It's wine Jim but not as we know it...

Victoria Moore starts the New Year with a cracking article in The Guardian entitled “Wine: Five Golden Rules for the Supermarket”.

Here’s Victoria’s five with an extra one from WOTW for good measure:

) Never risk a bottle with a bird, insect or animal on the label. This will keep you mercifully clear of Yellow Tail cabernet sauvignon, Little Penguin wines and many others.

2) Be wary of bottles bearing the tiny words “Imported by Constellation Europe Ltd” on the back label. Their wines include the execrable Banrock Station, Stowells and the almost always deadly dull and overpriced Hardys.

3) Avoid bottles sold at “half-price” – the lure of such wines is only ever supposed to be their promotion excitement. It’s never good when taste is secondary, or even tertiary.

4) Avoid rioja, chablis and sancerre. A simple tempranillo, white vin de pays or sauvignon de Touraine is likely to prove better value.

5) Avoid ginormous bottles – desperation to impress is best expressed through the wine, not the size of the glass.

and from me:

6) If you can possibly help it, simply don’t buy wine from Supermarkets at all. Support your independent store where you can and if you don’t have a decent one then always choose the Co-Op or Waitrose over Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s.

I can’t recall seeing better wine labels than these. The website lostateminor.com describes the labels as thus “through imaginative illustrations that reflect ‘falling from grace’, the black and white labels convey the story of how two former kings of the wine grape world — Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc — were cast aside as other varieties came into vogue.”

Developed by Mash Design for Red Heads Studio in Australia. Haven’t been able to locate them in the UK but I seem to recall that Redheads is part of Tony Laithwaites empire. I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong.

Took a quick trip down to Berry Bros. & Rudd (BBR) today. Lucy needed to drop off a shirt for one of her clients in St James’s so a good excuse for me to visit the grandest wine store in London.

BBR is Britain’s oldest wine merchant and they have a great back-story. The company was established in 1698 by the Widow Bourne at 3 St James’s Street in London (opposite St James’s Palace) and they’ve been there ever since. On the outside they may seem like the most traditional of traditional Wine Merchants – after all these are the fellas that have been supplying the big house at the end of the Mall since 1903 and currently hold two Royal Warrants for The Queen and The Prince of Wales. However, they are also innovators and are the undisputed Kings of wine on-line in the UK.

When I found myself immersed in the daily grind of development hell at The Wine Society, I often wistfully looked over at BBR with a huge dollop of green envy. They were well ahead of the curve when it came to the web (launching in 1994) and they continued to embrace on-line advances with podcasks (OK lets forgive them the pun) interactive content, and brilliant blogging. Check out their “wine pronunciation” guide if you want to sound like Gordon Kaye.

BBR definitely exist in fine wine terroir and, although much of their offering may be out of the price range of regular drinkers, it’s the place to go if you’re looking for something a bit special either for yourself or as a gift. I received a Gevrey-Chambertin AOC Vielles Vignes, Dugat-PY 2004 as a wedding gift from my work colleagues from Liberty this summer and the wooden box it was packaged in will remain lodged my wine rack for a good few years yet.

For me Berry’s is the place I go to when I’m in the market for Ridge Geyserville or Lytton Springs and it’s also the place for Chateau Batailley – always dominant in their tag cloud and it feels like they stock every vintage from the past 20 years.

Today I plumped for California – a Frogs Leap Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 from the Napa Valley. I think I’ll take it down to Dorset this weekend and take it round to share with the best man, and a review will follow.

Deals, deals everywhere! It’s the run up to Christmas and wine sellers all across the land are offering Christmas Cases, Winter Cases, Party Cases and Lions and Tigers and Bears. Oh my!

But what to buy? You need quantity, you’d love quality and value is important too. Right? 

Well here’s my 3 tips on what not to do when buying wine by the case this Chrimbo followed by a short list of current deals for “every day drinkers” that are worth taking a punt on.

1 – Avoid falling for “£50 off when you buy 2 cases – Only to New Members”. DON’T DO IT! Chief culprit for this type of masterful 1990′s style marketing are Direct Wines (You’ll know them as Laithwaites, Sunday Times Wine Club etc)

These guys use Christmas to harvest new “recruits” in order to mail them relentlessly for the next 24 months. Some of you will give in and become “active” while others will rightly resist until next Christmas when they’ll seek to “re-activate” you. 

Of course this wouldn’t matter if the wine was any good. But, you’ll get offered a limited range of mixed cases where a few of the wines will be quite nice, a few OK and the remainder rubbish.

To paraphrase Patrick Mcgoohan in the Prison “We are not Numbers. We are free men”

2 – Supermarkets like to offer you a choice of three price points, or as Tesco likes to put it “Good, Better, Best”. A quick re-calibration of this will give you “Bad, Good, Better”. 

Always go for the middle option.

3 – It’s 2008 and Global Capitalism has started it’s long decline but it won’t go down without a fight, hell no. It’s gonna try to make some money while it still can. So, when you come across any marketing carrying the phrase “Credit Crunch Busting” ignore it. It’s sad and a tad pathetic.

Here are 6  deals from the High Street that are worth taking a punt on - 

Mixed Cases

Modern Classic Reds
12 x 75cl Bottle
£74.88
Save £15 = £59.88
www.majestic.co.uk 

Modern Classic Whites
12 x 75cl Bottle
£74.88
Save £15 = £59.88
www.majestic.co.uk 

Red

Concha Y Toro Casillero Del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon, Chilean 75cl
Save £2.00 was £6.99 now £4.99
www.sainsburys.com

Cono Sur Pinot Noir Reserve 75cl
Per case: £34.14
Case of 6 x 75 CL Bottles (equivalent to £5.69 per bottle)
www.tesco.com/winestore

White

The Ned Waihopai Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc 2007/08 Marlborough, New Zealand
Christmas Special Offer – Save 33%
Case of 12 £75.84 equivalent to £6.32 each 
www.waitrose.com

d’Arenberg ‘The Hermit Crab’ Marsanne Viognier
£8.99 each
Buy 12 for £7.19 each
www.oddbins.com