Banear Friulano, 2009

… will kick you like a university student’s cheap homemade cocktails

(Sorry, not the best photo; only iPhone camera to hand)

There are a shocking number of extremely poor Italian wines being sold in the UK. So I suppose I oughtn’t to be surprised that Banear Friulano is emphatically mediocre.

At least it’s not terrible. And this is a price point (£5.50) around which congregate a great number of offensively horrible wines. But that’s not really an excuse. And I’m afraid that, taking all the above into account, Banear Friulano still has very little to recommend it.

There’s a slight soapiness of the kind that often lingers also around Soave. And it’s one of those whites that manages simultaneously to be empty and over-concentrated. Leave a mouthful of this too long without swallowing and it’ll kick you like a combination of vodka and nasty cheap grapefruit juice. Like a fresher’s homemade cocktail.

It’s a shame, because before that vodka-grapefruit hits, there’s the tiniest beginning of a creaminess that, had it been permitted to bloom, could’ve made all the difference.

Verdict

I’m being somewhat negative, although this isn’t — as I’ve said — terrible. It ticks various ‘adequate’ boxes, but I can’t find much to compliment, really. I suppose it’s ‘fresh’ and ‘zingy’, yeah — and a few more of those meaningless Wetherspoons-menu adjectives. And it’d be a fair enough appetiser, if only because, after a glass of it, you’ll be gasping for something else to cast onto the arid plain that your tongue has become.

M&S has a pretty good Friuli for a similar kind of price (I’ll find out its details next time I’m there and update this post accordingly). Drink that instead, and be reminded that neither Italian whites nor this region specifically are necessarily disappointing, even at a reasonable price.

Update: Yeah, that M&S wine I referred to is M&S Friuli Grave Sauvignon Blanc — seems to be a mere £6 at the moment, though I think it’s a bit more at full price. Buy it instead of Banear.

Rating *
ABV 13%
Price £5.50 from the Wine Society

Loios, Vinho Regional Alentejano, 2007 (J Portugal Ramos)

… will fill your mouth with cherry; crushed, dark and bleeding

Tonight, I was grilling lamb. Lamb rubbed with cumin and paprika, alongside a broad bean salad with coriander, garlic and, yes, more cumin.

So that called for a red wine, and one that would stand up to the Moorish spices and charred intensity. I picked a Portugese red from the region of Alentejo, in which (according to Hugh Johnson) ‘A reliably dry climate makes rich, ripe reds’.

This is a good wine.

There’s a nice balance between savoury and sweet. On its own (I taste wines first without food, then with), its complexity is obvious. It’s not a glug-before-dinner wine. There’s a fair bit of tannin there, which makes it a chewable mouthful.

Very first impression (microseconds) is ever so slightly empty. But then there’s an explosion of flavour. Which almost makes that initial first-sip emptiness a virtue. From there on, no emptiness whatsoever.

Flavours are cherry (cherry stones particularly), but of the deep, ripe variety; not firm and ruby, but crushed, dark and bleeding. The savoury tannins entirely keep the fruit in check (which could otherwise be sickly) — balance is excellent.

Add food (and mine was very nice, thank you) and the benefits of those tannins become even clearer. Ever drunk a fruity wine with food and been confronted with a sudden almost cloying sweetness? That was probably thanks to the lack of tannins.

Loios won’t do that to you. No indeed. Without ever becoming exactly soft, the wine mellows and broadens. Juicy. If I do say so, this turned out to be a perfect match for my lamb, and stood up brilliantly to the paprika and cumin.

Verdict

This is a very good wine. It’s serious, and you’d want to pay it attention, not gulp it mindlessly. Most people will want to drink it with food. To be sure of getting a French red of this quality, you’d have to spend a good whack more.

£7.25 is an excellent price, and I’d buy this again. Dinner party calibre, certainly.

Rating ★★★☆☆
ABV 13.5%
Price £7.25 from the Wine Society

Welcome to Old Parn’s Wine Reviews

In which your hero identifies his old, bad self and declaims (at no great length) his principles (or lack thereof)

Greetings, ladies; greetings, gentlemen. This blog exists solely for the purpose of cataloguing my consumption of alcohol (and my token justification of said consumption via the trusty mechanism of critical analysis/appreciation). Here’s the score.

  1. As I drink wines, I’ll write about them. I might even rate them, if I can bring myself to that formidable degree of decisiveness.
  2. I’m not a wine critic (though I once applied for a graduate traineeship at Majestic Wine. Rejected.) I buy these wines myself (though would be more than happy to receive donations from generous wine emporia, let it be noted).
  3. I’ll be covering a range of prices, from cheapish to bowel-clenchingly expensive. The latter considerably more rarely than the former. Unfortunately.
  4. Sometimes (I do not promise always), I’ll give y’a bit of background. Perhaps in the case of an unusual grape variety, obscure region or suchlike. This I will include in my posts (some will say counterintuitively) under the heading ‘Background’.

That’s pretty much it. More to follow shortly.