Festive fizz and great value supermarket reds to see in a Happy New Year

Source: Festive fizz and great value supermarket reds to see in a Happy New Year

Festive fizz and great value supermarket reds to see in a Happy New Year

The festive season started with some extraordinary fizz for The Wine Wanderers, continuing with a few excellent red wines which have reminded us what spectacular value the high street can offer.

 
First, the fizz – and none are more festive to look at than the exquisite hand-painted bottles and flutes which distinguish Perrier Jouet(pronounce that Jou-ETT), the favourite Champagne of Grace Kelly and Coco Chanel.   The brand has just taken over the Winter Garden of The Sanderson, one of London’s buzziest drinking destinations, for a season of old-fashioned fizz served the old-fashioned way.   For £65 a couple can enjoy a glass each of the spectacular Belle Epoque 2007 with a taste of Oscietra caviar, a pairing that always works.   The non-vintage Grand Brut is only £15 a glass, but frankly no match for the spectacular Belle Epoque.

We saw in Christmas Day with more fizz, another spectacular vintage bottle from Veuve Cliquot, but the star of our feast was inevitably a rich red wine.   Sainsburys  Taste the Difference 2012 Amarone made a spectacular partner for our turkey and is worth grabbing while on promotion at £14 until New Years Day.   Had we feasted on beef, we would have paired it with the Waitrose In Partnership Reserve Shiraz from St. Hallett, an elegant drop at £11.99.

It’s hard to beat supermarkets on price for still wines, given their buying power, and the quality you can get for under £10 is staggering.   One of the best reds we’ve tasted this year was pinotage from Morrisons. The M Signature label was worth every penny of £6.99 for a rich red which Decanter rightly awarded Gold, and the everyday value version which just picked up its own medal in the International Wine & Spirit Competition is ridiculously good value at  £4.  This is a store whose own-label wine(like its meat department, also to be recommended) should be regularly checked out – out of nine new medals they won in the IWSC, seven were for wines costing less than £5; they include the excellent Morrisons own-label South African merlot which took Silver.

 
Lidl is no longer a well-kept secret, especially for lovers of affordable luxury, and we’ve greatly enjoyed being able to buy Californian zinfandel, one of our favourite grapes, there for £4.99 a bottle, less than half what a red this good should cost, while stocks last.   The only problem with Lidl wines is that when they’re gone they’re gone, but their huge buying power means a great new raft of fine wine bargains will always follow; this store also had its fair share of IWSC winners.

 

Of course judging wine is subjective, and what shocks the experts can still please the punters.   The Wine Wanderers’ guilty supermarket pleasure of the year was Apothic Red, a blend of zinfandel, merlot and petite syrah which has been sweetened up in production by industrial wine-makers Gallo, but to us seems the essence of the California we once lived in enjoying affordable but well-made homegrown wines, whence this blend came.  Six out of seven Sainsburys shoppers who reviewed it loved it too( though one agreed with wine critics who deplore the added sugar), and it’s on promotion there at £8 till New Years Day.  You may also find it at ASDA and Tesco.

Bandol arrives in SW10 – heaven in a glass for lovers of elegant roses and stonking reds

Source: Bandol arrives in SW10 – heaven in a glass for lovers of elegant roses and stonking reds

Pukka primitivo, and other Puglian delights

Pukka primitivo, and other Puglian delights.

Lisa McGuigan puts a new spin on a famous winemaking name with sumptuous Aussie reds and whites

Lisa McGuigan puts a new spin on a famous winemaking name with sumptuous Aussie reds and whites.

No longer a joke – Italy’s sublime, lesser-known northern white wines

No longer a joke – Italy’s sublime, lesser-known northern white wines.

Tuscan Delights and White Surprises in the Heart of Chiantishire

Tuscan Delights and White Surprises in the Heart of Chiantishire.

Let’s hear it for the wines of the Loire – elegant summer drinking

Let’s hear it for the wines of the Loire – elegant summer drinking.

Let’s hear it for the wines of the Loire – elegant summer drinking

When the Wine Wanderers were invited to a dinner matching wines of the Loire to Indian dishes at London’s Cinnamon Club, we had a couple of preconceptions to get our heads around.   First, that dry wines make good partners for spicy food – our natural choice would be a gewurtztraminer – and secondly that there was sufficient variety in Loire wines to get excited about.

 
Laurent Chaniac, the restaurant’s wine buyer,  changed our minds, at least to some extent, serving unexpected partners to the delectable dishes at this clubby Westminster restaurant which strives more towards haute cuisine than its rivals in the capital whose Indian food has earned a Michelin star.   But we didn’t love all the wines we tasted,  certainly not the Savennieres which came with our king prawns with cardamom and green mango-coconut chutney.  Chenin blanc is a difficult grape to get right, and we haven’t been able to embrace it since being put off by some horrible domestic vintages when we lived in California.

What the Loire is rightly most famous for is Sancerre, about as perfect a sauvignon blanc as you’ll find to accompany fish and seafood, so no complaints about the 2008 Sancerre Moularde by CC.   But when we followed the Cinnamon Club dinner with our own tasting of Loires on the high street, we realised there IS a better Loire white out there than Sancerre, our old favourite Pouilly-Fume, which Chaniac chose not to showcase at the dinner.   The “fume” is said to refer either to the flint in the limestone where it grows, or the early morning fog which often blankets the Loire, but either way, it’s just that much more rich and sumptuous than the more austere Sancerre.

We took bottles of both these queens of the Loire to a cottage in Cornwall, where the voluptuous Pouilly-Fume Les Charmelles from Waitrose made a super partner for home-cooked lobster with lemony butter, and we were also impressed by the Signature Poullly-Fume from Morrisons.     But a nice Sancerre from M&S wasn’t bad either – we tasted a couple from their selection, of which Le Mont is currently a great buy on a 25 per cent off promotion, bringing the price below £10, a rare opportunity.   Also on this promotion is Les Ruettes, which won Gold in this year’s International Wine Challenge.

Before leaving whites, it’s worth noting that cheaper than either Sancerre or Pouilly-Fume, Muscadet is another barely talked-about Loire which makes a great partner for seafood. although it inexpllicably fell out of fashion a couple of decades ago and has never really hit the radar since.   It’s invariably better bottled “sur lie”, which means straight from the tankm without filtering.  We  enjoyed a great bottle of Sainsburys Taste the Difference in this category, outstanding value at £7.

We had been excited about the prospect of tasting a pinot noir, one of our favourite grapes, at the Loire dinner, but were warned those made in this region could be deeply disappointing, and tasting a red Sancerre from M&S, we could see why.   Much more successfully cultivated in this region is the cabernet franc grape, the mainstay of both Chinon and Saumur appellations.

The Saumur-Champigny Cuvee Bruyn 2010 by CC was a great partner for Romney Marsh lamb with sesame-tamarind sauce,  but at home it’s a whole raft of Chinons from the high street we’ve really enjoyed with light meats like veal and chicken.   Notably Les Complices de Loire Les Graviers, though it’s only available in 17 branches of Waitrose, and the more widely available Domaine du Colombier from Sainsburys, a particularly nice drop at £7, two-thirds the price of Les Graviers.

Overall, we feel you can’t go wrong with Muscadet when summer shellfish is on the menu, but if you’re going to push the boat out, a Pouilly-Fume for around the same price as a Sancerre delivers extra richness.  And that Chinon can be a perfect summer red, so long as you appreciate that it’s meant to be light, elegant and slightly chalky and totally different from the rich, ripe fruity reds of the south.

From the and of milk and honey-wines to swoon over

From the and of milk and honey-wines to swoon over.