Confessions of a Wino

So the World Cup is under way and the Spanish are hardly justifying their place at the top of the bookmakers’ lists, with the defence doing a passable impression of a kilo of Emmental.  Probably not much of that being sold in Spain tonight.

Meanwhile, new world wine nation, Uruguay, macerated mid-world South Africa 3-0.  And France will have to cheat considerably more than they have so far to win the special FIFA Bloody Sunday Award for fair play.

I guess it’s a good job they can still make great grape juice.

This is a rough country wine from Côtes de Blaye.  Earthy, plummy, dark and fruity.  Like Thierry Henry but more even handed.

Perfect with peasant food – my team of choice was a cheese (not Swiss) omelette and a handful of salad leaves.

I passed £7.50 to the Wine Society.  A quick toe-poke at Google revealed that it is scarcer than a Dubliner in South Africa right now.

I’ve been trying a few reds from South West France like this one from the Wine Society.  Mostly my experience has been good.  No, astonishing!

This rich smoky bomb is no exception.  Like inhaling a beetroot and blackberry flavoured firework.  Not so much representative of its terroir as made from the very scorched earth the vines are grown in.  From the vintage that deep fried numerous Gauls, this is a red-blooded hot spicy mama.

Gunpowder and plot (maybe without the treason, but you never know in France).  Truly delicious and at £7.95, a bargain.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried.  The Riesling grape, to serious winos, is what Der Ring des Nibelungen is to opera buffs.  If you don’t understand it, appreciate it, enjoy it, you are a mere Muggle.  Muggles merely struggle to consume the enormous contents wondering what type of hash cakes the buffs eat for breakfast.

And like The Ring, the natural home of Riesling is the Federal Republic of Engineers.  But at the risk of you thinking I have Teutonic Plague, my favourite Rieslings have come from Australia so far.  Just don’t tell anyone, please.

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There are some cracking wines coming out of South West France, especially Languedoc, right now.  Sadly this isn’t one of them.

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I’ve been exploring the wines of South West France recently.  Well, not so much exploring as gnat’s chuffing.  After being priced out of most Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rhone “offers” – I can’t work out why prices are still so high despite a decent recession – my bank manager wrote me a letter saying that he didn’t expect to see wine as a line item on my request for an overdraft when writing to explain why my household budget does not balance.

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This one does exactly what it says on the tin:  black cherries, spice, mint, plums.  It’s like chewing gum and walking….through a French orchard on a wet autumn day.

It cost me £9.99 from Virgin and is one of the better ten quid bottles from their stable.

Serve cool (not cold).  It accentuates the mint.  The perfect antidote for drab football matches, and a great partner for pizza.

I’ve just been dribbling all over the en-primeur Burgundy 2008 catalogue from the Wine Society.  I lined up a number of superbly priced selections and my wobbly knees were barely capable of carrying me to the computer to place an order.

In a year that, according to most commentators was variable at best, it looked like les escargots had marked their prices down to reasonable levels.  Then a prickly heat rose through my knees, groin, heart and ended in a face flush.  The values were for half cases.  Oh well, I am priced out again, so the catalogue was filed under B, for bin.

If, like me, you are a “W” man, and you fully expect the return of the recession (as soon as interest rates start creeping up again) then you could do worse than explore some cheaper areas of the home of wine.  South West France seems particularly good value.

This Cahors red is made from the Malbec grape, but the taste reminds me more of Carmenère.  Smoky autumn bonfires, apple and pear crumble, a touch of raspberry.  Perfect for a cold night in with a steak when you need to impress (or apologise to) your loved one.

Cost me £7.25 from the Wine Society.

Yet another strange thought troubled my grey matter when I smelt Momo – more cats’ piss than Dog Point!  And that is a compliment.

It is really zingy with balance provided by honeyed apples and pears.  If you like your Sauvignon Blancs tartier than Bet Lynch, you will love this.

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I was in New York City a couple of months ago and stumbled across a wine shop on the Upper West Side.  I posed the shop guy a challenge.  I wanted to take just one bottle back to the UK.  What would he recommend?  Something American, good value, underrated, and not available in the UK.

He suggested that I see through the marketing gimmicks of Cycles Gladiator and try the Cabernet Sauvignon at about 11 bucks.  I’ve not tasted it yet.

At a California Wines event in London last month, I stumbled across the same brand.  A number of thoughts raged.  It’s available in the UK!  And they do a Pinot Noir!  And it’s the same cheesy label!  And it tastes annoyingly good…

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Being a wine snob, I normally hate own brands.  Especially supermarket brands, even though they may well be the most reliable.  Isn’t it more rewarding to seek out a tiny independent producer in the Andes that can only be accessed by chamois wearing crampons?  A winemaker whose idea of export is chucking a couple of bottles to the next village idiot, 0.2 kilometres of un-navigable Amazon jungle away?

But I am not so sure if there is such a big difference between a carefully selected Sainsbury claret sourced from reputable Médoc vineyards, and a large scale “independent” brand such as Cono Sur, for example.

One brand that I occasionally (but not always) trust is The Wine Society.  This Corbières is not rough and ready like the country wine I expected, but smooth and rich with strawberry flavours and spice.

Incredible value at £6.95.  Sometimes one has to ignore the label and just get drinking.