A Sunday Times Wine Club crisp refreshing whites case (£60) produced this rather cheap looking Sauvignon Blanc from Chile’s Valle Central. It was cheaply packaged and very pale with hardly any aroma.
And it wasn’t just cheap looking it was cheap.
When in dining mode, I am a grazer. I like to sample a range of flavours, and try new things as often as possible. Chinese banquets are great.  I like my Indian food to be served on as many plates as possible so I can play culinary Russian roulette with my taste buds. A spot of lime pickle on a spoonful of Vindaloo is like walking your tongue across hot coals, but this is far superior to pavement slabs of bland meat.
The ultimate grazer’s delight is a combination of three words: Spain, seafood and tapas. I think I may have found my mecca, ironically just to the west of the railway station in Fuengirola, Costa del Sol. This place is one of the best restaurants I’ve ever eaten in and almost certainly the best value.
If Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, named this his favourite restaurant, and Adrian Gill, erstwhile restaurant critic of the Sunday Times, also raves about the place (albeit that he is presumably on a retainer for writing about the history of most of the major restos in Caprice Holdings Ltd), then any self respecting wino has to visit. Sunday lunch is just the perfect time to eat oysters, and my rocks were from Malden. I am embarrassed, though, to admit I had to ask the waiter to explain that Essex is where these crustacea were reared. I am such a northern oik!
The service at Scott’s is obviously superb, highly professional and (unusually) English. However, our waiter was having an off day. I had to ask three times for my wine to be topped up. You may be thinking “lazy so and so” but I would have had to walk about 300 yards to get to my bottle of Pouilly Fumé from where they parked it. Talking of which can you spot our car in the photo below?
No I can’t see it either.
Boiled eggs.
Still reading?
It is sometimes the simple, apparently yawningly boring, plain and ugly things in life that give the most pleasure.
I regularly eat boiled eggs at the flat because they are:
1. Cheap;
2. Easy to prepare;
3. Easy to consume; and
4. Tasty
Giving fair exception to the last horseman of my ovate apocalyptic quartet, many people allege that Chenin Blanc welcomes only the first three riders onto its lazy back.
Accused of blandness, and being a Jack of all trades but master of none, how does Chenin Blanc stand in the dock against horseman number 4’s indictment? It is a grape I largely ignore, but I am not entirely sure why.
My wino mate, Robert, opened a debate about whether bringing a supermarket branded wine showed good judgement, or embarrassed your dinner party hosts.
Most winos concluded that it shows good form to see through the label and judge the wine. In fact, spotting a bargain winissimo in sheep’s clothing is a big coup for a wine snob (assuming he can convince his friends that the wine is really worth much more than the actual price). I have a personal view here. I simply don’t care where the wine comes from, or the name on the label, or the price, but I am a sucker for packaging. On that measure I am not sure why I picked up this ugly bottle at Sainsbury for £6.99.
When you hear a wine described as “balanced” what does it mean to you?
I unscrewed this bottle of Torrontés and drank most of it before reading the back of the label. Before opening, I knew that it was made by Susana Balbo one of my favourite Argie producers. I knew that the wine came from Majestic and retails at £6.99. I knew that it had a pretty label and came in the usual gargantuan bottles that are trademarks of the land of diminutive Eva Perón. I am convinced that the bottles used by Dominio del Plata are almost as big as Evita and probably have clocked up more air miles per kilo.
After reading the label I now feel much wiser, because I know that “Crios” means “offspring”. I know that Torrontés is Argentina’s uniquely aromatic grape, and that it is similar to Viognier with the dry crisp taste of Sauvignon Blanc. The final interesting fact I took on board was that no oak was used in ageing the wine. Oh, and just to cram just one more sliver of semi-useful intelligence into my puddled brain, that the wine displays excellent “balance”.
Regular readers know that I sampled the Auction service at Virgin Wines with mixed results. I discovered recently that they have started auctioning Cloudy Bay 2007. Fabulous idea! Everyone knows the price of Cloudy Bay. Although Harvey Nichols sells it every year for about £16-18, other retailers struggle to keep it below £20. The Sunday Times Wine Club sells it at a rip-off £26.95! Virgin Wines? You can start bidding at £1 for 6 bottles!
So I raced to the site and discovered with disappointment that, with 18 hours still to go, the bidding was already at £131 for a half case (£21.83 per bottle). It only took me 1 minute on Google to find it at £18.99 at lebonvin.co.uk. I am not saying that £131 for 6 is bad value, though. It just pays to keep an eye on availability elsewhere if you value your coins. Well worth visiting Virgin and placing a bid of £50 or so, just in case! I am going to keep going back for a look.
Anyway, the cricket saison est arrivé, and tomorrow I managed to get a ticket (sold out) for England vs New Zealand at Old Trafford (Manchester). I know what you are thinking, how on earth is he going to tie all this nonsense back into a post about a wine from Touraine? Listen carefully, I am about to begin…..
My first experience of buying from the Virgin Wines auction site left me with a case of total tosh to distribute discretely amongst my sorry mates.
But I bravely (some would say foolishly) tried again and this time things look more promising. This one came from a case of All White Delights and I successfully bid less than £50 including delivery!
I am a fan of Argie wines – Malbec and Torrontés are my favourites. The Colibri was typical of other Torrontés I have tried with lime, kiwi and rich apricot flavours. Simple and unpretentious, I like it.
The insipid colour was paler than an albino’s bikini line, but it is a lively, zingy and decent (but cheaper) alternative to Sauvignon Blancs. It ticks all the boxes for me.
I was delighted to receive the 2005 Château Guiraud I ordered en primeur what seems like ages ago. The photo below shows it compared to the same wine from the 1990 vintage (on the left). Wow!
As I speed towards old and wrinkly, it’s nice to see that some things can age with enormous grace.
I am quietly pleased that I have finally managed to get this weblog onto a new platform, a new ISP and new publishing software. I am still using the excellent WordPress, but have upgraded to version 2.5.1. My previous version (2.1) was error prone and insecure – spam was starting to appear in my scheduled posts! I strongly recommend anyone using WordPress to upgrade.
The new WordPress platform is pretty good, but it is much less intuitive than I expected. Loading and managing pictures for example, is in theory much easier, but in practice I think there are still a few bugs that need ironing out. I can also see that many of the new improvements have been aimed at non-technical users like me. However, as with all open source software, it is ultimately designed by techies who don’t quite understand how us Muggles think.
As with all software upgrades in my experience, the problems arise in the database conversion. This is something to watch out for if you are moving up several WordPress versions in one go, like I did. I had numerous problems that a friend with some SQL knowledge kindly sorted, in exchange for a couple of bottles from my inner cellar.
To celebrate my new platform I am drinking an unoaked Chardonnay from Virgin Wines. Pensilva Estate The Cross 2006 Coonawarra Chardonnay is not what I expected. Does it hit the bulls eye or should it merely be hung out on a crucifix to die?
Stumble It!
