Cellophanity, Putin-pleasuring and Pinot Gris

A significant portion of which is devoted to a spirited ‘crie de coeur’ on the subject of ready meal packaging, and most of the rest of which contemplates distasteful sexual activities practised upon Russian politicians. I’m up-front about this stuff, y’know.

Bottle of Hugel Pinot Gris and some oven ready meal instructions‘Remove cardboard sleeve and peel away plastic film.’

It sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But, honestly, they may as well have said, ‘Remove cardboard sleeve and give Vladimir Putin a blowjob’, for all the chance I have of accomplishing their instruction with any modicum of ease or pleasure.

I’ve written before about my intense dislike of cellophane that fails grotesquely in its sole goddamn interaction with the customer. But that doesn’t mean I can’t write again. I mean, Christ. Collectively, think of the time humanity wastes on attempting to peel off a plastic seal and instead peeling off a ludicrous thread of plastic from around its rim, repeating this process at each of the carton’s four corners, before (defeated, humiliated) grabbing a knife and slashing psychopathically at the bastard cellophane until our collective shirts are spattered with ragu sauce that looks for all the world like blood.

Time that could be put to better use in — oh, I don’t know — curing cancer or eradicating poverty or watching the latest episode of Sherlock.

Oh, that Sherlock. He wears a nice dressing gown, doesn’t he? (Declare an interest? Me? Piss off.)

But don’t just think of the time. Think of the fucking psychological despoliation wreaked by this supposedly peelable cellophane. Whole generations demoralised by their inability efficiently and rapidly to prepare a godforsaken ready meal (the very words themselves a hollow mockery — for this now ungrippably-cellophanated carton in front of me couldn’t be any less ready); to follow even the unglamorous preparatory instruction — mere prelude to the complex matrix of oven types and temperatures, and frozen vs chilled states. When we see growth rates in the developed world stalling and purchases of pre-prepared food rising, do we not pause to consider the relationship between the two?

JUST AS SODDING WELL, THEN, that I have a half-bottle of Hugel Pinot Gris, 2010 (The Wine Society, £6.95) to calm my cellophane-rage. A sluicing of very pleasant-tasting alcohol to numb my brain to the injustices and indignities of the food packaging regime — analogous, one might venture, to an autocrat’s cynical pampering of an emerging middle class with the finite proceeds of a natural gas boom whose days are numbered.

SEE WHAT I DID, THERE? YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED IT, BECAUSE IT WAS QUITE SUBTLE. RE-READ THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH IF YOU’RE NOT SURE.

It’s nice, Hugel Pinot Gris. Of the Wine Society’s praiseworthy array of half bottles (several of which I’ve written about already), it’s one of my favourites. I like the way it lies, deliciously inert (like a coma coated in syrup), in your mouth. The way it rings out with fruit, but leaves your tongue free of that ganky aftertaste of the sugary muck that often gets called ‘fruity’.

(Speaking of which — fuck. When you’re pretty much living off wine from TWS and Waitrose, you sometimes forget just how goddamn withering a bad white wine can be. I was in a pub, the other week, and forgot myself to the degree that I actually ordered a glass of white wine — somehow extrapolating from the fact that most wine I drink is quite nice a kind of rule that all wine I choose to drink will therefore be nice. A rule whose inherent fallacy was pitilessly exposed by said pub and its vinous offering.)

Hmm. Somewhere between talking about presidential fellatio and rotten pub wine, I was doing a kind of wine review, there, wasn’t I? Christ alive. Sorry about that. We’ve dispensed, haven’t we, you and I?, with any kind of flimsy, cellophane-esque pretence that you’re here for in-depth or nuanced alcoholic commentary. The commentary of an alcoholic, maybe. But not alcoholic commentary. So let’s leave it at this. Hugel Pinot Gris. Easy to open (if you have a corkscrew). Doesn’t cause you to flail around with a kitchen knife. And definitely tastes better than my ready meal.

Not to mention Putin.

What happens when you Drink at Eat?

In which our hero links to his latest guest post — narrating the woeful tale of his attempts to buy wine at Eat restaurant on the South Bank.

A pie and potato from Eat (in disposable pie box) and a mini bottle of Stowells white wineWhen a place calls itself Eat, perhaps that’s, y’know, a kind of subtle hint that the emphasis isn’t on the wine list.

