Merlot, like Sauvignon Blanc is not my favourite red wine grape, but after being pleasantly surprised by The Ned Sauvignon Blanc I decided to give this a go. At nearly £10 a bottle a wine needs to be good… And I liked this – again I was pleasantly surprised. I do feel however that I…
Tag: wine
Sandbox Chenin Blanc
Sold by various pubs, especially All Bar One. Not fairly traded. Reasonably priced for pub drinking, but not the best Chenin Blanc. I suspect the margins on this are huge. Imported by the huge plb group, who merged with Bibendum a few years ago. Tasting notes: Reasonable summer drinking. Green apple notes. Region of…
Picpoul de Pinet – Tesco Finest
In the Loire valley is known as Gros Plant, in Spain (esp Catalonia) as Picapoll. This is good summer drinking. This is the new label for Tesco’s offering; is it better than Waitrose? Well yes… and no. No because it’s the identical wine from the same co-operative producer, but with a different label. And yes…
Pinot Blanc Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference
German wine is sadly overlooked; perhaps the memories of floral hock & liebfraumilch are too much for most. I like Riesling and Austrian wines and gave this a go. I wasn’t as bad as I feared, or as good as I hoped. Faint praise… Tasting notes: Pale straw colour. Dry. Pleasant. That is all. Wine…
Comuna Pinot Grigio – Sainsbury’s
Pinot Grigio is probably the world’s favourite wine. A lot of it is insipid plonk, good for glugging with Doritos and a movie. Italy sells more Pinot Grigio than it produces apparently. Apparently this is because it’s the world’s most faked wine. Why on earth would you fake a wine that retails at £5 a…
Campo Viejo White Rioja – Mutant!
I met with the winemaker, Elena Adell at a Decanter magazine tasting at Michelin starred Ametsa with Arzak Instruction at Como The Halkin Hotel in Belgravia. Their white rioja was up for tasting and I really liked it. The Tempranillo grape has been used in red rioja for ever. Seventeen years ago a man called…
Macon Villages Blanc, Tesco
It’s white, from burgundy and 100% chardonnay. All good? Not quite… It’s £6.75 a bottle, however with the Tesco ‘buy 6, get 25% off’ deal it comes down to £5.06 a bottle. It even tasted pretty good. So what’s not to like? I woke up at 4am with a pounding headache – my wife 3…
Pouilly Fuisse, Marc Dudet, Waitrose
Again not cheap and not everyday wine. Pouilly Fuisse is one of my favourites along with pretty much all white burgundies. At this price I have expectations and naturally hope the wine will be markedly better than the £8 wines I go for. It often isn’t and I have had so many disappointingly ‘meh’ Chablis…
Bellingham Chardonnay
In my quest for good, well priced, widely available wines I came across this Chardonnay which drew my eye… Most of us would probably associate South Africa primarily with Chenin Blanc. Tesco sells this Stellenbosch Chardonnay for £11; not cheap and at that price I have expectations… Tasting notes: Has a really good nose which…
Tre Fiori Greco de Tufo
I’ve been a fan of this grape since I first visited Italy 20 years ago. In Italy this is an everyday wine, in price at least. £10.99 seems quite expensive – but I enjoyed this wine. ‘DOCG’ means that the wine is tasted by a panel who ‘guarantee’ that it’s worthy of the name, but…
Waitrose Brazil Chardonnay
Waitrose sell a brace of Brazillian wines: one red, one white (the red is reduced to clear – which makes me wary of it). This is the first Brazillian wine I’ve tasted, in fact the first I’ve ever seen. I shouldn’t be surprised that a country as vast as Brazil produces wine; I’ve been to…
Hen Pecked Picpoul de Pinet
Waitrose sell this under their own label but it’s available widely and has been for years. The name isn’t a bad attempted pun, but refers to the way that chickens in the vineyards like to eat any fallen grapes. We feed our chickens any over-ripe grapes, strawberries etc, so I can believe this. Picpoul is…
A Time for Wine 