Do you approve of recycling? Of course you do. So I hope you will welcome my belated realisation that the monthly pair of wine recommendations I make in Business Life, the in-flight magazine designed for British Airways flights within Europe, might be of interest to you.
I am accordingly publishing the entire 2006 oeuvre from now back to the beginning of the year and will continue to add each new month’s. Since most of those who fly BA within Europe are British, the stockists specified in the original articles were strictly in the UK but I have added a link to our old friend winesearcher.com to help you find a stockist where you live – although some of the wines I recommended at the beginning of 2006 may, alas, have sold out by now. In many cases it’s worth looking at the succeeding vintage as most of the producers cited get better every year.
Every month I’m asked to recommend one wine ‘for the table’ to drink immediately without too much agonising over cost and another ‘for the cellar’ that is more suitable for keeping a while, or at least regarding as a special treat.
NOV 06
For the table
Casillero del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 Chile
£5.99 Asda, Booths, Budgen, Londis, Morrisons, Oddbins, Sainsbury’s, Somerfield, Spar, Tesco, Thresher, Waitrose
I’d love to see this sun-drenched wine in a blind line-up with a score of California Cabernets selling at four times the price. It has the same super-ripe style and denseness but a much lower price tag. And look at all those stockists! There must be a pipeline of this stuff over the Andes and under the Atlantic. But is is awfully good – just the thing for cold nights.
Chilean Cabernet and Merlot is by definition just about the most reliable choice you can make for inexpensive red wine value but there is so much taste-alike stuff available at £3.99 and £4.99 it’s a relief to find something that is distinguished and full of really bright fruit.
It’s made by Concha y Toro, with Santa Rita one of the two biggest wine companies in Chile, but this family-run business has always been careful to spend a great deal on winemaking talent. Benefit from it! The 2006, which I cannot vouch for, is likely to find its way on to shelves before the end of the year so grab a few bottles while you can. It’s usually on special offer down to as low as £4.48 somewhere. Use the search function at www.quaffersoffers.co.uk to find out who is currently offering it at a discount.
For the cellar
Quinta de Chocapalha, Chocapalha Reserve 2004 Estremadura
Approx £16 Corney & Barrow, London E1
This is the most unusual but most exciting wine, from a generally rather undistinguished region on the coast of Portugal. The secret again is in the skill of the winemaker, Sandra Tavares, the glamorous winemaker responsible for the renowned reds of Quinta do Vale Dona Maria and her own label Pintas with husband Jorge Borges in port country. Chocapalha represents the crème de la crème of production on her parents wine estate where most of the grapes are still sold off to others.
This Reserve bottling is made up of the best barrels from 2004 and is a blend of 60 per cent Touriga Nacional, Portugal’s most famous indigenous red wine and port grape, with 40 per cent Tinta Roriz, which is the same as the Tempranillo of Rioja in Spain. It was aged for 18 months in mainly new oak and, by its sumptuous texture, succulent fruit, zest and great balance, was treated to all the luxury of a Bordeaux classed growth, château bottled claret.
The white Chocapalha 2004 is pretty exciting too, and about half the price. Half oak aged and a blend of Chardonnay with the noble local Arinto, it is surprisingly delicate and mineral-scented. You could drink the white now but the red should be at its best between 2007 and 2014.
OCT 06
For the table
Glen Carlou, Tortoise Hill White 2005 Paarl
£6.99 Oddbins
I don’t know about you, but I am increasingly looking for interesting blends rather than wines made out of a single variety such as the ubiquitous Chardonnay, Cabernet and Merlot. The estimable South African producer Glen Carlou, particularly, reputed for its Chardonnay, makes this interesting and well priced blend from 65 per cent Sauvignon Blanc with 30 per cent Chardonnay and five per cent perfumed Viognier.
South African Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay are particularly refreshing, I find, with more natural acidity than many of their counterparts elsewhere outside Europe – perhaps because of the cooling influence of currents straight off the Antarctic. (Meteorologists also predict that South Africa will be less affected by global climate change than most other wine producing countries.)
This interesting, well-made wine gets its crispness and some of its aroma from the Sauvignon Blanc; its body and friendliness from the Chardonnay; and an intriguing topnote of dried apricots or blossom from that dollop of Viognier.
Well chilled, this would make an interesting bottle to share with friends before a meal.
