winestorm

simplicity

Garlic and Wine James Gillick

This stunningly simple painting makes me want to pick up the bowl and slurp the wine. The darkness and redness suggests a young wine from thick-skinned grapes, something both densely fruity and interesting chewy. And something that would work well with lots of garlic.

A couple of early autumn wines that could be drunk from a bowl and enjoyed with a plate of garlicky food:

Tesco's Finest Côtes Catalanes Carignan 2011 (£6.99)

Very, very red, with a rustic, black pepper nose. This is a firm, fruity wine that's best drunk with food (and chilled slightly before serving).

Taste the Difference Crozes-Hermitage 2010 (£9.49) from Sainsbury's

Good, young Crozes-Hermitage should look like the wine in the painting, and this does. It has the  distinctive C-H perfume mixed with green pepper, and is very good, textbook stuff.

 

 

 

accepted glassware

[1937 glass guide]

[Everyday glassware, 1909]

Or you could throw caution and convention to the wind and drink from whatever sort of glass you like.

I know whole pages can be filled on the subject of wine glasses, and how glass type, size or shape can make or break a wine. But speaking as someone who has done a lot of wine-tasting and plenty of wine-drinking, I can honestly say that as long as a glass is clean and clear and easy to hold, then it's fine. I've tried many very expensive, wine-specific glasses at various events, and although it might be nice to have a set of glasses for our Chianti, and one for our Chablis, and one for our Shiraz and so on, I simply can't spend that amount of money on glassware which is so easily broken and doesn't really change your life - or your wine.

We use very plain, very clear, very simple glasses and wash them by hand. I like my glasses tall and bulbous so I can swirl the wine and admire its colour. But they don't have to be crystal, and they don't have to be expensive. We buy one type of wine glass from John Lewis to suit most wines - red, white, and fizzy - but sometimes use a slightly smaller glass for fortified wines (not thimble-size schooners). I tend to prefer a 'white wine' glass for everything because so many 'red wine' glasses are ridiculously large, and because it's so much easier setting the table when you have just one sort of glass.

And here's a suggestion for something nice to put in your glass:

Jean-Luc Colombo La Redonne 2011 Côtes du Rhône Blanc (£12.99 from Waitrose)

66% Viognier and 34% Roussanne - a blend that in the past in this region would have produced a hot, alcoholic, rustic style of wine. But nowadays, with modern winemaking techniques, it produces a weighty but elegant wine with great fruit and lots of character. It would be great with food. 

And something to swirl:

The King's Thorn Pinot Gris 2011, Marlborough, NZ (£12.99 from Majestic)

A real 'chunky-monkey' wine with lots of grapefruit and passionfruit character. It's spicy and quite hefty; a really interesting, well-made wine from a grape variety more usually associated with Alsace.

 

wine in the afternoon

[Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon (1957)]

I'm absolutely useless at drinking wine in the afternoon. I love the idea of a glass of something cold/white/fizzy/stylish/interesting around 1pm or with lunch, but the reality is that if I drink wine then, I feel great for a short while, and sleepy and rough for a lot longer. So most of the time it simply isn't worth it

But, if I were in Paris with Gary Cooper, in a room with a balcony and a view, it would be rude not to have wine in the afternoon,  and I would hope to be offered a crisp, gooseberryish Sancerre or a steely, appley Chablis, both very popular wines in Paris due to the relative proximity in the vineyards.

But if the setting is the less glamorous garden at home on a warm and sunny, late summer's afternoon, this is what I would hope for:

Asda Mas Miralda Cava Rosada NV (11.5%) £4.59: a bright, cheerful, cherry pink cava with not too much sleep-inducing alcohol.

Asda Chablis 2010 (£7.65): very good Chablis at this price, and it's great with food (a good idea when drinking in the afternoon).

Domaine de Sours Rosé 2011 (£7.99) from Tesco: excellent, fresh, full-bodied but balanced rosé with a very nice label. I gave this one lots of stars when I tasted it in the afternoon at the Tesco Spring tasting.

 

upside-down pineapple wine

A little while ago I was offered a glass of 'DB', as though I should have known what it was. But the crisp, fruity, deliciously exotic smelling and tasting wine was new to me. Or so I thought until I read the label, and realised it was from the famous, long-established, and hitherto pretty old-fashioned De Bortoli winery in Australia. Now contracted to DB and making really good Chardonnay that steps away from the sometimes overbearing, blockbuster, oak-laden style of the past.

I bought some to have at home and as soon as we poured it, I smelled that lovely aroma of ripe pineapples which made me think of the upside-down pineapple cakes I make with tinned fruit and butter. Which is very apt, considering it comes from Down Under.

DB Reserve Chardonnay 2010 is available from Majestic (£7.59 if you buy two or more bottles), and from Asda where it is a little cheaper. Nice rebranding, and great reinvention of a classic wine style. Pass the DB, DH.

treading grapes

I've always fancied treading grapes, and I suppose these Vans (with 'Grapes' design by Kenzo) would make a decent alternative. But really, I would like roll up my shorts and go barefoot in a lagar in the Douro to squash Touriga Nacional with the soles of my feet, get pips stuck between my toes, and turn my legs deep red. Some houses still do a little pressing by foot (often to music) but it's mainly for show and for  the sake of tradition, now that automatic presses that replicate the human treading action are commonplace. It would be hard work but fun, and you wouldn't need to go the gym for a while.

