Confessions of a Wino

In these days of recession where few of us can afford the high end Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rhone wines; where the axis of oenology has shifted to the BRIC countries, leaving Americans and Brits to pick up the scraps; where does one look for quality combined with value? Most wine commentators (including me) point to the South West of France.

Of course, this region has offered great wines for years. It’s just that, if you can afford a Latour, why roam further than Pauillac? I can’t afford a Latour, so I like (that is to say I am compelled) to adventure.

(more…)

Les Baux-de-Provence is not a place I have ever visited.  But it has just blasted its way up my desirable-where-to-do-dégustation-in-France list, purely based on this wine, which is one of the most delicious reds I have tasted in a long time.

(more…)

If a bottle of wine costs more than £20 then I take it seriously.  I am tight as a gnat’s chuff after all, being from the north of England.  My recent visit to Nicolas on Berwick Street (in the grim South of England) resulted in £23.50 being added to my overdraft and the harsher penalty of ridicule from some readers.  The stakes placed on this St Julien are high.

Since I discovered Nicolas in London, I’ve spotted new branches appearing more frequently than Caffé Nero coffee shops.  It’s like buying a Ford Mondeo then realising that everyone else on the road also owns one, and most chose the same colour as you.  Reading around, it seems that the famed wine “corner shop”, revered by French drinkers possibly since Napoleon was in shorts, bought venerable British institution, Oddbins and had started converting stores to the French brand in large number.

The restructure brought about by the new owners of Oddbins was not without controversy.  The Nicolas brand was not so popular in the UK.  Accused of being bland, arrogant, and too Franco-centric it was the very cliché of the British view of les bleus.

(more…)

I stumbled across this branch of Nicolas in bustling Soho.  Wine shops are magnets to my liver and I felt the power dragging me across the street and in through the door like I was a hypnotised automaton.

(more…)