Spy Valley Gewurtztraminer 2009

… makes an F-117 Stealth Fighter look a bit indiscrete and rough round the edges

A bottle of Spy Valley Gewurtztraminer from New Zealand

Now, Spy Valley may not mean much to you. Not even with its trendy Modern Warfare-type label design. To you, it may be just one more highish-end New Zealand wine brand.

But Spy Valley and me? We got history.

Okay, as history goes, this is very recent history. History from last Wednesday evening, to be precise. On which date, several bottles of Spy Valley Pinot Noir ushered me — disarmingly — far, far down the path of inebriation. To a destination marked ‘Hammered’.

You know. The head-in-hands, only-daring-to-peek-between-clawed-fingers, occasional-abject-moaning-to-noone-in-particular kind of hammered.

(Resulting in, incidentally, a maybe-if-I-wear-my-suit-into-work-today-I-will-trick-my-brain-into-behaving-like-a-professional kind of hangover, the next morning. I don’t think the suit fooled anyone, to be honest. My brain least of all.)

Anyhow. You may well imagine the barely-concealed suspicion and simmering resentment with which I eyed the bottle of Spy Valley Gewurtztraminer I subsequently found lurking in my wine rack. The way you might regard the sister of a man who’d recently punched you in the face.

But, Spy Valley Pinot Noir, all is forgiven!

Because your sister, it turns out, is pretty damn fit.

In other words, this is a very good Gewurtztraminer. Putting it to your nose is like turning on a big tap of flowers, tropical fruits, perfumes of the Orient.

And this wine is smooth. It is so smooth it’s practically frictionless. It makes an F-117 Stealth Fighter look a bit indiscrete and rough round the edges. And it sits in your mouth like nectar. It may well be the quietest, stillest thing you’ve ever had in there: it’s the polar opposite of fizzy. It’s almost as if it went right through ‘still’ and came out the other side.

This is anti-fizz.

And, Christ alive, it’s nice.

Verdict

Unlike our earlier Alsatian fling, Cave de Turckheim, the hefty alcohol of this wine is brilliantly handled, with no flabby belch of ethanol to trouble your quaffing. This is a pedigree Gewurtztraminer — exhibiting all the classic characteristics of the breed. Its honeyed — almost candyflossed — greeting mellows to an unctuous, gobfilling equilibrium. Deliciously inert. And there’s some raisiny depth (and a distant bite of gooseberry) there too, in case this is all sounding a bit too flimsy and high-note for you.

Almost indecently drinkable, then. I could get through bottles of the stuff.

So beware, Old Parn: maybe she’s not so different from her brother after all.

Rating ????
ABV 13.5%
Price £10.95 from The Wine Society (no longer in stock), though I got it in the January sale for a delicious £9.50. They still have it though (for £12.49) at Majestic, and their current deal on New Zealand wines potentially brings that down to £9.99. At that price, I would. Wouldn’t you?

The Wine Society’s Rioja Crianza 2006

… will give you some youth, some punch, some spunk. And all for just £7.

Closeup of the label of the Society's Rioja Crianza 2006The Wine Society’s ‘house’ Rioja is a confident, unfussy sort of affair. When you stuff your nose into the glass, you get a nice deep, serious kind of waft: a new pair of leather shoes just out of the box.

This is laced (see what I did there?) with a stalky vitality that lets you know: this isn’t going to be an unctuous, indulgent, wallowable kind of wine, but one with some youth, some punch, some spunk.

And, yeah, it’s not a fusty old Rioja. There’s a nice tannic weight to it, combined with a stinging little bite of sharpness. But these qualities are smoothed over somewhat by mulled red fruits: plums, cinnamon, pepper. And a dab of oak there at the back. Where I like it.

Verdict

Like most of The Wine Society’s ‘house’ range, this is an admirably solid, dependable wine for a very good price. Spend £7 on a Rioja in the supermarket and find one as good as this and you’ll be fortunate indeed.

That said, it’s not flawless. It’s a tad thin in the mouth for my liking, and (for my taste) the sour bite is a little overdone. I’d like this aspect of the wine reigned back a little. So — as I’ve implied — it’s dependably rather than inspirationally good.

Not that I’m so naïve, dear reader, as to expect inspiration for £7. Dependability suits me just fine.

Rating ★★★
ABV 13%
Price £6.95 from The Wine Society

Corriente Del Bio 2009, Pinot Noir

… is serious, poised and (at time of writing) rather good value

A bottle of Corriente Del Bio Pinot Noir from Marks & Spencer

I thought I’d crack open a bottle of this M&S Pinot Noir. It’s reduced right now, y’see, from £8 to a mere 6 — a bargain to which my attention was drawn by Fiona Beckett’s Credit Crunch Drinking.

Now, if you fervently adore pinot noir in the way that I do, your eyes will already be lit up at the prospect of a bottle for £6. But is it good?

