Last week Sir Alex Ferguson revealed his thoughts about wine to the Italian Newspaper Gazetto dello Sport. Sir Alex is a well know oenophile but is a primarily a football manager and therefore did not deserve the sneering snobbery of the wine critic Victoria Moore in the Daily Telegraph.

Here’s what Sir Alex had to say:

The best French wines are still the best in the world, but Italy has some fantastic ones. I am a fan of Tignanello Antinori, also Ornellaia, Sassicaia, Brunello di Montalcino. I prefer the Tuscan wines, but I also appreciate those from Piedmont.

The rest of the world also has some fabulous wines, in Australia [Shiraz Penfolds Grange], Chile [Concha Y Toro Don Melchor], Argentina [Malbec], Napa Valley [Screaming Eagle].

And here is Victoria Moore’s reply:

On the basis of what Sir Alex says here, which is incredibly general, I don’t know whether to be envious at the access he clearly has to fine wine or appalled.

The top French wines? I presume we’re talking first growth Bordeaux and eye-wateringly-hard-to-secure-an-allocation Burgundy here. Wine from Tuscany and Piedmont, the two best-established and most expensive wine regions in Italy, throw in Brunello di Montalcino, the most expensive appellation in Tuscan

y, a handful of flash SuperTuscans, and then some of the biggest cult names from the rest of the world and we’re really talking about someone with the taste of an insecure Russian oligarch.

Perhaps I’m being unfair, perhaps Sir Alex didn’t want to sound too much of a snob by getting too precise but I’d expect anyone with a real passion for what something actually tasted like to be talking about producers whose style they love, or smaller geographical areas that have mesmerised their taste buds.

This is the list of a labels man who’ll drink anything as long as it scores lots of points and costs a lot of money. He can keep his Chilean icon wines as well – the vinous equivalent of being knocked on the head with a large rock.

WineOfTheWeek is no fan of Manchester United, or indeed of Sir Alex Ferguson, but is dismayed at Victoria Moore’s response. She makes a series of horribly dismissive remarks based on a two paragraph quote from an Italian newspaper. This is the type of sneering wine snobbery that WineOfTheWeek hates to see and is very disappointed  in the otherwise excellent, Victoria Moore.

Having said that, if she had done even a smidgeon of research, she may have observed, somewhat wryly, that Concho Y Toro are sponsors of Manchester Utd and perhaps that’s why a certain Chilean Icon appears on the list. But hang on, research? That would involve journalism wouldn’t it?

Amid the plethora of articles  reviewing iPhone wine apps (of which Jonathan Ray’s is but the latest), one question has remained unasked. Where are the wine producers?

We have apps that allow you to scan barcodes, apps that allow you to search and rate wines and apps that allow you to inventory your cellar. But where are the apps for the wines themselves? In music, art, film and fashion we have dedicated apps for brands, new releases, events and designers but in wine we are poorly served.

Until now. Well sort of. At the risk of appearing a Concha Y Toro fanboy, let me present the Casillero Del Diablo wine app for iPhone.

The clever boys and girls from Chile have actually produced a mobile version of their website (no doubt because the flash version doesn’t render on the iPhone) and a specific app for the iPhone itself.

They claim “both initiatives are conquering a space in the network, and becoming one of the most successful initiatives in the recent history of Casillero del Diablo”. Hmmm.

You can view the mobile site by clicking through to this link on your mobile browser http://diablowinesmobile.com/. Here you will find the story of the “legend” some nice advertising material, a store locator (USA only) and a whole bunch of other stuff. It renders well, and looks striking.

The iPhone app was created for the Peruvian market (yes, Peru) and is in Spanish only. You can still download it from the iTunes store in the UK by searching for Creasa Bores.

The application itself is basically a food and wine matching tool and it’s, well, a little underwhelming. For example you select your type of food e.g. Chinese (a pretty broad category there then) and then the app gives you a wine to drink e.g. Casillero Del Diablo Riesling. The wine itself is presented in the form of a rather badly scanned PDF. Yuk.

So, full marks for the mobile site and one star for the iPhone app. Let’s see more of these please.

Rooney. United's favourite whine.

There are many things to admire about the Chilean wine company Concho Y Toro. Their Casillero del Diablo (‘Devils Cellar’) range has achieved ubiquity whilst maintaining quality and they market their wines with fun and innovation – they’ve even got an iPhone app for heaven’s sake!

Furthermore, when The Wine Society chose Concho Y Toro to provide their Chilean own label wines then you know that this is one global corporation you can trust.

But then they go and ruin it all and sign a deal with Manchester United. Of all the teams in the world it had to be “them”.

The official announcement of this new ‘partnership’ will take place in August at a press conference in Old Trafford.

As well as supplying their wines to the stadiums lounges, boxes and bars they’ll also become fully paid up members of the ‘prawn sandwich brigade’  by getting themselves some corporate hospitality at home games. TV viewers will no doubt  see various wines pinging around the digital board advertising.

Apparently this is the fourth deal signed by the Manchester Utd in the last three months. They now have twenty partnership agreements and commercial revenue has topped  £200m since the opening of its sales office in London three years ago.