We've been enjoying a lovely, deep, richly but softly extracted wine from the Douro (where gentle pressing/treading gives great colour and soft rather than harsh, drying tannins) which is a light years away from the ultra-traditional, mouth-puckeringly tannic wines that Portugal used to produce. It's part of the move towards using the Douro's wonderful climate and great mix of Portuguese grapes to make table wine as well as port.

Crasto Douro Red 2010 from Quinta do Crasto, available at Majestic and various independent merchnats, is well worth the asking price, is ready to drink now, will keep for another 12-18 months, is great with food, and excellent with cricket on TV. (I find it fitting that the annual Portuguese trade tasting is held at Lord's.)

easy and breezy

[Jason Mraz]

Maybe it's time to have a few new different categories of wine on supermarket and merchants' shelves. For a start, I'd really like to see an 'Easy and Breezy' section full of  young, fresh, vibrant wines that are well-made, undemanding, and totally in tune with life's lighter moments.

The background music to last week's holiday in Suffolk was a teenager's iPod selection, and I was introduced to the songs of Jason Mraz. Listening to Living in the Moment while enjoying a glass of Yalumba Y Series Pinot Grigio made me think that wine is too often taken too seriously and made intellectually intimidating, exclusive and elitist. Yet it should be straightforwardly enjoyable, 'easy and breezy' (to borrow the phrase from JS), something to be drunk with friends and family while sitting outside/eating takeaways/watching TV/sitting on the beach/having a laugh.

Two easy and breezy white wines: 

Yalumba Y Series Pinot Grigio 2011 (Australia) £7.49 from the Co-op

Toboexa Albariño 2011 (Rias Baixas, Spain) £9.49 from Waitrose

Both are clean and lightly fruity, and would be great with pizza, fish and chips, jigsaws, watching the world go by, and living in the moment.

a to z of wine

According to Alpha Zeta, C is for Corvina, the grape used to make Valpolicella. In this case, it's also C for cracking, cheerful, cherry-coloured wine. 

I don't usually go around checking whether my wine matches my flowers, but today I bought a potted 'Tartan' dahlia whose deep, mouthwateringly cerise-pink petals are exactly the same shade as this young wine. Something to contemplate as I sit outside and enjoy both. 

More Alpha Zeta vinous letters of the alphabet are A for Amarone, G for Garganega, P for Pinot Grigio, R for Rosato, and V for Valpolicella. If you lined the bottles up, you could make words or sentences, or a whole new language of wine.

Alpha Zeta Corvina 2011is great value at £5.75 from the Wine Society and various independent merchants. It's best served lightly chilled, especially on a summer's evening. The Wine Society also sells the R for Rosato. 

 

chilled

More holiday-at-home wine for chilling. Literally and in the more modern sense.

In Portugal we drank a delicious white wine from the Douro with cataplana, and enjoyed its light, floral, crisp and fruity style.

And, happily, I've now found out that you can buy it from Majestic. If you need to be convinced about Portuguese white wines, this will do the job. (I also like the fact that 'cataplana' and 'Planalto' are only a couple of letters short of being anagrams of each other which must prove that they were meant to go together.)

holiday wine

All holiday wine is great because it's holiday wine. It doesn't matter that you might never drink it at home, that it comes in an anonymous carafe, that you have never heard of the region, never mind the producer. It all tastes good because you're predisposed to like it. But that doesn't mean it will taste the same if you bring it home; it's probably best just to bring back the memories. 

This has always been my holiday wine philosophy until now and the long weekend we've just spent in Portugal. This time, instead of going for plonk, it turned out to be much more interesting to try some of the wide and varied and brilliant named and bottled wines now available, such as the Duque de Viseu white (widely sold, but not in the UK) which is the Portuguese equivalent to the Spanish Torres Vina Sol and a holiday wine par excellence (fresh, clean, aromatic, good fruit, with local character and unmistakably NOT French or Australian, great with sardines and cod).

The reds are even more interesting, and  these days there are some incredibly good and smart wines from the Douro and the Alentejo. The biggest revelation of all was going into the Jumbo supermarket in Cascais and being faced with hundreds of smartly packaged, modern-looking wines, something that was unheard of a few years ago. It's enormous fun to take a gamble, to try something that sounds exotic (Portuguese grape varieties are gloriously odd-sounding), and to put your feet up on the balcony and have a wine holiday. For once, I really wished we could bring a mixed case or two back with us.

A couple of good Portuguese wines closer to home:

Tapada de Villar Vinho Verde 2011 £6.99 from M&S: vinho verde ('green' or 'new' wine) is a classic holiday-at-home wine, and this is a good, traditional but light and refreshing example (11% alc. so v quaffable).

Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Douro 2010 £8.99: nicely perfumed, sweetly fruity. great structure and very drinkable.

put your feet up

I often work on the basis that an excellent sparkling wine  can be a much better choice and better value than a cheap and nasty champagne. Pelorus, from the Cloudy Bay winery in New Zealand, bears this out belief every time. Plus, it was on offer at £14.99 at Majestic when I was buying so was even more attractive. It's got great fruit, depth and elegance, and puts many champagnes to shame. It requires no ceremony, no special occasion - although a warm Saturday evening was worth celebrating.

Two more good value sparkling wines tasted recently that go well with feet-on-the-table levels of informality and relaxation:

San Leo Rosato NV: £8.99 from Waitrose, a well-made, fresh and - very importantly - clean,  easy-going, pale pink fizz, described as 'strawberry blonde' in the Waitrose notes (maybe they want you to match your drink to your hair colour)

Asda Extra Special Prosecco NV: very pale, very fresh and foaming with touch of  grapey perfume, and a fair price of £7.98.