Wine of the Week – a friendly and great value Douro red

I love the wines from the Douro Valley in Portugal. This beautiful part of the world is an isolated, harsh, arid landscape that produces fabulous world class wines, as well as Ports. The wines tend to be red, but some lovely whites are made too. Douro wines are usually very high quality and although they can be pretty expensive, they generally deliver very good value for the quality that you get.

Map of the Douro – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement. Quinta do Noval is marked, just north of Pinhão.

Recently I have presented a couple of tastings on the wines of the Douro, which were very well received indeed and I will write about those soon. In the meantime I tasted a red wine from the Douro that delivered a huge amount of pleasure at a very good price, so I have made it my Wine of the Week.

Quinta do Noval.

2013 Lot 20 Douro Grande Reserva
DOC Douro
Douro Valley
Portugal

My normal go to good value Douro red wine is the Altano Organic – and which is currently on offer from Waitrose at just £7.99 – which I like very much, but this is another terrific wine that hows what the region can do at a very good price. It is a limited production wine – just 41,000 bottles – and forms part of Aldi’s Lot Series, which contains some other very good wines.

This Douro Valley red is a blend of three of the most important local grapes; Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca and Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo) and is made for Aldi by Quinta do Noval, which is one of the most famous and respected producers of Ports and table wines in the region. I recently showed their excellent 2010 Cedro do Noval and magnificent 2007 Quinta do Noval at a tasting and they were really appreciated.

The view from my room at Quinta do Nova a couple of years ago. The closest building is the winery.

The colour is a deep red, while the nose offers ripe black and red fruits together with liquorice, sweet spice and black pepper. The palate is incredibly fruity with black cherry, blackberry, plum, chocolate, pepper, wild herbs, a touch of spice and supple, smooth tannins. This is a wine that is clearly made to be drunk young. It is very soft, fruity, quite rich, herbal and spicy which makes it very attractive and easy to drink – 88/100 points.

Available in the UK from Aldi for £9.99 per bottle – a case of 6 bottles  is £59.94 and delivered for free.

This is a delicious wine that shows some of the flavour profile the Douro region gives, but a a very good price and in a very drinkable style, it’s well worth a try.

Wine of the Week – a lovely sparkling wine

Christmas is coming, quite fast it feels, so I am tasting a lot of wine with an eye to festive drinking.

I don’t know about you, but I really like a good bit of fizz at Christmas as I can drink it with all sorts of different foods, or none. Of late I have been tasting some rather wonderful English sparkling wines and I will tell you about some of them soon, but in the meantime I tasted a surprisingly good English sparkling wine recently that is easily available and good value for money too, so I have made it my Wine of the Week – even though there is absolutely nothing to celebrate given the dire world situation today.

Chalk Valley Brut
Denbies Wine Estate
Dorking
Surrey
England

English sparkling wine is all the rage at the moment and rightly so as they can be very good indeed. However, they aren’t all as good as the best ones, so you do have to be careful. This wine is a special cuvée made for Aldi by Denbies Estate in Dorking. I have enjoyed visiting Denbies in the past, it is a lovely place to visit with a couple very nice restaurants, a casual one and a more formal proper restaurant. However, I have often been wary of their wines in the past as I didn’t always find them particularly exciting. If this wine is anything to go by though, then I might have been doing them an injustice. I am sure that their sparkling wines used to taste very green and lean, which can be a problem in our climate, but is most certainly not the case here.

Denise Wine Estate, Dorking, Surrey – photo courtesy of the estate.

The wine is made by the traditional method and is a blend of 54% Seyval Blanc, 34% Pinot Noir, 8% Chardonnay 8% and 4% Pinot Blanc, all aged on the lees for 18 months.

My first clue that this might be rather good, was the rich, golden buttery colour. The nose is like freshly baked rolls and seaside rockpools together with some apple and apricot compote.

The palate is astonishingly rich and weighty with a fine mousse, a remarkable sweetness of ripe apricot, orange and apple fruit as well as a little sweet spice and creaminess, although the wine is dry. I was really thrilled by this wine, it is very drinkable and enjoyable – 88/100 points.

This is a good sparkling wine which gives you a good idea about English fizz and is easily available in the UK at a very good price.

 Available in the UK from Aldi for £14.99 per bottle – £ 89.94 per case of 6 bottles including free delivery.

Wine of the Week – a delicious & great value Priorat

Beautiful vineyards in priorat.

The other week I was wandering around the Three Wine Men event in London and I found myself trying the wines on the Lidl stand.