Be that as it may. Defying corporate nomenclature, I decided to put Eat’s wine selection to the test — with characteristic ruthlessness.

Be warned: there are scenes in the following post that readers of a sensitive disposition may find upsetting.

You can read the story of the whole desperate, sorry experience in my guest post across at eVines. Here’s the link.

A sherry suckerpunch of Manzanilla mouthjoy

…is one half-bottle-sized suckerpunch of mouthjoy — the sea-wind bite, the roll of it, the swell of it, the crescendo

A bottle of sherry and a condensation-beaded glass -- on the background of a floral print

Sherry, sherry. I adore sherry. I adore it in its many guises and manifestations. Whenever I’m passing through a decent wine shop or supermarket, I scour the shelves for half-bottles of sherry. Because half-bottles of sherry, my dear friend, are like anchovies: my kitchen is bereft without them.

So last time I was salivating my way round Whole Foods, I tossed a half of Fernando de Castilla Manzanilla into my basket.

And Manzanilla (oh! Manzanilla!) is possibly the sherry I adore most of all.

Why? Because of its richness, its depth and its bite. This one is a half-bottle-sized suckerpunch of mouthjoy. The impossibly woody, dense, complicated smell. The sea-wind bite — like spray from the cold Atlantic. The roll of it, the swell of it, the almost overwhelming crescendo of the flavour once you have it there in your gob.

The way it leaves you gasping for another mouthful.

This is an excellent Manzanilla. I can imagine drinking it with some of those anchovies. And lemon. Salt. Bite. Yeah. That would be fucking lovely.

Staggering, mouthwatering, delicious.

Drink it. Drink sherry. Drink!

Rating ???? 4 stars (very good)
Region Jerez
ABV 15%
Price £6.49 (half bottle) from Whole Foods, High Street Kensington; £10.95 (whole bottle) from Stone & Vine

A fresh, thunderstorm-clearing Alsace Riesling

… is a wine for rooftop terraces and golden sunshine

A half bottle of Trimbach Riesling, with distinctive bright yellow label, sits on a tabletop

Fresh!

This is like walking outside into air just cleared by a spring thunderstorm (pavements still wet) after a day in a stodgy, stuffy office. It is delicious. Sharp (grapefruit sharp; stiletto sharp), with a flavour that rings out like a clean-struck bell.

A wine for rooftop terraces; a wine for golden sunshine.

Delicious.

Rating ★★★★ 4 stars (very good)
Grape Riesling
Region Alsace
ABV 13%
Price £6.25 for a half-bottle from The Wine Society; £10.95 for a full bottle.

Pedro Ximenez Don Marcelo Jerez review

… is delicious, extraordinary and quite goddamn sexy. Even if it *does* taste of raisins. Because wrinkles can be sexy, too.

A dark brown bottle of Pedro Ximenez sherry, with out of focus daffodils behindOkay. It’s Valentine’s Day. And in celebration thereof, what better alcoholic beverage than one that tastes MIND-BLOWINGLY STRONGLY of raisins? — thereby reminding you that whilst you may be taut-skinned young grapes right now, one day, you’ll both be shrunken and wrinkly.

BUT YOU’LL STILL TASTE LOVELY.

(Realism beats Romance every time, eh? Just ask TS Eliot if you’re unsure.)

Anyway, I maintain that this is a Romantic wine. It’s big and swingeing and unashamed. It scatters your bed with petals and serenades you with sentiment-sodden ballads. And tenderly crams handful after handful of raisins into your gob.

It is sweet. Really, really, really sweet. Even as you’re pouring it, you’re thinking of molasses and treacle and whatever other viscous liquids you might find appealing. And it’s almost impossibly rich and dark when you get it into your mouth.

It’s hard to believe, in fact, that something can be as sweet as this and still seem, y’know, even vaguely grown-up. Especially when drinking it puts you in mind of cramming your stubby fingers into those little boxes of Sunmaid to extricate the pieces of fruit that’d wedged themselves right into the bottom corners. But it is grown up. Possibly because it’s so outrageously goddamn decadent-tasting. And also because it’s not sickly.

Or, at least — and here, once again, the raisin likeness holds — it’s not sickly unless one consumes it to excess.

