Revelation

Picked this up in Oddbins tonight because it was new and I was curious, although I suspected it would be a rotten match with what I'd bought for dinner. Turned out to be a light, nicely acidic rustic drop of grog with a dusty aftertaste, not unlike the aftermath of cycling accidents when you end up with a mouthful of grit. Reminded me of the wines you can buy from the barrel in French campsites. In fact, I'm pretty sure a wine very similar to this came out of a fountain all night during a village fete once. Messy.

Lupe Pintos sell really good tortillas... in overly generous packs. Having bought some for my previous post I'll be eating them for a week. So tonight I decided to try a trick learnt from my friend Jo... tortilla pizzas.

Preheat the oven to as hot as it goes with the baking tray in. Smear the tortillas with some passata and a splash of habenero sauce. Sprinkle some precooked seafood and sliced spring onion onto the sauce. Top with torn up mozzarella. Into the oven for five minutes.

Then came the revelation.

While the 'pizzas' cooked I nibbled some of the left over seafood then had a slurp of wine. Unbelievable. A perfect match. That strange dusty gritty flavour and the wine's lightness were a perfect match. Just to make sure I tried another mussel followed by another a slurp of wine. Yup. Better try a cockle with the wine... yup, that works too. Mmm, what about prawn... yup. Squid... just in time the cooker beeper sounded.

So the first red wine I've ever had that really, properly goes with seafood. It's high acidity worked a treat with the tomato, chilli and cheese on the pizza too. Remarkably unexpected. I'll definitely buy it again to serve with a seafood platter to freak people out. Otherwise, as a wine, it's a tad overpriced.

Domaine Mas Theo's organic Coteaux du Tricastin: £8.99 Oddbins.

A red wine for seafood.

Bloggers Block

I've been trying to write a post for about a week now, there's an unfinished dozen, all starting off with some half arsed whimsy that trails off into no-where. Something's not there, it's missing, and my thoughts just won't gel.

So, here's a wine. A very nice wine. Recommended by Ross at the Woodlands Road Oddbins. Full of spring flowers and smelling of almonds.

It's organic, has a gentle spritz and... I've discovered that it's much better after opening, drinking a glass, then finishing it off three days later. Such parsimony hardly ever happens Chez Splodge. Strewth, I really am out of sorts. Maybe this will help...

Ticket price back with any purchase over £75. 20% discount on 12 bottles. Feel the deal. Okay, it's a mildly complicated deal. Here's a summary: If you're planning to buy some wine why not get pleasantly pished for free and save lots of pounds? You know it makes sense.

Without any wheeling and dealing, this Falerio will cost you £7.49. It's well worth it.

What Not To Drink

If you work in the arts or own a restaurant, chances are you'll live in dread of the critics review. They can, or at least many of them think they can, make or break individuals, openings and performances. Of course, the critics themselves will publicly, with lashings of faux modesty, deny that they believe any such thing. Even among journalists they're a strange breed, still, at least they do criticise. Wine writers rarely lay it on the line.

I can see how it happens. Invited along, say to taste fifty wines from a large supermarket chain, or a nice visit to foreign winemakers in situ, the temptation is to recommend something a reader might enjoy. Why waste space listing duffers and endless bland wines? Well, one danger with this approach is that this gives a false idea of wine 'talent'. Highlighting the few, camouflages the many.

I'd been thinking about this after visiting Marks and Spencer the other night. For me it boasts one of the best supermarket wine ranges. But I tend to steer myself towards certain wines. This time I deliberately picked up a couple of cheaper 'randoms' from the shelf. The average price of wine bought in the UK is still incredibly low.

First up, a dry German wine, down £2 to £3.99. These days the domestic market in Germany is dominated by dry wines so there are some good ones.

This isn't one of them. Quite acidic and tasting of pears. It has a deeply unpleasant pithy bitterness in the mid palate, like a badly peeled grapefruit. The finish is astringent too. Not nice.