Many of you will know that I have a lot of time for Lidl. They offer very interesting products and, like Aldi, they seem to be able to put some excellent wines on the market at very good prices. Whether or not these great prices survive our leaving the EU remains to be seen, but right now they offer some staggering value.

The beautiful Priorat landscape. Photo courtesy of Oficina de Turisme del Priorat.

All the Lidl wines I tried that day were pretty good, but the star was something that absolutely astonished me. It was a red wine from Priorat, one of the very best wine regions in Spain, which normally produces some of Spain’s most expensive wines, but this one is an absolute bargain.

Wine map of Spain, see Priorat in the north east – click for a larger view

The beautifully rugged Priorat landscape.

2011 Vinya Carles Crianza
Bodegas Reserva de la Tierra
DOCa / DOQ / PDO Priorat
Catalunya, Spain

Priorat – Priorato in Castellano, or proper Spanish – is one of Spain’s great regions and it produces many of Spain’s most famous, most expensive and sought after wines. Indeed Priorat is one of only two Spanish regions – the other being Rioja – that is labelled with the prestigious PDO status of Denominación de Origen Calificada / DOCa – Denominació d’Origen Qualificada or DOQ in Catalan. This is a rank above most other Spanish wine regions, which are labelled as Denominación de Origen or DO, and the regulations are more stringent.

It is a wonderful place, beautifully rugged and mountainous with an amazing backdrop of the Montsant Mountains. It is most famous for the fine, spicy reds made from blends of Garnacha and Cariñena, often together with Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, although some fascinating, rich and herbal white wines are made too.

I am afraid that I know nothing about the wine, not definitely anyway, as the technical sheet I was sent says that it is a 50/50 blend of Tempranillo and Cabernet Sauvignon, while the back label on the bottle says it is a Grenache, Carignan / Garnacha, Cariñena blend. I think I believe the back label, as it doesn’t feel as though there is any Cabernet or Tempranillo here.

The colour is a deep, opaque, vibrant purple. The aromas are of warming, spicy, herbs and rich berry fruit; blueberry, mulberry and cooked strawberry together with rich pear and wafts of sweet liquorice and sweet coconut and vanilla from the oak – presumably American oak.

The palate is very juicy and supple, with plump fruit, smooth, ripe tannins and a twist of spice. It is nicely concentrated, richly fruity and very enjoyable indeed. It isn’t very complex, but it is delicious and pretty full-bodied. I cannot imagine anyone failing to be seduced by its charms. This wine over delivers for anything like the money, it was terrific just tasting on its own, but with a venison burger and a salad it gave me a huge amount of pleasure – 87/100 points, I originally gave it 85, but as the bottle went on, I marked it up for the pleasure it gave me.

Available in the UK from Lidl for £5.99 per bottle.

Wine of the Week 74 – a rich and warming winter red at a bargain price

If the weather is getting you down and you have started eating rich stews, pies and casseroles to warm you up. Then you are in for a treat as I tried a wine the other day that is perfect with any of those. It will certainly bring a smile to your face, but will not break the bank, so I decided to make it my Wine of the Week.

It comes from a place, in South Australia, called the Limestone Coast. I have known of the region for a long time as it includes the famous Coonawarra sub-region as well as Pathaway. Coonawarra has long been famous for producing world class Cabernet Sauvignon and Padthaway for excellent Chardonnay, although in truth each grape can grow in both and achieve good results. Until recently though, I was not too familiar with the other sub-regions such as Robe, Mount Benson or the eccentrically named Wrattonbully.

Map of South Eastern Australia, the Limestone Coast and Padthaway are right on the border with Victoria – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement.

All of these places seem to make terrific wines and it seems a shame that so few of us have heard of them. Luckily help is at hand with Aldi stocking a terrific pair of great value wines from the Limestone Coast – a Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon.

2014 Aldi The Exquisite Collection Cabernet Sauvignon
Limestone Coast
South Australia

Made by Taylors Wines (Wakefield in the UK to avoid confusion with the Port house) from 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from Padthaway. The wine is cold fermented in stainless steel to preserve the freshness of the fruit and then has 9 months in French oak. 25% is aged in stainless steel to preserve that bright, ripe fruit.

Deep, opaque black cherry colour. The aromas power out of the glass in that classic South Australian “lifted” way with a little leafy minty and a rich cassis coulis note. The oak gives a lovely dash of espresso, smoky, cedar cigar-box and a touch of spice.
The palate is rich, mouth coating and ripe with bold, sweet ripe black fruit and very smooth, supple tannins that make it slip down very easily. While this is not a great, it is delicious and it is certainly a good, enjoyable, very drinkable and extremely well made Cabernet – 86/100 points.

 Available in the UK at £6.99 per bottle from Aldi.