For the cellar
Domaine Força Réal, Les Hauts 2003 Côtes du Roussillon Villages
£9.99 The Real Wine Company www.therealwineco.co.uk
Mark Hughes used to be a wine buyer for a large supermarket group but found himself searching for more individuality in wines than tends to be possible in global brands and wines bought by the container-load. The result is The Real Wine Company which is dedicated to shipping wines from small producers (no vigneron over five foot six perhaps?) who are dedicated to artisan wines made from low-yielding vineyards.
I wouldn’t want to over-emphasize the low yield business and I believe all wines have a natural balance and that there are some pretty horrid, over-concentrated wines being made from yields forced to adopt a bonsai existence, but, like many other independent UK wine importers selling direct to the public, Mark has found the Languedoc-Roussillon is particularly fertile hunting ground.
This exceptionally rich red – from a rich vintage and a powerful appellation – is very well made. There’s no obvious excess of alcohol but attractive, appetising flavours in a heady cocktail of the southern French holy trinity of Syrah, Grenache and Mourvèdre grapes. Drink this over the next three years with strongly-flavoured Mediterranean food.
SEP 06
For the table
Domaine de l’Aumonier 2005 Sauvignon de Touraine
£5.95 Stone, Vine & Sun of Twyford. Winchester
When I tasted this wine at a showing of Stone, Vine & Sun’s recent acquisitions for wine writers, the guys from the wine merchant were rather ashamed of this one because it wasn’t as dry and austere as previous vintages, but we wine writers loved it. Sauvignon de Touraine is usually as firm and piercing as a knitting needle but this is a particularly opulent, exotic and downright charming example from Thierry Chardon. Perhaps this was because 2005 brought unusual ripeness to the Loire valley – a combination of very low rainfall and much improved techniques in the vineyard which have lowered yields and encouraged all grapes to reach full ripeness. Whatever the reason, this wine should give oodles of pleasure, whether drunk on its own or matched with salt cod or dramatically sauced fish. On no account stick this in your cellar, however; it is best drunk well before Christmas.
For the cellar
Brolio Chianti Classico 2004 Ricasoli
£10.99 larger Sainsbury’s
Prolong summer holiday memories with this bottle of absolutely classic Tuscan red. It was Baron Ricasoli who wrote the Chianti recipe in the 19th century and now this grand estate in Gaiole in Chianti is back in family hands – after many a corporate adventure – and being run superbly. Chianti used to be a pale, thin, tart thing that too often disappointed but since the late 1980s the vineyards have been renewed and planted with much better clones of the all-important Sangiovese grape that characterises Central Italy.
This is quintessential food wine. It’s too chewy to enjoy as an aperitif and, like so many Italian reds, has a little kick of bitterness on the finish that is great for the digestion but not so comfortable for sipping as an aperitif. The 2004 (not 2005) was a stunning vintage in Central Italy and I would expect this wine to be drinking particularly well between 2008 and 2012. If you open it before then, make sure you serve it with something as chewy as roast meat or, better still, bistecca fiorentina.
JUL/AUG 06
For the table
Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi 2005 Coste del Molino
£5.99 Majestic
One of the most exciting changes for wine drinkers over the last few years has been the dramatic improvement in the quality and even style of Italy’s white wines. For too long it seemed that Italian winemakers felt it was enough that they should be refreshing and free from faults. But now, all of a sudden, Italian whites are chock full of delicious fruit too.
This applies as much to the standard Italian whites Soave and Pinot Grigio as to the slightly less well-known names such as Verdicchio made on the eastern, Adriatic coast from the Verdicchio grape grown just west of Ancona in the Marche. This wine is made by the go-ahead Monte Schiavo winery which manages its 280 acres of vineyard notably well and has come up with this bargain which would make a great house wine right through the summer. With its lightly floral aromas and good, fruity palate, it is quite satisfying enough to drink without food though should be very versatile with a wide range of summer foods.
For the cellar
Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru Les Folatières 2003 Joseph Drouhin
£29.99 Waitrose
It’s extremely rare to find a delicious, top quality white burgundy that’s in mass distribution but as I write Waitrose assure me that this wine is available in no fewer than 91 branches of that estimably wine-minded supermarket. If by any chance your local branch has run out, I know the wine buying team will try to plug the gap with something equally toothsome.