In summary: delicious, extraordinary and quite goddamn sexy.

A small terracotta dish with ice cream, scattered with dried rose petals

Oh. And may I leave you with a ludicrously specific serving suggestion? Put a glass of this alongside a bowl of rosewater and cardamom ice-cream. Buy the dried rose petals from a nice man in the Iranian deli on High Street Kensington. He may even give you a free biscuit. Then simultaneously boast and congratulate yourself for doing all of the above by photographing it and posting it on your silly little blog.

You pathetic specimen.

Rating ★★★★ 4 stars (very good)
Region Jerez
Grape Pedro Ximenez
ABV 16%
Price I got mine from The Wine Society some time ago for about £9 (half bottle). But it ain’t there no more, I’m afraid. Sozamonia.

Williams and Humbert 12 Year Old Oloroso Sherry review

… will show you (yet again) that sherry is not just a drink for your grannie.

A half bottle of Williams & Humbert, bathed in red light

Marzipan and meat and cream (so goddamn creamy I want to die). Light wood. Smooth wood. Not cheap wood. But smooth. Dried fruit. And the warm, spirity burn of alcohol caressing your throat.

Your lucky, lucky throat.

Drink it — like I did — with sweet, pink chicken livers, spinach, caramelised onion, pine nuts and the gang. There’s a recipe in the first Moro cookbook that you’d do well to follow. Actually, drink it however you want.

Because, yeah, I’ve said it before. (And I don’t care that I have.) Drink sherry. Sherry is not just a drink for your grannie (though far be it from me to deprive her of it). Sherry is lovely.

This one particularly so.

Rating ★★★★ 4 stars (very good)
Region Jerez
Type Oloroso
ABV 19%
Price (half bottle) I got mine from Wholefoods, High Street Kensington for an amount I can’t recall. Online, I see it at £6.14 from Cambridge Wine Merchants or at £6.85 from Alexander Hadleigh

Jurancon Sec Chant des Vignes, Domaine Cauhapé 2010 review

… doesn’t play remotely hard to get: extrovert, fruit-laden, immediate

A closeup of the label of this Jurancon Sec half bottle from The Wine SocietyThis Jurancon — made from the outstandingly named Gros Manseng grape — has that grassy, springy, verdant burst that you associate with Sauvignon Blanc. And, like Sauv Blanc, it’s mightily accessible. A garden-friendly, pub-friendly, gob-friendly kind of wine. Not remotely playing hard to get, it’s extrovert, fruit-laden, immediate.

But here’s where it beats the pub Sauv Blancs. Yes, it’s got that front-of-mouth accessibility. But it stays in balance. It doesn’t gank up your mouth or descend into sugary blandness. Instead, it’s taut and toned throughout. Balanced, yeah?

Good, simple stuff. And, yes, I’m reviewing another half bottle. Because I like half bottles. Alright?

Rating ★★★ 3 stars (good)
Region Jurancon, south-west France
Grape Gros Manseng
ABV 13.5%
Price £4.95 for a half bottle from The Wine Society

Alsace Pinot Noir, Kuentz-Bas Collection 2005 review

… will help you avoid meting out acts of equine violence should you be confronted with the prospect of a Pinot Noir Twitter shindig

Closeup of this Alsace Pinot Noir's label: gold and brown, with a simple crest and typographic focus

Way back — way, way back — there was some kind of pinot noir ‘event’ on Twitter. ‘Let’s all drink pinot noir,’ the governing philosophy of said event seemed to be, ‘and pretend that doing so has some kind of higher purpose or conceptual justification.’

Well, Old Parn doesn’t necessarily need conceptual justification to wrench the cork from a bottle of PN. But one doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, does one? (Or, in the words of Young Parn, many years ago, one doesn’t knock a gift horse in the mouth. Which would be even more churlish.)

Anyhow. Conceptually justified to the max, I took out the above-depicted half bottle of Kuentz-Bas. And rather fine it was, too: poised and sharp, fruited and taut. Its colour was pale, russet-tinged. Once it’d been out in the glass a while, it really bloomed and softened. Relaxed.

(A little like that gift horse did, once it realised I wasn’t about to crack it a swift uppercut to the jaw.)

Verdict

Supple and smooth, with a tiny gruff stemminess at the back of it. Beautiful to hold in your gob. Light, effervescent.