If you like New World Cabernet with its bold fruit and intensity, then this could be an excellent everyday wine for you. Try it with roast lamb, sausages, casseroles and pot roasts.

If you are popping down to Aldi, do remember to try their Exquisite Collection Clare Valley South Australian Riesling too – it is quite super, read about it here.

Wine of the Week 27 – amazing value dry Riesling

I love Riesling. It is one of the best white grapes in the world and it produces such a wonderful variety of wines that it pains me that more consumers do not love it as I do. It still seems to evoke laughable images of the 1970s and Liebfraumilch for many people, but what those people have to remember is that all the things they find funny about the 1970s now, were not funny then. Their younger selves – or their parents – actually liked wearing safari jackets and flares, eating chicken kiev and drinking Blue Nun – get over it I say.

It also might interest you to know though that Blue Nun never had any Riesling in it and most Liebfraumilch and cheap German wine was – and is – made from Müller-Thurgau grapes and not Riesling at all.

Riesling can be stylish, classy, refined and elegant and what’s more a great many are dry. If you want dry wines made from Riesling, then drink Riesling from Alsace, Austria, Washington State or Chile. All these places are produce some superb dry Riesling, but my Wine of the Week this week is cracking dry Riesling from the Clare Valley in South Australia. If the delights of Riesling have so far eluded you, but you enjoy Grüner Veltliner or Albariño, do give this wine a try, you might well enjoy it.

Clare Valley Vines at Taylors Wine. Photo courtesy of Taylors Wines.

Map of South Eastern Australia – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement.

2013 Aldi The Exquisite Collection Riesling
Clare Valley
South Australia
Riesling was once the work horse white grape of Australia and it is still widely grown. However, two areas of South Australia have really made a speciality of it and now produce superb premium Riesling in their own unique style, although many other grape varieties are planted there too. These wine regions are the Eden Valley and the Clare Valley.
Clare is probably the most famous and produces the iconic style of Australian Riesling, dry, medium-bodied and with lots of fruit balancing the grape’s natural acidity. They normally appear richer than their European counterparts and often have an oily character to them.
If you read the small print on the label you will see that this wine is made by Taylors Wines, who are a large, but very good quality family run producer that exports under the Wakefield label to avoid confusion with the Port house. 

Strangely the Clare Valley is not that cool, it actually has a Mediterranean climate, but the nights are cool and together with the height of the vineyards – around 350-400 metres above sea level – this ensures the wines retain their freshness, acidity and balance. It is an area of gently rolling hills in fact and not strictly speaking a valley at all, but it is very beautiful.

The nose is enticing and glorious with the freshness of lime and lime zest, some grapefruit and tangerine too and there is something mineral and stony about it as well. It smells fresh, vibrant and pristine, but has a little oily, waxy richness too.
The palate has lots of zing and fat, ripe fruit too. It has lovely, mouthwatering acidity making it clean, and crisp, as well as a juicy quality to the fruit; apples, pears and white peach, together with lemon and lime zest on the finish and some steely minerality.
Really good stuff that is just perfect as an aperitif or with light meals, fish dishes, shellfish and it is really good with most Asian cuisine – anything you dip into sweet chilli sauce in fact  – 88/100 points, this scores high for value and tastes much more expensive than it is.

I don’t like the label of this wine or The Exquisite Collection name Aldi have given the range, it’s a pretty terrible name, but who cares if the wine is this good?

 Available in the UK at £6.99 per bottle from Aldi.

I will certainly make sure that I have some of this on hand over Christmas, it is utterly delicious and a bargain at that.

Wine of the Week 25 – a superb inexpensive sparkler.

I love sparkling wine and enjoy drinking it whatever the occasion. Nothing cheers me up so much as some fizz after a difficult day. Sparkling wine before dinner always turns an ordinary day into something of a celebration too. A nice fizz always gives me a little lift and makes the world seem a better place. Sadly a lot of sparkling wines can be a bit expensive for everyday drinking, while the cheaper examples can often be disappointing.

Happily there is help at hand and I have made it my Wine of the Week. It is a Crémant de Jura, so it comes from the Jura region of France. Jura is a small and relatively obscure place in the east of the country, but it makes some wonderful wines and produces stunning cheeses – Comté comes from here. I recently created the maps for the definitive book on the wines of the Jura, which is available here in the UK & here in the US.

My map showing where Jura is. Click for a larger view. © Quentin Sadler 2014.

Jura vineyards showing the dramatic terrain.

Sadly I have not yet visited, but from my research I know that Jura is a beautiful and captivating place full of stunning scenery and picturesque towns, while imposing mountains are never far away. I gather the place is very quiet and rural and a world away from the France of the big cities.