This is the apogee of Chardonnay, grown on Burgundy’s specially favoured (premier cru, or first growth) site on the Côte d’Or, the narrow strip of vineyards that stretch from Dijon south through Beaune to the cluster of white wine villages Meursault, Chassagne-Montrachet and Puligny-Montrachet at its southern tip. Folatières is one of the highest Premier Cru vineyards so in the heatwave vintage of 2003 benefitted from slightly less torrid nights than the vineyards lower down the slope. Hence this lovely deep-flavoured savoury wine with hints of liquorice that should drink well over the next two or three years.
The difference between a really good white burgundy and typical Chardonnays produced elsewhere is that burgundy really is bone dry and seems to have an extra layer of flavour and ageing potential.
JUN 06
For the table
Tesco Finest South African Chenin Blanc 2005
£4.99 Tesco
find this, or a very similar, wine
Chenin Blanc is South Africa’s most planted grape variety and can make very refreshing white wine with slightly honeyed fruit. Because it’s so common, many South African winemakers encourage it to overproduce and then make pretty dull, thin wine from it, but Ken Forrester, who made this wine, is widely recognised as one of the most accomplished makers of Chenin with real character.
He is so besotted by the grape that he has spent several vintages working in the Loire Valley, home of Chenin Blanc, at one of the best properties there, Bernard Germain’s Château de Fesles, improving his knowledge of how to grow the vine and make the wine. Germain has since travelled to South Africa to look at what Forrester does and they would doubtless argue about how teaches whom more.
Tesco are either lucky or very clever to have persuaded Forrester to make their own-label Chenin for them. This should provide great drinking with or without food throughout this summer. Lovely with salads. Beware though that this has a plastic cork and therefore should not be kept more than a few months.
For the cellar
Pirque Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 Maipo Valley, Chile
£6.99 Marks & Spencer
find this, or a very similar, wine
This great-value wine comes from Viña Haras de Pirque, a very superior Chilean estate that has attracted attention from the great Italian wine producer Antinori, based at the Palazzo Antinori in the Piazza Antinori in Florence [yes, that one again – JR]. They are engaged in a high quality joint venture together.
This particular wine is clearly designed to be drunk well into the future. I would suggest anything form two to five years’ time, and at the moment is pretty chewy, so many tannins does it have to preserve it for a long life. But there is no shortage of ripe fruit either. In my experience it is very rare to find a wine selling in a national retailer for under £10 that is seriously intended for long term ageing. I can’t help feeling that Haras makes quite a bit of wine like this with its own name on that retails for a much higher price.
I urge you to take advantage of this, and have noticed that M&S have a tendency to sell a number of ambitious but underpriced wines from top producers around the world which are often under-appreciated by their customers.
MAY 06
For the table
Yering Station Pinot Noir Rosé 2005 Yarra Valley
£8.99 Majestic
find this or the next vintage of this wine
The talented Australian winemaker behind this wine Tom Carson was trained in Burgundy and fully absorbed the niceties of the French wine scene while he was there. His red wines are some of Australia’s closest approximations to red burgundy you can find in Australia and he has won trophies aplenty because of their quality and finesse.
But this particular wine, also made from the red burgundy grape Pinot Noir, was inspired not by Burgundy but the Loire, and pink Sancerre in particular. Tom had noticed the particular quality of Sancerre rose is that it is bone dry – quite unlike most of the pink wines currently hurtling on to our shelves in time for summer. So this one, whose lively fruit is kept as fresh as possible under a screwcap, is even labelled Extra Dry and is designed to be drunk with food. Drink it immediately – it will only go downhill and lose its fruit – and revel in this unusual wine made just outside Melbourne.
For the cellar
Xisto 2003 Douro
Swig
This highly sophisticated new red comes from vineyards that for years producer port but are now responsible for this very charming, concentrated table wine that should continue to improve over the next three or four years. Xisto is Portuguese for schist, the all-important soil type of the Douro Valley in northern Portugal.
More and more port producers are trying their hand at making dry table wines nowadays but this one is the product of enormous expertise. One of the two partners in this joint venture is Jean-Michel Cazes who recently retired from running his family properties in Bordeaux including Ch Lynch Bages of Pauillac and was presumably encouraged in this new enterprise by his Portuguese wife. He flies in his extremely respected longtime winemaker Daniel Llose to help with the vinification. The other party is the Roquette family who have been making superior Douro table wine at their farm Quinta do Crasto since the early 1990s – pre-history as far as dry Douro table wines are concerned. This one is made from a blend of 60 per cent of Touriga Nacional, the most famous port grape, plus 25 per cent Tinta Roriz (the Tempranillo of Rioja) and 15 per cent of another port grape Touriga Franca. It’s an interesting combination of fiery Douro fruit with Bordeaux restraint.
