Did you spot our summer? It really was a case of blink and you will miss it so I guess we can forget about rose wines for the patio and look at something more hearty and warming. Right now if you want a wine that will put the hairs on your chest but you don’t want to be rinsed in the process, the South American shelves are the place to search.
Thank heavens for the dinosaurs if the latest wine news is to be believed. Apparently their extinction allowed woodlands and various plants, including vines to thrive, although it took mankind over 100,000 years to discover the beauty of vinification!
The Rhone Valley reds are among the most copied styles around the world which in itself, tells you all you need to know about this fabulous region. If you’ve ever enjoyed a shiraz Grenache from Australia or Argentina or a Grenache Mourvèdre blend from South Africa, then the chances are it was inspired by the wine makers of there Rhone.
The Lib-Dems would be something like Sancerre; a classic that had its finest, most popular days a century ago but that you love to flirt with every now and then.
While Sancerre is the spiritual home and I still love them at Christmas, Marlborough in New Zealand is the region that really put the grape on the map with concentrations of fruit and acid that are off the scale.
Someone recently asked me for advice on wines to supply for their wedding and it got me thinking. Unless you’re flush and daft, or you really adore all the guests, you don’t really want to aim high, but then again, no one wants to be known as the tight sod who served mouthwash.
Can you do French wines on a budget? I'm always being stopped by folk telling me how they took a trip to France and filled up a 5 litre plastic bottle at a roadside vineyard for 3 or 4 euros and all I can think is that I'd rather rot my guts with Diet Coke.
We looked at things that were a bit different last week and I decided to continue the theme after trying a couple of wines from a rather unusual urban winery in London of all places.
The first is a really unusual product and one that a snob like me would normally run a mile from. It's called Fresita and it's a low alcohol sparkling chardonnay-based wine from Chile with about a half an inch of crushed strawberries in the bottom of the bottle.
