Wine Club
June Wine Club
A visit to the London International Wine Fair is, paradoxically, a sobering experience.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like white Burgundy. Such people must exist, like black swans, but I never seem to come across them. The problem for us fans is usually price, but not with this Macon Charnay, Clos des Tourons 2007 (3), which has been cut again by £1 to £8.49. It has all the rich, ripe, peach and vanilla flavour of a good Burgundy at a very good price. A wine to serve to people you like a lot.
Last year Hedley Wright sold a lot of this delicious pink sparkler, the Taltarni Brut Taché 2005 (4). It is made in Tasmania from the three classic Champagne grapes — Chardonnay plus two types of Pinot — with a dash of Shiraz thrown in to give it colour and just a little more depth. The result is a wine that looks happy and bouncy and spritzy, and will give you the same feeling. Just right for an aperitif, but would also go perfectly with salmon or poultry. Reduced from £11.99 to a most attractive £10.49.
Now the reds. The L’Eglise Grenache Merlot 2007 (5) from southern France is a really nice summer wine, smooth, easy drinking, with bags of flavour to stand up to food or just to glug with pleasure before a government minister marches up and tells you how many units it contains. (Did you know that a unit is an entirely arbitrary measure, and of course tells you nothing about body weight or metabolism? I expect you did.) The wine is reduced from £6.25 to £5.49.
Finally, I loved the Silencio Tinto Joven 2006 (6) from the Ribera del Duero. The greatest wines of both Spain and Portugal come from the banks of this river. Personally, I think they are far classier than the run of Riojas, having weight and backbone along with their rich, plummy, cedar and damson flavours. This is a very fine wine at a very decent price, £6.49 — a whopping 19 per cent off its £7.99 regular price.
There is a sample case reduced by a further £4. Delivery, as ever, is free and there are substantial discounts for larger orders: take £10 off a total order for two cases, £20 off three, and £35 off a four-case order.
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August Spectator Wine Club
Simon Hoggart's latest selection for the month of August
July Spectator Wine Club
Simon Hoggart's latest selection for the month of July
May Wine Club
I’ve been reading an intriguing article by Miles Thomas in the Psychologist magazine. It’s called ‘On Vines and Minds’, and it discusses many of the ways in which our brains determine the experience of drinking wine.
April Wine Club
The budget has hit wine merchants and drinkers quite hard.
February Wine Club
Time for our annual offer of Château Musar from the excellent folk at Wheeler Cellars, sister company to Lay & Wheeler.
January Wine Club
I love Stone, Vine & Sun of Winchester. They keep winning awards for best independent wine merchant; they have a knack for finding delicious wines at excellent prices from places you haven’t heard about yet but very soon will.
December Wine Club
This is our positively final offer for Christmas, and it’s terrific. Thanks to Lay & Wheeler we have half a dozen French classics, all of which would be very welcome on the Yuletide dinner table, or at a memorable party. What’s more, every one is generously discounted. They are not cheap wines, but they are tremendous value.
NOVEMBER WINE CLUB
I cannot imagine anyone who looks less like Father Christmas than Adam Brett-Smith, the managing director of Corney & Barrow. Adam is slender instead of fat, his face clean-shaven rather than covered in a fluffy white beard, and he would no more wear a red fur-lined suit and a silly hat than you or I would go to work dressed as Ronald McDonald.