APR 06
For the table
Daniel and Martine Barraud 2004 Mâcon Vergisson
£9.50 Lea & Sandeman shops around London www.londonfinewine.co.uk
The 2004 vintage in Burgundy was markedly better for whites than reds and if it’s value you want in white burgundy, head south of the famous, and expensive, Côte d’Or for the Mâconnais where people like Barraud are turning out luscious Chardonnays with a distinctly French twist. So obviously exciting is the quality of the best Mâconnais whites that an increasing number of émigrés from smart addresses in the Côte d’Or such as Domaines Leflaive and Lafon have already started up southern branches in the Mâconnais.
The most expensive wines of the Mâconnais tend to come from fashionable Pouilly Fuissé but you can find much better value in less famous appellations. Vergisson is just north of the villages of Pouilly and Fuissé and is well known for the concentration of its wines. This one has a lovely rich, opulent smell and excellent refreshing tension on the palate. No flab here – but drink it this year or next.
For the cellar
Grosset Watervale Riesling 2005 Clare Valley
About £14 Bennetts of Chipping Campden, Harrods, Philglas & Swiggot around London, Noel Young of Trumpington, Cambridge
There could hardly be a more springlike wine than a Riesling from Australia’s King of Riesling Jeffrey Grosset. It’s positively bracing and tastes like a spring clean for the palate. Grosset, who has spearheaded Australia’s widespread move to screwcaps from less predictable corks, makes two different Rieslings grown on his own carefully tended vineyards on the slopes of the Clare Valley just north of the Barossa.
Polish Hill is the more famous, but can take years and years before it is gentle enough to drink. I loved this particular vintage of Watervale which is just about drinkable now but will be much better in two years and I expect will still be increasingly interesting eight years from now.
The wine is intensely introvert and mineral with very pure flavours yet no shortage of body. It is bone dry and would be delicious either as an aperitif or with relatively spicy foods.
MAR 06
For the table
Ch Cassagne Haut-Canon, La Truffière 1999 Canon Fronsac
£13.95 Vine Trail of Bristol 0117 921 1770
Fronsac is one of Bordeaux’s unsung wine regions with a noble history, some great wine terroirs and, unusually for Bordeaux, very pretty green, wooded countryside – in this case just west of Pomerol. For a while the powerful Moueix family who own Ch Pétrus championed properties like this one but a few years ago sold the lot which has meant that Fronsac has had to clamour even louder for attention. The result is that Fronsac can offer some superb value.
This is serious dinner party claret – very fresh, thanks to the steep limestone slopes of Canon Fronsac with dense, deep-flavoured fruit and an attractive roundness that means you can enjoy it already (although it should still be going strong two years hence). Sixty per cent Merlot is given structure by equal proportions of Cabernet Sauvignon and the aromatic Cabernet Franc. La Truffiere is Ch Cassagne Haut-Canon’s top blend, aged in a mixture of new and older oak barrels.
For the cellar
Dominique Rocher 2001 Côtes du Rhône Villages, Cairanne
£8.95 Big Red Wine Company www.bigredwine.co.uk and 01638 510803
Until 1996 Dominique Rocher ran a well-known restaurant in London but then returned to his native France, bought a vineyard in the southern Rhône whose produce until then had been sold to the local co-op. He promptly set about converting it to organic viticulture (much easier somewhere this hot and windy than in, say, the humid climate of Bordeaux where the fungal diseases to which vines are so prone positively flourish).
This wine positively hums with life. Like so many red Côtes du Rhônes, it’s a blend of mainly Grenache with Syrah that is ripe and rich – just the sort of wine to keep March winds at bay – but very fine tannins are still there drying out the insides of the taster’s mouth, indicating that this wine still has a few years of development still to give – very rare in a wine under £10.
Find thousands of tasting notes, ratings and suggested drinking dates on the purple pages of www.jancisrobinson.com which have attracted subscribers from more than 70 countries.
