Calais this week

Rod,

I've been a fan of Kay's since the early 2000's when I began to do business in Oz. To me, Mclaren Vale is far more charming an area to visit than the Barossa.

My wife and I were luckly enough to attend Kay's Block 6 release dinner in 2011 during our honeymoon and were treated to an evening of excellent food and several examples of Kay's wine, including the newly released Block 6 and a 10 year old vintage - excellent night!

The Hillside Shiraz is made from vines in a similar block location to the Block 6, and originally cut from the Block 6 vines. It's also very good...

phil

Don,

I seemed to recall than 2002 was an excellent year in McLaren Vale, and have found a website which suggests that this is correct:

http://www.winebiz.com.au/vint...search=McLaren+Vale+(South+Australia)

phil

If you like Sauvignon Blanc try Oyster Bay Saivignon Blanc 2013 very nice indeed. It is £11.00 in Sainsbury but you may find the same wine in Waitrose for a cheaper price.

Mr Rodwsmith,

What is you view on the 'flowering' English wine industry. I had some wine from a vineyard in Kent and thought it quite palatable, the Vineyard is called Chapel Down in Tenterden. 

Are these wines generally considered a laughing stock, or have they garnered some respect Abroad?

 

Jason

Jason's question in another thread...

The vineyards of England (and a few in Wales) are actually well suited to the growing of grapes to produce crisp (high acid) white wines. There is quite a lot of land with good exposure, aspect and soil for viticulture (the whole area of the South Downs, right the way to Chablis in Burgundy and Pouilly Fumé in the Loire is one large chalk basin, cross-sections of which are easily viewed as you leave Dover, or sticking up in pointy bits at the edge of the isle of Wight.)

These wines can be good (if tart) on their own, but what they excel at is as base wines for sparkling wine production, à la Champagne.

Whatever your views on global warming, the mean temperature in Champagne has risen by one degree in the last twenty years. 1 degree compared to 16 is a significant percentage rise, and all the more so if you happen to be a plant. The result of this is that Champagne the wine is starting to be made from riper grapes (hence fruitier deeper flavours and more alcohol) OR from earlier harvested grapes (hence less flavour development in the fruit). Either way, the style is changing and there is nothing they can do about it.

Southern England on the other hand now has the chance to make wines in a similar style to those of Champagne twenty years ago - arguably more classic. (The grape varieties and production methods are, or at least can be, identical.)

The wines are anything but a laughing stock. Nyetimber and Ridgeview produce some of the world's greatest sparkling wines, regularly beating Champagne (and others) in blind tastings.

There are, however, three problems:

1) Nowhere that you can grow grapes successfully in Sussex, Essex or Kent is the price of land anything but very expensive (even if it can only be used for farming, this is all premium).

2) The weather is much more unreliable than in Champagne (which is a long way east and south of coasts). From risk of frost at budding to hail during the fruiting stage, and rain almost any time, there will be vintage variations in the UK, and this is, if anything, getting worse. It is also generally not as sunny/cloudless in August in England as it is in northern France, even though the distance between them is not that great.

3) Unbelievably for a domestic industry, a UK wine producer has to pay MORE tax to the treasury than is due on an imported wine.

Accordingly, the best UK wines are more expensive than their French counterparts. It's not profiteering, they cost the producers more to make for the above reasons. Nyetimber, for example, decided that the crappy rainy 2013 vintage (I'm sure you remember!) simply wasn't good enough to make the wine from, and sold off all their fruit to others. A good quality statement, but not one that comes cheap (or is ever necessary in Champagne).

The UK wine industry will never be big (more wine is actually made in the Netherlands than in the UK), but there is potential for greatness if they get it right. 

Hope that helps!

Cheers

Rod

A very informative post and thank you very much for your time on my question.

In spite of the problems, I am pleased to hear the wine itself is generally respected within the industry. It is a great shame the British government is yet again showing a lazy and unserious attitude to the  British wine industry by not giving tax breaks.

Lets see if the British government will be more giving with the fledgling Tea plantations attempting the same thing in the South of the UK.

Once again, very interesting and thanks.

Jason.

Tenterden is RD country......chances are he has bought and drunk their entire output !!

Mista H