It is an absolute avalanche of joy to be able to buy a wine like this in a half bottle. Thank you, once again, Wine Society; thank you. And thank you, Pinot Noir Day. Or whatever your name was.

Rating ???? 4 stars (very good)
Region Alsace
Grape Pinot Noir
ABV 13%
Price £7.50 for a half bottle from The Wine Society

Pouilly-Fume 2009, Seguin (half bottle) review

… is a sharp, acidic gob-flasher who reads Zola novels and plays the bassoon

A half bottle of Pouilly-Fume from the Wine SocietyThis is a delicious wine. Buoyant zing, spring leaves. I love it when a sharp, acidic gob-flasher like this is backed up by that bready wholeness that rounds it out and gives it depth.

A flasher who reads Zola novels and plays the bassoon.

Almost criminally drinkable, it’s lovely, balanced, fresh. A long-lasting tongue-tingler. And it comes in a half-bottle, alright?

Legend.

Again, here’s what Sauvignon Blanc can do, kids. (And when I say ‘kids’, obviously I mean ‘over-18-year-olds’.) Sauvignon Blancs can be exquisitely balanced — fresh, immediate, springy — yet non-cloying.

Lovely stuff.

Rating 4 stars (very good)
Region Pouilly Fume, Loire
Grape Sauvignon Blanc
ABV 12.5%
Price £7.50 for a half bottle from The Wine Society

Darting Estate Muskateller Eiswein 2008 review

… is eyebrow-flappingly, toad-paralysingly sweet. Suicide-bombingly sweet. Sweet enough to make the sweetest goddamn kitten photo ON THE WHOLE OF THE INTERNETS seem only mildly touching

A half-bottle of Darting Estate Eiswein. Simple label with crest and traditional typography

Your first clue that you’re in for something out of the ordinary is the fact that this wine is a deep, deep amber.

And it is eyebrow-flappingly, toad-paralysingly sweet. Suicide-bombingly sweet. Sweet enough to make the sweetest goddamn kitten photo ON THE WHOLE OF THE INTERNETS seem only mildly touching.

It’s also very acidic — which is just as well, as it’d otherwise be utterly unmanageable. Because the bite of the acid helps retain a bit of balance.

But when it’s there in your gob, and as you swallow, it’s so damn sweet. I’m going to be straight with you: too sweet. It has that little catch in the back of the throat that you get drinking orange squash with too much concentrate. The colder you can get it, the better this becomes — but even chilled right down in the Dedicated Parn Drinks Fridge, it’s still too throat-cloying, too syrupy.

What’s more, the sweetness makes it hard to discern the rest of the flavours. Which are lovely, deciduous, autumnal, fleshy, ripe: grapes and peaches and sugar, oh my!

This is a crying, weeping, howling great shame.

Verdict

I’m sorry to say that, at £16 for a half-bottle, I can’t recommend this wine. And, oh boy, believe me: I love Eiswein. When I snaffled this from the shelves of M&S, I really thought I was in for a treat.

But, sorry, it’s not a treat.

The worst thing is that, behind the sweetness, there’s a stunning wine, I’m sure of it. Tragically, though, I’m stunned in the wrong kind of way.

Rating ★ (1 star)
ABV 6.5%
Price £16 from Marks & Spencer

Le Froglet Wine in a Glass — Review

In which our intrepid hero subjects himself to the horror (the horror!) of three revolting sold-by-the-plastic-cup specimens from Marks & Spencer: Le Froglet Rose, Chardonnay and Shiraz. A truly gruelling experience.

Three plastic cups of Le Froglet wine, sold by the glass — one red, one white, one rose

So, today we’re looking at wines sold by the glass (plastic): three (only moderately depressing-looking) specimens from Marks & Spencer going under the brand name Le Froglet.

Now, you know me for an honest commentator, I hope. So I must confess upfront that my expectations were very, very low. That said, I don’t want to be snobbish about this. There’s nothing remotely wrong with the idea of buying wine this way.

The question is — never mind the idea — what’s the reality like?

In answer, dear reader, I give you —

Le Froglet Chardonnay, Vin de Pays d’Oc 2009

So. You’ve got over the novelty of opening a wine as though it were a yoghurt. What now? Stick your big old snout in there, that’s what.