FEB 06
For the table
Castillo de Molina Shiraz 2003 Chile
£5.99 Morrisons
All over South America grapes are ripening fast in readiness for the southern hemisphere vintage ahead. The grapes destined for this bottle in three years time will be lapping up that ready sunshine and the clean, arid air of Chile where the fungal diseases that plague vines throughout most of the rest of the world are hardly known.
While the Bordeaux grapes Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Carmenère (a variety than has virtually disappeared from Bordeaux’s own vineyards) dominated Chile’s vineyards for years, export-oriented growers have realised that in today’s competitive wine market the country needed to offer a wider variety of flavours. Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc are thriving in some of Chile’s coolest corners, but the new variety that seems to have the brightest future in the traditional warmer areas is Shiraz, or Syrah as it is known in its homeland France.
This example is great value. Made by one of the biggest and most efficient companies San Pedro, it comes in a bottle that looks, and feels, more suitable for a £19.99 bottle. But more importantly, this concentrated, savoury wine tastes as though it costs considerably more than £5.99. You could enjoy this, with hearty, chewy foods, any time over the next two years.
For the cellar
Ata Rangi Pinot Noir 2002 Wairarapa
£25 Majestic London NW8
We most readily associate New Zealand wine with pungent Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough in the north of the South Island. But New Zealanders themselves are increasingly besotted by their red wines, specifically those made from the great Pinot Noir of Burgundy which will soon be the country’s second most planted grape. Pinot is now grown in all but the hottest New Zealand wine regions (it’s naturally early to ripen so needs somewhere cool enough to extend the growing season if it is to build up any interesting flavour) and is proving remarkably successful.
Most of New Zealand’s Pinots are extremely fruity, immediate and easy to like and understand – very like her Sauvignons. If they lack anything it’s the subtlety and earthiness of a good red burgundy – typically at least partly because the vines are very young. This wine is different. It comes from the hinterland of Wellington in the south of the North Island, from a property with one of the longest track records in growing fine Pinot. The 2002 is not nearly ready to drink but is impressively built for showing real autumnal depth and bright red fruit sweetness between roughly 2007 and 2011. I feel quite confident in this prediction because I have been following this producer for years and enjoy every bottle I come across in its maturity.
JAN 06
For the table
Felsner, Grüner Veltliner Moosburgerin Kabinett 2004 Kremstal
£7.99 Waitrose
Austria’s full-bodied, perfumed but dry whites are the most fashionable in the world at the moment among trend-conscious sommeliers. Most of them cost well over £10, sometimes more than £20, a bottle so this delicious example made from Austria’s signature grape variety is a real bargain. I love the way it expresses the peppery, lively character of Grüner Veltliner – quite a mouthful by any standards and frequently abbreviated by English-speakers to just Grüner (‘green’), ‘GV’, or even ‘Gru-Vee’.
Felsner is the name of this family winery, set in a 500 year-old cellar hewn from the local rocks. Moosburgerin is the name of the vineyard where vines have been grown for more than 1100 years (incredible but true), and the region the vineyard lies is in the valley (tal) round the historic town of Krems on the Danube west of Vienna. Kabinett means it was picked at normal rather than advanced ripeness. Drink this wine with food – even quite assertive, spicy, red wine sort of food.
For the cellar
Taylor’s Quinta de Vargellas 1996 port
£22-£25 Fortnum & Mason, Majestic, Oddbins, Selfridges, Sainsbury’s, Tesco
If you’re not going to drink port at this time of year, when are you going to treat yourself to this uniquely rich and comforting wine from the wild, virtually uninhabited Douro Valley in northern Portugal? The most expensive ports of all are so-called ‘vintage ports’ made in the very best years. This is from the next layer down, ‘single quinta ports’ from the next best years made only with the grapes produced on a single farm, or quinta. Quinta de Vargellas is Taylor’s most prestigious property, the one where they entertain visitors and which has provided the backbone of Taylor’s highly admired vintage port for decades. This therefore is virtually vintage port at a bargain price – and, while it will easily last for another decade or two, it is already lovely to drink – round, sumptuous and all too easy to drink.
Quinta de Vargellas boasts the highest proportion of old vines of any quinta in the Douro Valley – 60 per cent being more than 75 years old – which is great news as old vines made smaller quantities of higher quality wine. This port has been made in just the same way as Taylors vintage port proper, including good old-fashioned foot-treading, the most expensive and time-consuming way of ensuring that a port contains maximum colour and flavour without tasting harsh.