The fact that the wine is a Crémant means it must be made sparkling by the Traditional Method, the same way that they do it in Champagne. The wine comes from Aldi and I think it might well be the best sparkling wine on the market at under £10, but don’t tell anyone, or they will all want to try it! In fact I have been quite impressed with lots of Aldi wines, so while you are there buying this you might want to grab a few other bottles to try.

If you have never been able to try anything from Jura, this wine might be a good place to start as production here is very is small and so the can often be difficult to track down.

2011 Philippe Michel Crémant du Jura Chardonnay Brut
A.C. Crémant de Jura
Jura, France

What makes this so good? It is the balance and the acidity which gives it freshness and elegance. It really is much better than the modest price tag would lead you to think. Made from pure Chardonnay – Jura is not far from Burgundy – it’s crisp with a lean, apply structure, the merest hint of toast and tends towards the firm, taut texture of Champagne, although some flourishes of subtle tropical fruit soften the plate somewhat. This so obviously comes from a cool region and it such a refreshing – in every sense – change from the soft pappy and sweetish style of sparkling wine that is so widely encountered nowadays (I’m talking about cheap Prosecco here in case you didn’t know) – 85/100 points.

Available from Aldi at £7.29 per bottle – you can find your nearest store here.

This just makes a perfect everyday fizz, so stock up early for Christmas would be my advice. What’s more if you like it – and if you like sparkling wine you will – make sure you try something else from the Jura, The Wine Society stock some Jura wines, as do Les Caves de Pyrène.

Classic Wines at GREAT Value Prices

A couple of times over the years I have mentioned Aldi in these pages because I really like their Toro Loco Tempranillo red and Toro Loco Bobal Rosado / Rosé from the Spain’s Utiel-Requena wine region. They are extremely good quality wines, deliver loads of pleasure and will disappoint no one at the £3.69 asking price.

Well, Aldi seem to have noticed as they recently sent me a few of their other bottles for me to try:

2012 Gavi ‘The Exquisite Collection’
D.O.C.g. Gavi, Piemonte, Italy
Made by Fratelli Martini Secondo Luigi / Casa Sant Orsola

I like Gavi and think it is one of the best of Italy’s traditional dry white wines from indigenous grapes – of course recently I have discovered the wonderful whites of Etna and Campania. This had the little bit of weight, almost creaminess like a Mâcon, that I associate with good Gavi and a slightly nutty character, fresh acidity and was just a tad richer than crisp making it very attractive and enjoyable.
Extraordinaryly good wine for £4.99.

The beautiful rolling hills of Piemonte – photo courtesy of Fratelli Martini Secondo Luigi.

2011 Albariño Rías Baixas ‘The Exquisite Collection’
D.O. Rías Baixas, Galicia, Spain
Made by Bodegas Martin Codax

Another stunning value bottle of wine made by one of the top producers of the region. This is not the finest Albariño I have ever tasted – it lacks a little acidity, minerality and poise for me – but only a little and it is a lovely and enjoyable dry white wine. It is concentrated and tasty with some succulent fruit and some freshness from the acidity. An excellent aromatic, floral and peachy dry white wine  and a good Albariño for beginners. And the price is just £5.99!

2012 Mâcon-Villages
A.C. Mâcon-Villages, France
Henri de Lorgère

I like Mâcon wines and think they can be really very attractive indeed, provide value and sometimes really great quality too. Well, this is a nice wine, it is very classic and European – not a fruit bomb – there are discrete apple and pear notes, nice acidity and flinty minerality even. This is very much on the light end of the Mâcon spectrum, but it isn’t dilute, it is fresh, very dry – verging on crisp –  and just medium-bodied, so refreshing and gently rounded too, but clearly unoaked. It is nice and great value, but the Gavi is better – £4.99.

(2012) Côtes de Provence Rosé ‘The Exquisite Collection’
A.C. Côtes de Provence, France

I don’t often choose to drink a Provence rosé – I don’t really know why, I just never think of it, so did not know what to expect from this Grenache, Cinsault and Syrah blend. It looked attractive having deeper colour than I often associate with Provence and was in the classic curvaceous bottle. Incidentally I have been informed that this was from the 2012 vintage, but I searched the bottle in vain for that information. This is a very drinkable rosé – judging by how fast the bottle emptied – very fresh and lively with good acidity and a core of juicy  red currant, cranberry and strawberry fruit. A great deal of pleasure for just £5.99.

