Spanish Steppes - Rueda's Whites
POSTED ON 24/04/2009Like airline food and friendly fire, the word great coupled with Spanish white wine has long been one of life’s more amusing oxymorons, albeit not to the Spanish. But the virtues of Galicia’s albariño, with its wonderful pure fruit and fresh acidity, showed how it was the perfect accompaniment to the cornucopia of wine-friendly Atlantic coast seafood. Given a kick up the backside by Galicia, Rioja started to make something of its own hitherto somewhat neutral viura grape.
Que Syrah, Syrah - Chilean syrah
POSTED ON 17/04/2009The last time I saw Alvaro Espinoza, Chile’s leading organic winemaker landed me in a mountain of steaming dung on the estate where he makes Emiliana’s wines in Chile’s Colchagua Valley. I can’t imagine it was on purpose because his four-wheel drive had to be pulled out by a tractor. I wondered if Charles and Camilla might suffer a similar fate when they stepped on Viñedos Emiliana Organicos’ sod (the vineyard, that is) in Casablanca recently. No such luck.
Holy, Holy, Wholly
POSTED ON 10/04/2009What did you give up for Lent? Work? Religion? Giving things up? If you gave up wine, having duly purified mind and body, you will doubtless have been looking forward to easing yourself into wine’s answer to a luxurious bubble bath. Unless like Kate Moss and Johnny Depp you like both at the same time, the best place for bubbles is in the glass. I’m not the world’s greatest fan of the sweeter kind, but if there is a right time for the naughty but nice luxury of a demi-sec champagne, Easter is it.
Supermarket Sweep - Tesco
POSTED ON 03/04/2009The chief medical officer’s proposals to slap 50p a unit of alcohol on booze have caused a stir. Conveniently forgetting for one moment that it had recently imposed two duty increases, with further rises to follow, the government said that raising prices would be punishing the majority for the sins of the minority (read: ‘sales would go down and we wouldn’t be able to raise as much tax’). You can imagine the cmo’s proposals going down like the proverbial lead balloon too in the wines, beers and spirits departments of supermarkets throughout the land.
