ALL OF US who love wine will have had the same experience. We open a bottle, it doesn’t impress us at first, but as the meal goes on it seems to wake up, so that by the time we’ve finished the bottle we are astonished at how good it is. “How the wine has opened up” we say, assuming that it’s the contact with the air that has released those previously hidden aromas. Some of us will even decant any red wines that are more than a few years old in the hope of getting the aeration done from the start.
Tag Archives: Decanter magazine
Wine, Judges and Medals
Summer is special for us all. For some it’s the outdoor life, for others it’s the Tour de France, but for wine lovers there’s the publication of the Decanter World Wine Awards! 275 international judges taste 17,000 wines blind and make their awards accordingly. Almost all the wines are available to us, either online or in the shops. If you subscribe to Decanter (“the world’s best wine magazine”) you get the printed report free. If you don’t you can view it free online at awards.decanter.com. Never again need you be disconcerted by the huge array of wines offered to you in a supermarket, a wine merchant or online. Continue reading Wine, Judges and Medals
International Prize Winning Wines
I recently bought two bottles of wine for £4.99 each: Chateau Mont Milan from Majestic and Marques de Carano Gran Reserva 2002 from Tesco. Of the two it was the Mont Milan that I was most looking forward to; it’s from the Corbières, a region of France I know and whose wines I like; but above all because it won Bronze in the 2010 Decanter World Wine Awards.
I was disappointed. The Mont Milan was good value for money; it had the blackcurrant fruitiness typical of Corbières with a little peppery spice, but it wasn’t special, and not a patch on the Spanish wine, which didn’t wine a prize. So how do these prizes get awarded and what do they mean?
Continue reading International Prize Winning Wines
Sublime Sherry
Philip Reddaway, The Whistler’s wine columnist…
How do you picture the typical sherry drinker? Is it your mum-in-law sipping a small glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream at Christmas – a bottle bought five years ago that hangs around at the back of the cupboard, oxidising nicely, awaiting its annual outing? It’s true that no ‘fine wine’ suffered such a calamitous fall in fashionability as sherry through the very same decades that the UK public were discovering wine drinking. Is it on the way back? Not really, global sales have slumped over 20% since the early 90s and in 2008 UK sales continued their long-term decline with a 3% downturn. With over 40% of sherry drinkers over 65 the producer Gonzalez recently commented “we need to recruit six new consumers for every Sherry drinker that dies”. A bit of a stretch for even the most resourceful marketeer!
All the more surprising then, that in Decanter magazine’s recent feature on “What’s your desert island wine”, two of the twelve world wine experts quizzed opted to take an Amontillado sherry.
The truth is the cognoscenti of the wine world have never turned their backs on sherry. The reason: if you invest just a pound or two above the most basic supermarket generics it’s usually delicious; it’s a drink that covers a broad gamut of styles for every drinking occasion from aperitif, via food accompaniment, to sublime pudding wine; and, most importantly in these straightened times, it’s the best value fine wine in the world, no question. Compared to the £100 + La Tâche Burgundy and the vintage Krug selected by some of those Decanter article wine experts, sherry is outrageously cheap – you would be hard pressed to spend £20 on a bottle and the great sherry brands are available at £7-£10. What’s more, if you’re concerned about the alcoholic strength, well consider this: in these global warmed times a fino sherry has no more alcohol (15%) than most of the Cotes du Rhone I drink here every evening.
My personal favourite style is bone dry Manzanilla from the town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, light and fresh, with just a touch more flavour than a fino, very tangy, clean and crisp with just a hint of saltiness. I’m also very partial to a very different style of sherry, dark as molasses and unctuously sweet – Pedro Ximenez – made from the grape of the same name – goes brilliantly with home-made vanilla ice cream. My top buys would include: The Wine Society’s Maribel amontillado at just £7.50, or buy a selection from Waitrose, surely Britain’s top sherry retailer. I’d go for their La Gitana Manzanilla at only £5.69, if you buy a case, or the classic fino Tio Pepe at £9.01 for case buyers, or best of all – my desert island sherry – the top bodega Hidalgo’s Pasada Pastrana single vineyard manzanilla, superb complexity for just £10.21 per bottle. Enjoy! And if you’re ever our way, in Provence, please do bring me a bottle, it’s impossible to buy here, the French don’t get it at all.
If you are interested in one of our Provence based wine holidays please visit www.rhonewineholidays.com, or if you just want a fabulous place to stay as you drive through France we now do bed and breakfast – see www.bighouseinprovence.com.
The Whistler 