Confessions of a Wino

The Olympic Games are coming to London in 2012.  Like most Olympic preparations there are rumours of delays, accusations of bribery and corruption, confirmation of massive cost increases, and public doubts that anything will be ready on time.

This is all entirely normal in the run up to any Olympics.  However, unlike other recent hosts, we have contrived to produce the most astonishingly inept logo, and at £400,000, it looks about as cheap as a Northern Rock mortgage.

Rapsani from Tsantali Winery claims to be “The wine of the Gods of Olympos” but I take this with a pinch of salt since, elsewhere on the bottle the label breaks out into a nasty bout of francophilia, claiming the wine to be “Appellation d’Origine de Qualité Supérieure”.

I think this one arrived chez Bathgate by accident, in a random bin end case from Laithwaites.  If you followed the Laithwaites link you will have seen them at pains to compare this wine to a top growth claret.  Never mind the different terroir, never mind the different grapes, it was aged in premium oak barrels and, therefore, deserved comparison with a cru classé. 

Er, sorry, no.

But that’s not to say it’s a bad wine.  I can taste the oak.  I get the herbs and the rich fruit, mostly blackcurrants, reminded me that Ribena ought to launch a toothkind alcopop.  It’s an incredibly intense wine that tastes much stronger than its 13% alcohol rating.  It has a finish that lasts longer than an episode of the Sopranos and a body much larger than Tony’s.  But at the end of the day, it’s a nice wine, not a classic and certainly not challenging the Bordelais just yet.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 11:56 am and is filed under greece. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.