Yeah, it’s pretty good. Serious, proper stuff. It doesn’t have that over-veggy, slightly composty thing that some cheaper new world PNs do. And it’s silky light, laced with becoming aromas of orange zest — though I’d like a little more body, please.

(But then, I’m a scrawny wee runt.)

Thanks to relatively prominent tannins, it also has that somewhat austere cranberry dryness. Best with food, I’d say.

Verdict

Not at all bad, M&S. For £6, this is definitely worth a try. It wouldn’t, though, be my £8 pinot noir of choice. I’d take the Wine Society’s Chilean Pinot Noir any day. And use the spare £1 to BUY SWEETS.

But if the notion of a serious, poised kind of wine for £6 grabs you, haul ass down to M&S soon. It won’t be on offer for much longer.

Rating ★★ at full price; ★★★ at its current price
ABV 14%
Price Reduced to £5.99 at Marks & Spencer (usually £7.99)

Come with me to a new and wholesome land!

In which Old Parn introduces the masses to his newly designed blog

A painting depicting a family of pioneers in a verdant rural landscape Okay, what’s happening?

This is what’s happening.

You remember how I promised the advent of a great and mighty wonder — in a fashion not wholly unlike that of John the Baptist — a few weeks ago? Well, that wonder has come to pass.

I have made a new blog design. Wiv me own bare ‘ands.

(That’s why it all looks diffrunt, loike.)

All my new reviews (and there are some goodies on the way, I promise) will only be posted on this new site. The old site? Well, try and go there if you wish; you’ll be ushered (gently yet firmly) across to the new’n.

A reassuring word to my beloved subscribers

If you’re reading this post via an RSS feed or an email subscription, fear not: you don’t need to do anything and your subscription will simply move across to the new site. Indeed, all being well, it probably already has. Woo.

(In passing, allow me to encourage those of you who aren’t to get with the cool kids and subscribe, too. Imagine! Old Parn’s winey ramblings straight to your inbox/reader. Bliss unparalleled, I tell ye.)

And, finally, a smidgin of waffle about the redesign, for those waffle-lovers amongst you

Yeah, as well as drinking alcohol and scattering words about like a shredded dictionary in a wind-tunnel, I also design websites and brochures and logos and things. And I deemed it a little ridiculous that a designer of things should have a crap-looking blog based on an off-the-peg template.

So that’s how it came about.

I’ve designed the site in such a way as to put emphasis on the reviews. I didn’t want to clutter them up with loads of sidebars and links, so all that gubbins is annexed off to the bottom. I’ve also made the text big. Because you probably want to read it, and big text is good to read, innit?

I also wanted it to look different from most wine blogs.

I’d be delighted to read yo’ comments on the redesign. Or, indeed, on anything else.

I ain’t fussy.

Prieler Pinot Blanc, Seeberg 2009, Burgenland

… will take you down a crispy duck boulevard. But quietly.

A bottle of Prieler Pinot Blanc from Waitrose

Let’s kick off with the good: this is a liltingly fresh pinot blanc, front-loaded with a walloping great bomb of soft fruit. And take it from me, dear reader: it you’re going to be walloped by a bomb, there’s no better bomb by which to be walloped than a soft fruit bomb.

Oh yeah. Heck yeah.

Meanwhile, shove your schnoz into the glass and you’ll delve your way into a magical fantasy land of lemon sherbet fountains and boulevards lined with streetlamp-sized crispy-duck pancakes (yes, really: the water-blood of just-sliced cucumber combined with hoy sin sweetness and sizzled duck).

Back to the gob and, post-bomb, you’ll find there’s a certain unexpected bitterness. Not unpleasantly so.

But the rub. Ay, the rub. You knew there was one coming.

… This wine isn’t as good as it should be for the price. It’s not bad, and, as I’ve already implied, it has some kind-of-funky, kind-of-interesting things going on. But not in sufficient abundance. I’ve focused in on them because I was tasting the blighter. Squirting it to all corners of my trap, snuffling at it like a trufflehunter.

In other words, I should probably have held back on the crispy-duck boulevard stuff above, which makes it all sound quite psychedelic and in-your-face, I realise. But can you blame a man? It’s not every day you get an oriental delicacy wafting up out of your white wine at you.

Y’see, the problem is that you have to work relatively hard to get much out of this wine aside from its initial fruit bomb. Which, though nice, is scarcely £13-worth of bomb (sorry to disappoint you, wine terrorists).

Verdict

So, to be honest, I expected the wine to be a good bit more interesting than it is. What post-bomb complexity it has, it conceals beneath a veil of chardonnayish anonymity. Which is a shame.

Tasting it, I felt bleary-tongued: as if my senses somehow weren’t quite awake enough to experience it properly. Because everything except la bombe is too distant, too muted.

