Another sunny day in England during what feels like a never ending heatwave meant yet another BBQ. I picked up a bottle of Tesco Finest Chianti Classico Riserva 2022 to go with it. I wasn’t looking for anything overly serious. I just wanted something Italian, savoury and with enough acidity to stand up to everything…
There are some bottles I pick up because I know roughly what I am getting, and then there are bottles like this. At £7.99 in Lidl, a 2019 Gran Reserva from Cariñena made with Tempranillo, Garnacha and Cabernet Sauvignon was interesting enough that I couldn’t really leave it there. Tonight it was going alongside a…
An Old School Campino in a Glass Some wines get opened because you have planned a meal around them. Others because you have been looking forward to trying the bottle for weeks. This wasn’t either of those. I’d just got back from a round of golf and had also had the thoroughly unwelcome news that…
What Happens When a £6.99 Merlot Gets Eight Years of Bottle Age? Every now and again you find a bottle that you buy more out of curiosity than expectation. This was definitely one of those. I found this 2018 Barramundi Merlot languishing at the back of Moss Delph Stores, one of those little independent shops…
Marlborough, New Zealand Sometimes you don’t need a big food pairing or an excuse to open something special. This was a 10pm opener after a long day, no food planned, just fancied a glass of wine and this was what I had in. Oyster Bay is probably one of the most recognisable names in Marlborough…
Sometimes there doesn’t need to be a food pairing or any great occasion behind opening a bottle. England were playing, I fancied a Rioja, and that was pretty much the extent of the decision making. Tonight’s bottle was the Hacienda López de Haro Reserva 2019, a Rioja Reserva that on paper should be right up…
There are some bottles where the price almost becomes part of the tasting experience!! This is definitely one of them. I picked up the Cepa Lebrel Reserva 2019 for £5.99 and opened it for a late September BBQ. Ribeye, Denver steak, minted lamb and sausages were all going over charcoal, so Rioja seemed a fairly…
A peachy, floral Burgundy that quietly got everything right I’ve been drinking a fair bit of Chardonnay recently, but this was a slightly different proposition. Montagny sits down in the Côte Chalonnaise and this particular bottle is a Premier Cru from Les Millières. I went into it hoping for some of that richer white Burgundy…
There are probably easier ways to spend Father’s Day than abandoning your wife and daughter in a seafood restaurant while you walk around Liverpool looking for the right bottle of Riesling. But apparently that’s where I’m at with wine now! Liv and Eden had taken me to Crabbish for Father’s Day, a seafood boil restaurant…
Don’t Judge a Wine by Its Colour When I poured this into the glass my first thought was, Wow, that’s almost rosé! It’s one of the palest Pinot Noirs I’ve come across, almost translucent in the glass, but as we all know with Pinot, colour means very little. Tonight I paired it with haddock, goat’s…