I've been enjoying a lot of 'oldskool' Chilean cabernets recently. Lighter, less concentrated not so over extracted and not too expensive. So I went for this at £3.99. Oh dear.

Good colour, nice legs... but not much of a bouquet and it tasted 'dirty', like it'll give you the hangover from hell. Not good.

So don't buy either of these wines. They're rubbish. Instead, buy this:

From Oddbins. A combination of Chianti's main grape with Merlot. It works really well. A great wine for £5.99. All cherries and plums with a lovely earthy, gravelly texture. I was steered towards it by a very knowledgeable chap in the Woodlands Road branch... and have drunk quite a lot of it since.

The picture at the top of this post is called 'The Critic' by Kathy Jo Braceland.

Click here for her website.

Smuggler's delight

Cornwall was once synonymous with rum coves and hidden passages. These days, thanks to global warming, there's little need to sneak it in through the back door. Niven and Sabeen were justly proud of this souvenir, so much better than a plastic pirate's patch.

It's light, aromatic, invigorating and very similar to a Loire sauvignon. Apparently it sells out every year and costs about £10. So is that too expensive?

Well, if it was from the Loire, yes, it's not quite Sancerre. But for one of the best wines in Cornwall? Clearly that's what you have to pay.

Niven and Sabeen are getting very close to producing something else they'll be proud of...

To help them celebrate, and given the scarcity of Cornwall's finest, I'm suggesting this little beauty. I love it.

Melony, limey, sherbety and totally refreshing, it's hard to stop drinking this wine. A cracker and best of all, yours from Oddbins for just £5.99! Total bargain.

Click here for the Camel Valley Vineyards

Oops I did it again.

"20% off 6", said a big cartoon poster as I strolled purposefully towards Oddbins for a bottle to go with dinner. 20 minutes later, and £48 lighter, I was heading home. Why do I always fall for it?



First out of the box is Perrin's 2007 Cotes Du Rhone Nature. An organic wine that appears to have been endorsed by the butterflies.
Made mainly from Grenache grapes. At first it's quite sultry with hints of childhood... Blackjacks, wood smoke and raspberry ripple.

But it grows up quick. Pretty soon there's eucalyptus masking the smoke, white pepper, powdered chocolate and the fruit seems more mature, bruised even. With a couple more swirls in the glass it transforms into a heady, herby, gobby wine. I love it. Probably best with grilled meats and vegetables but it's damn good on it's own.

Look, it even shed a tear for the polar bears. Not that innocent.

From Oddbins:

Normally £9.99 but about £7.99 if you buy any 6 bottles. Buy, buy, buy.

Bargain New Zealand Pinot Noir

How has New Zealand managed it? People I know who normally baulk at spending over a fiver a bottle will happily drop £15 for a Kiwi pinot noir. Apparently it's because, "That's how much it costs". Great for their wine industry, not so good if you happen to like drinking the stuff.

I do, so hurrah, finally, a NZ pinot for £8.99. Crucially though, it's also delicious. Buy, buy, buy... and if you buy 12, Oddbins will give you 20% off. That takes it down to just over £7. Bargain, and believe me, you'll drink it...

(wine revealed in the video below)

I just can't get enough..

This is a cracking wine for the money that I've been buying in dribs and drabs for weeks. Tonight I asked the woman in Oddbins how much she had left..... "Oh, funny you should ask, I had loads but a guy came in today and bought 3 cases and someone has just left with two, so I'm running low". That did it, especially since you get 20% off any 12 bottles. 

So, I popped out for a £5.99 bottle to have with dinner and struggled back carrying a case. Oops. The discount makes this wine £4.79 a bottle. A total bargain! 

It tastes to me like the best of old and new worlds, ripe but not too rich, a subtle lick of oak, licorice and I'd swear gravel too.... in a nice way, like Graves. And, it's only 12.5% alcohol.