Except that, being full to the thick plastic brim, there’s no room for your big old snout.

So pour it into a proper glass, why don’t you, and try again?

Your labours will be rewarded with a truly awful gutwipe of a smell. Like the breath of a depressed office worker who ate a stale bacon & egg sandwich for his lunch.

It is truly, offensively grim.

At this point, you’re understandably wary. But you chuck it down the hatch in any case, reasoning ‘Since when has my sense of smell ever been a reliable indication of putrescence?’

…and — first gob-impression? IT ACTUALLY TASTES OF NOTHING.

Unfortunately, you will be looking back on that first impression of nothingness as a kind of golden age of Le Froglet Chardonnay. It was at its peak then. ‘The tragedy of Le Froglet,’ you will muse, ‘is that it never recaptured that tantalising early promise of nondescript mediocrity.’

Because, after a second or so of wondering whether you accidentally just bought a plastic glassful of foul-smelling water — the stale sandwich you smelt earlier hits you smack in the gob. And fucking horrendous it is, too. Cardboardy flaps of egg-marinated bacon in that suddenly-not-so-tasty-tasty malted bread.

Now (you might note) the smell’s mellowed a bit. Now it’s like the remnants of a KFC bucket left out overnight in the corridor of a student hall of residence.

If you can manage to get this wine into your mouth without inhaling, it’s just about bearable while you hold it there. But sometime — sometime, my friend — you’re going to have to swallow. Then there’s the aftertaste. The preserved egg sarnie.

I am not exaggerating when I say that this is truly horrific stuff. There will be a patch of dead grass in my garden tomorrow morning where I chucked the rest of this devilpiss.

Onward, then, to —

Le Froglet Rose, Vin de Pays d’Oc 2009

Imagine a nightmare scenario in which you are given a plastic teaspoon and ordered to eat an entire washing-up basin full of Tesco Value strawberry jam.

The smell of Le Froglet’s Rose is strikingly, strikingly similar to the smell of the strawberry-scented vomit that you will copiously spew in the aftermath of the above scenario.

Sickly sweet, but with a rancid acidic tang.

At least with the white (incredulous, I find myself harking back) there was some lingering presence of the chardonnay grape, even if in brutally abused form. Here, there is nothing but sickly, rotten, jammy fruit.

Once it’s actually in your mouth? Well, it’s not actually as full-on sweet as I’d expected. But horrible nevertheless. A bit bitter (not in an appetising way, but in the same way as accidentally sucking your finger after touching some chemicals), with overtones of loo cleaner. Not nice loo cleaner, either. The kind of stuff they use in prisons.

When the sweetness comes (which it does, like a warm, candyfloss blanket, once you’ve swallowed) it is almost a blessing.

I’m not entirely sure whether this is worse or better than the white. It’s less in-your-face-evil, but more slyly insidious. The white was like Krang in Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles; the rose is more like Nick Griffin.

I’ll leave you to judge which you’d rather spend an evening with.

… and skip on, meanwhile, to —

Le Froglet Shiraz, Vin de Pays d’Oc 2009

… Which is dark. Dark as the soul of Le Froglet.

Snout-wise, it’s the least offensive of the three by some margin. That’s not to say it smells promising. No indeed not. But it’s not actively repellent. There’s sweet red fruit (worryingly sweet) and, yeah, vanilla. And cheap wood. It’s like walking into a discount furniture warehouse.

And in the gob, it’s also by far the least horrible. There’s still that ol’ bacon & egg sandwich whiff to the whole affair (which is clearly something to do with either the glue they use to stick on the lid or else some kind of preservative), but at least there’s a modicum of normality to the thing. I mean, it tastes like cheap plonk, sure. But at least it tastes like recognisable cheap plonk, not some outlandish liquid beamed to Earth by aliens as part of a sick reality TV escapade to amuse the folks back home at Alpha Centuri.

It’s very very sweet, yet also laced with a last-minute tannic mouth-shrinker. In no way does this qualify as a recommendation, but it has the dubious honour of being crowned ‘winner’ of this evening’s taste-off. A contest, I might add, that set me back a total of £7.95 (£2.65 each) — a sum I parted with heavily against my better judgement, and largely in order to provide entertainment to you. Yes, you.

So the least you can do is leave me a comment or something.