If you’re a naive idealist like me and believe in the purity of both sport and the vine then the following quote from the club’s Commercial Director, Richard Arnold, will make you despair:

“We are proud to welcome Concha y Toro to our family of sponsors. The quality of their products and the synergy of the brands, particularly Casillero del Diablo – mean that they are a natural partner for us to seek. We are particularly excited to work with them to bring the partnership to life for our millions of fans around the world.”

I wonder what Sir Alex, a well known oenophile, secretly thinks of such utter drivel from Dick.

I’m devastated. Distraught. Bereft. Less than three weeks after I purchased a brand new MacBook Pro, the poor machine is now lying dormant, unable to power up, utterly f*cked. And it’s all the fault of a Malbec from Concha Y Toro.

Here’s the sequence of events:

2008-2009 - I pontificate, procrastinate and ruminate about buying a MacBook Pro. I really want one but they’re expensive right?
08/07/2009 – An unplanned visit to the Apple Store in London’s Regent Street results in a purchase of my first mac. I’ve finally done it!
08/07/2009 – 29/07/2009 – Love blossoms. I transfer my itunes library to its new home, download Handbrake and start a project to convert all my movies to a digital library. I download Evernote and Omnifocus for work based notetaking and project management. I give my first Keynote presentation with some awesome embedded video – in short I fall in love with everything Mac. What is a PC anyway?
1.30am 30/0-7/2009 – Lying on the couch, watching series 3 of The Wire, I hear the notification sound of a text arriving on my wife’s iPhone. The sound is muffled, so I  lift up a couple of cushions, searching, and then… OH NOOO!!! The cushion in my left hand barely touches the glass of Malbec on the coffee table, but the force is still enough to send the Reidel glass of red crashing on to the keyboard of the MacBook Pro. Sh*t!! Panic. Fear. Impotence. And yes, the eyes started to moisten.

I turn the power off. I wipe away as much of the wine as I can. I’m frantic, I feel ill. Meanwhile McNulty is out on a dinner date with the Campaign Strategist in uptown Baltimore. Christ McNulty, you’re always thinking of yourself!

I go to bed. Everything will be fine if I believe it to be so.

08.30am 30/07/2009 – I’m awake. I take the Mac into the garden and power up. It’s working…but wait. I have a working trackpad but no typing capability – the keyboard has shorted. Bloody hell. So I turn my poor Mac off in the vain hope that if I re-boot everything will be ok. Except now the machine won’t even turn on! Oh God, say it ain’t so Joe?

So that’s it. The Apple store say that it’s not covered under AppleCare as my carelessness is classed as “accidental damage”. The repair bill is going to be at least £600 and likely to be more if the wine has touched the hard drive.

I am utterly gutted. After two years of dreaming of a MacBook Pro, I’ve managed to kill mine within three weeks of finally purchasing it.

And the wine? A Winemakers Lot Malbec from Concha Y Toro that I picked up from Oddbins on the way home from work. The wine was pretty average – how cruel that such mediocrity could be responsible for the death of something so great.

It’s all in the hands of the insurers now.

My dog isn’t well. The wife and I took Samba for a second visit to the vet in three days and still no closer to a diagnosis. Blood tests have been taken and results are now in anticipation. We have one very sad little Ruby Cavalier King Charles Spaniel at our feet.

So, upon arriving home I was extremely cheered to find a Wine Society Box waiting outside the front door. Firstly, I was amazed that it hadn’t been pilfered by the local hoodies – maybe this could be an angle for the TWS Marketing team  “Rest assured, our Wines don’t appeal to thieving chavs”.  I guess that’s why TWS located their Warehouse in Stevenage. No worries.

And secondly, what great customer service from these guys.  The majority of the deliveries are made by their own Vans, so you just know that the wine will arrive on time and will be treated with the care it deserves. After Friday ‘s delivery notification email I knew it would be here today between 10.30am and 1pm – cos that’s what they told me.

It’s always a thrill opening a mixed case from a merchant, and The Wine Society adds a desired flourish with two sides of tasting notes to accompany the wines.

With this kind of service I wonder how many little boys and girls out there look like Wine Society drivers. Milkmen have nothing on these fellas.

I’m regulating the booze intake to 1 bottle a week at the moment (carrying a stone and half too much – no really) and will have some fun blogging my way through the following 12 peaches -

Whites -

D’Arenberg Footbolt Shiraz 2006

Christian Moueix Bordeaux 2005

The Society’s Chilean Chardonnay Casablanca

Gewurztraminer Tradition 2007 Cave de Turckheim

Levin Sauvignon Blanc Vin de Pays du Jardin de la France 2006

The Ned Waihopai River Sauvignon Blanc 2008

Reds

Winemakers Lot No 77T Rapel Merlot 2005

Zarcillo Pinot Noir 2007

Corbieres Domaine de la Marque 2006

Verdelho 2007 Esporao

Quinta do Crasto Douro 2007

Cotes du Rhone Cuvee Friande Domaine Jaume 2007