What sort of an answer do you expect when you taste an interesting wine and you ask where it’s from? Do you hope to be told it’s from a little village nestling in the foothills of the Cevennes, just an hour’s drive from the Med? Or would it be more useful to be told, “Waitrose”? The best answer would include both pieces of information, but supermarkets can make that difficult. Some of their best value wines are their own brands, but it can be hard to find out where the wine is actually from. Continue reading Should we scoff at supermarket own-label wines?
Category Archives: Andrew Polmear
Stories and news about Wine & Cheese
We need to talk about Brexit
Will be all be drinking Australian wine?
While we remain in the EU customs union, European wine is sold in the UK without paying import duty. If we leave the customs union, duty will be payable; how much depends on the deal agreed between the EU and the UK. At the present rate of progress, there seems a good chance that no such a deal will be agreed, so if we leave the customs union we would revert to World Trade Organisation tariffs, currently 32%. Combine that with the predicted fall in the value of the pound and we may find ourselves paying half as much again for European wines as we do now. Continue reading We need to talk about Brexit
Port
I don’t know how it got there, but two weeks ago I found a bottle of port at the back of my drinks cupboard. It was labelled Cockburn’s Vintage Port 1983. I took it round to share with friends. It was a job to open. The cork was sealed with wax that I had to prise off with a knife; the cork broke as I pulled and the bottom end (port corks are longer than those of any other wine) went into the bottle. But filtering it through some kitchen paper into a decanter revealed the port to be a rich brown colour. It filled the kitchen with its smell. It tasted divine – old leathery fruit of incredible power. We drank it with the cheese, we drank it with the desert, we finished it off after the coffee. Continue reading Port
Can we talk about Bordeaux-style Wine?
It’s not something a winemaker can put on a label. The word Bordeaux can only be used for wine made in a certain way, to a certain standard, from grapes grown in Bordeaux, France (as opposed to Bordeaux, Wyoming). But wine writers and wine sellers use the term all the time. It’s not just Bordeaux, of course, they talk about Burgundy-style, Beaujolais-style, even New Zealand Sauvignon-style. The French, of course, say it’s nonsense, that the wines of Bordeaux are unique and that a wine is either a Bordeaux or not, and any wine from elsewhere, even if made with the same grape varieties using the same methods of viniculture, will taste so different that it should be called something different. I have a lot of sympathy with the French view. Continue reading Can we talk about Bordeaux-style Wine?
Wine Scores – should we trust them?
As I write these columns and delve into the intricacies of what makes a wine taste as it does, I am sometimes hit by the thought that I am not answering the reader’s most pressing question; which is, often, where can I find a good wine with character for under (say) £7? I can’t give that sort of recommendation, because I write too far ahead of publication for there to be much chance that the wine will still be on the shelves when The Whistler reaches you. What I can do is use a recent discovery of my own to point to certain principles. Continue reading Wine Scores – should we trust them?
The Whistler 