The Asda Wine Shop
POSTED ON 24/05/2014You have to feel for Asda. Ok maybe you don’t, but squeezed between the devil of the discounters and the deep blue sea of Waitrose, M & S and Majestic, life just got tougher for the middle ground supermarket. So credit to the wine team’s Philippa Carr, an experienced but unstuffy Master of Wine who’s getting to grips with the need to keep prices down while raising customers’ expectations of improved quality. One answer is to stock 500 wines, including 100 premium wines, in the Asda online Wine Shop, with free delivery and 10% off Wine Shop orders till 1 June.
Aussie Rules
POSTED ON 17/05/2014After an unimpressive tasting of Australian big brands earlier in the year, my faith in Australian wine was restored at this month’s Decanter World Wine Awards. The total of wines tasted by the 200 plus judges at London’s Tobacco Dock topped 15,000 wines for the first time, while Australia’s contribution, at over 1000 wines, was substantial. Numbers don’t necessarily add up to quality, and it was our job sitting nose in glass for a week to sort the wheat of trophies and gold, silver and bronze medals from the also ran chaff.
Bang for Buck
POSTED ON 10/05/2014After three unexceptional years on the trot, Bordeaux had a golden opportunity to win (back) friends and influence people by reducing the price of the mediocre 2013 vintage. The UK wine trade made itself hoarse shouting that prices needed to decrease by 30 - 35% if the wines were to sell at this early pre-bottling release stage. But Bordeaux blew it. The trouble is that the châteaux don’t care enough because they can hold the Bordeaux merchants to ransom by threatening to withhold their allocation in a good vintage.
A Rose By Any Other Name
POSTED ON 03/05/2014I’m sure there are many of you who think that the idea of superior rosé is as plausible as equating cupcakes with haute cuisine. To disabuse us of the notion, Richard Bampfield MW and his client, the enterprising Jean-Christophe Mau, owner of Château Brown in Bordeaux, put on a blind tasting last month of premium rosés around the world at London’s Westminster Boating Base.
In the Pink
POSTED ON 01/05/2014I would like to start with a confession. I never took rosé seriously for a long time, in fact I hardly ever drank it at all. Unless of course it was Dom Pérignon Rosé Champagne. I used to think that rosé was the kind of wine that was only drunk by young women on girls’-nights-out or middle-aged matrons on ladies-who-lunch expeditions. I wasn’t alone in thinking this way. Many winemakers too made their rosé wine as an afterthought.