(2011) Pinot Noir
Vignobles Roussellet, Vin de France

To be honest I put off trying this. Cheap / inexpensive Pinot always makes me wary and Vin de France is roughly what used to be called Vin de Table, so it theoretically pretty basic stuff, but I tried it in the end. Again you will scour the label in vain for the vintage, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is the wine and this is quite remarkably good, soft, juicy and fruity. It has the soft tannins and bright fruit of a nice Beaujolais, but some Pinot-like earthy fruit quality too. It is not a great Pinot by any means, but it is a very good Pinot for the price and a nice drop of easy drinking, soft red wine. Amazing value and very versatile, with food, without food, room temperature, chilled, even mixed with lemonade and all for £4.49.

N.V. Champagne Veuve Monsigny Brut No: 3
Champagne, France
Made by Champagne Philizot & Fils

I was half looking forward to this and half dreading it. Somedays I thought it was going to be ok and others undrinkable. Well it was better than both those thoughts. This is genuinely a nice bottle of Champagne, fresh, lively and very appley with a soft mousse and palate. Frankly for the £12.99 price tag it is stunning!

The only odd thing about really is the back label, where it claims; ‘Ageing in cellars 5 years more than the legal minimum has enhanced its complexity.’ Really, this spent 75 months on the lees – the legal minimum is 15 months for Champagne – it doesn’t taste like it, which is a good thing I think in this instance and it would cost an enormous amount to do that!

The vineyards of Champagne.

I haven’t given these wines any points as that would be, er well… pointless actually. All of them are just right, absolutely what you want, extremely well made and very good value for anything like the price. So, if you want nice wines and no surprises – except for the low price tag – then it seems to me that Aldi can offer much more pleasure at their normal on the shelf prices than most of their competitors do with their special offers.

Aldi didn’t only send me wine by the way, there was also a bottle of Oliver Cromwell London Dry Gin in the box and as I type this I am enjoying a rather good Gin and tonic made with it. As a republican – American readers note the small ‘R’ – and admirer of Cromwell, given the times he lived in, I could not resist trying it and I am glad that I did because it really is pretty good, nicely perfumed and aromatic with a good depth of flavour and at just £9.65 per bottle it is a steal for a properly made gin – where the botanicals have been redistilled in a pot-still with the base alcohol.

You can find your nearest UK Aldi branch here.

Very drinkable great value wine

Most of the cheap stuff on the UK market nowadays seems to be the big brands that operate at the lower ends of the quality spectrum; Blossom Hill, Kumala etc. I am sure most of these find favour with someone, but I always presume that they sell rather more because of marketing budgets than on wine quality. So, I am always on the look out for honest and well made wines that can compete at low price levels.

 

vineyards just outside Requena

It seems that I found a bit of a winner recently – and it promises a great deal right from the start, with its modern packaging, screwcap and a Decanter World Wine Awards Silver Medal sticker.

The only visual negative is that at first glance I assumed it was from Toro – one of the very best Spanish wine regions for good value – the design even resembles some Toro wines.

 

Map of Spain’s wine regions, Utiel-Requena is just West of Valencia – click for a larger view

I like Utiel-Requena, I was there a few months back and it is a beautiful place. Administratively it is part of Valencia, but geographically and historically the region is more like La Mancha – they don’t speak Valenciano and the area is a plateau quite unlike the coastal conditions. I really enjoyed visiting Requena itself, the town is very Spanish with no hint of the costas about it – and the prices of most things are cheap . It is surrounded by lovely countryside – mostly flat and covered in vines, but there are always hills in the distance and the landscape gets a bit more bumpy inland from Utiel.

The quality of the modern wines was a revelation too and as a consequence they are now more widely seen on Spanish supermarket shelves as well as creeping onto the UK market.

The Bobal grape is the traditional speciality here, but this wine is made from the much more famous and respected Tempranillo, which produces the great wines of Rioja as well as Ribera del Duero.

2009 Toro Loco Tempranillo
DO Utiel-Requena, Spain

There is nothing to dislike about this wine, unlike most at this sort of price it is not dilute, it is not over-extracted, it is not sweet, confected or jammy and at a modest 12.5% it is not over aclcoholic either.

It is soft with minimal tannins, a tiny waft of spice and lots of gluggy blackberry fruit characters. I found it most agreeable with some sausages – 88/100 points.

Available at £3.49 from Aldi – which must make it what Parker strangely calls ‘a value’ and what I call great value for money.

I have reviewed the same producers excellent dry Bobal Rosé before, but for the 2009 vintage the have  revamped the packing to Toro Loco and lowered the price to just £3.49.

These are amongst the very best cheap wines that I have tasted in a long time and I think they provide a much more pleasurable experience than most in their price bracket.