It’s not a bad wine, but at this price it should be better. Dial it up, Prieler, dial it up. Except the bomb. That’s loud enough already.

Rating ★★☆☆☆
ABV 13%
Price £12.99 from Waitrose (£12.34 with online discount)

Review: Chateau de la Grave Caractere 2005, Bordeaux

…will bloom, big & magnificent, in your gob

Photograph of a bottle of Chateau de la Grave Caractere

A brief third instalment, this evening, in my jamboree of Christmas wines. We’ve already had the festive sherry and the pre-Christmas-dinner Champagne. With the dinner itself (goose, courtesy of my splendid parents) we drank a bottle of Chateau de la Grave Bordeaux 2005.

It was big and blooming. Blooming big and big-blooming, if you want to be all corny about it.

Supported — but not constrained — by a taut scaffold of tannins (this wine could’ve aged further, had I but the patience to let it), it easily squared up against old monsieur goose.

Amidst the usual big bordeauxy flavours there are sprinklings of bitter dark chocolate laced with orange zest. And there’s a real old mushroomy depth to each mouthful, assuming you give it time to bloom and linger, rather than cramming hot parsnips into your maw the very next second. You big yokel.

Verdict

So, yes. A very good, solid bordeaux. Not quite awe-inspiring enough to make me leap and cavort around the festive table (a mercy, perhaps, for all concerned), but very enjoyable, very robust, very satisfying.

Rating ?????
ABV 13%
Price Was something like £18.50 from The Wine Society, but is no longer available there or, it seems, anywhere much else.

Change is coming to Old Parn

In which the eponymous Old Parn tantalises his readers with distant prospects and promises

Thanks for accompanying me through the blooming and withering of the flower that was 2010. I raise my glass to you (if you could see me, I guarantee I would be raising my glass. Or at least gulping from it, madly.)

Back when I started Old Parn’s Wine Reviews, in the murky depths of, um, September 2010, I had no idea how much I’d enjoy having a cast-iron excuse to drink lots of wine writing a wine blog.

So I’m stepping things up a bit.

A closed, partially-derelict wine bar in Belfast with a distinctive pink facade

Old Parn’s Wine Reviews, then, will be changing soon. First up, it’ll be moving from Blogger to WordPress. But more importantly, it will be metamorphosing. I am — even now — hard at work in my secret laboratory, designing the new Old Parn.

So your days of looking at this site’s over-yellow and JPG-artifact-ridden background are (mercifully) numbered. A new and prettier site is on the way. And this one will be brought to you — bespoke — by my own fair hand. Not grabbed off the peg.

Stick with me till then, won’tcha? I’ve a Pinot Blanc and a Christmas Bordeaux to tell y’about in the meanwhile…

Review: Bollinger Special Cuvee Champagne

… will remind you why celebration is — and e’er will be — fizzy

I’ve a few posts waiting in the wings for you, o dear & faithful reader — thanks to the seasonal profusion of alcohol from which we’re just emerging.

We’ve already done the sherry, so accompany me onward through my festive imbibitions. Next up? Pre-Christmas dinner champagne (courtesy of some bloke who took my parents’ old car off their hands and repaid them with a bottle of Bollinger. Which is exactly the way to do things.)

A bottle of Bollinger Special Cuvee Champagne

I love good champagne. Conversely, I despise the cheap, astringent carbonated pisswater that all too often comes in its stead.

Fortunately, Bollinger’s Special Cuvee is no pisswater. And if you’ve had your mouth shrivelled by one too many thin and acidic fizzes of late (which seems likely at a time of year when cheap fizz is almost mandatory), your first mouthful of Bollinger will remind you why you ever liked this stuff.

For this is a big, generous old toffee-apple sponge of a champagne. It is expansive. It has that characteristic delicious biscuit quality — except that here it’s richer than mere biscuit. More, I’d say, like the topping of a fruit crumble with oats, butter, muscovado sugar — crisped from the oven.

It’s this lovely savoury-sweetness that makes it, that frees it. It gives the wine full license to go bone dry (as we’d expect of a Champagne) without risking astringency.

Smell-wise, the apple and toffee are there, accompanied (subtly) by the aroma of expensive cigarettes.

And it’s a proper bubbler — pretty lively, not so fine a ‘mousse’ as some other champagnes.

Verdict

So, yes, you have it all above. A fine ol’ champagne, balanced, savoury and delicious. And it won’t shrivel your stomach and tongue with acid. It’s a pricey enough bottle, though, at full price — so if you’re spending £30-40, you should damn well expect finesse.

That said, let it be noted that this is very much the kind of champagne I’d like to be given, were someone to take a car off my hands.

(Let it also be noted, howsoever, that I do not own a car.)

Rating ★★★☆☆
ABV 12%
Price £28 (reduced from £38) at Majestic, £34.98 from Amazon (who knew Amazon sold wine?), and £39.99 from Oddbins.