Now. Christ alive. Get me some malt whisky.

Rating ☆ (0 stars) for all of them. The ‘winner’ included.
ABV 12% (rose), 12.5% (red), 13% (white)
Price £2.65 a pop from Marks & Spencer

Wine Society half bottles roundup

In which three French half-bottles from The Wine Society are put through the rigorous Parn tasting process

In the foreground, Crozes-Hermitages; background, The Society's Chablis and White Burgundy

I’ve written before about my lonely love of half bottles. Below are my brief impressions of three French wines, all available in half bottles from The Wine Society.

The Society’s White Burgundy

Planted resolutely at the dry, pure, stony end of the (vibrant) chardonnay spectrum, this is delicious, appetising. Aromatically discrete, yes, with a bracing dose of lemon-rind bitterness. Finding small fault, it’s just a touch thin, a touch watery. But at the price, I feel almost churlish saying so.

Rating *** (3 stars)
Price £4.50 from The Wine Society

The Society’s Crozes Hermitages

Roughish, somewhat stalky and austere. There’s a fair bit of bitterness and tannin — and a certain coaly quality, like that stuffy-headed smell I remember from my grannie’s coal scuttle.

In the gob it’s a little lighter than I’d expected, with some red fruit to counteract all the gruffness. There’s also a bit of orange in there — orange oil/essence, not juicy, fresh orange.

Fine for a midweek slurp, though a little rough and unbalanced.

Rating ** (2 stars)
Price £5.25 from The Wine Society (but no longer on the site)

The Society’s Chablis

Slate and peach and cream. It fills your nose like the smell of summer rain. In the gob, it’s appealingly plump — though with a fair old dose of acidity. A good bit of citrus there.

Proper dry stuff. Nice. With simple, unadorned seafood, this would be delightful. My mouth’s watering already.

Rating *** (3 stars)
Price £5.95 from The Wine Society

Marks & Spencer Dry Old Oloroso Review

… will allow you to live the dream of swigging 20% ABV sherry from a beer bottle. LIKE A MAN.

Closeup of the text of the Dry Old Oloroso bottle

First things first. This is a bottle of dry oloroso sherry. Indeed, it’s a half bottle. And I’ve made my admiration of both half bottles and good sherry abundantly clear in the past.

The bottle of the Dry Old Oloroso: dark brown, somewhat squat, unpretentious — for all the world like a bottle of beerMy admiration for this half bottle, though, goes a step or two further. Because this is sherry in a beer bottle. FINALLY MY DREAM HAS COME TRUE: I can slyly swig oloroso sherry from the bottle whilst hanging out with the lads — yet not compromise my appearance of nonchalant masculinity.

(An area in which compromise is a fearful prospect indeed.)

So, the only question should be: is this the sherry you’d want to swig? Or should you carry on rinsing out old beer bottles and laboriously refilling them from that tank in your cellar?

Let’s see.

So, uncork the blighter (yeah, they haven’t introduced a bottle-cap yet) and you’ll be greeted by a delicious waft: full, mellow, barrelly. It smells lovely. Once it makes its way into your trap — well, it’s still pretty nice. Nutty, yes, and spicy too. Like spicy nuts. Or nutty spices, I suppose. At first, it’s delightfully smooth. But let it linger in there and it’ll give you a belt around the tastebuds, enough to bring tears to your eyes.

(Or maybe I just cry easily. Nonchalant masculinity, like I said.)

Verdict

So, yeah, it’s not the most refined of sherries. That’s a shame, because I’d dearly like that woody sweetness it has to develop more in my mouth — but I daren’t let it, for fear that my ‘mates’ will discover me weeping over what appears to be a bottle of beer.

Nevertheless, it’s a handy thing, to have sherry in a 37.5cl bottle. And a glassful of this made a goddamn mean sauce for my seared tuna steak with caramelised onions. Which surely has to count for something.

So: a creditable performance, but a tad eye-watering for Old Parn. Sly sherry-swiggers may note with excitement, however, that M&S has a whole range of sherries, all bottled thus. And I’m clearly going to work my way through them all.

Rating ★★
ABV 20%
Price £7.49 from Marks & Spencer

Parallele 45 Reserve Cotes du Rhone Villages 2007, Paul Jaboulet Aine

…you can drink alone like the miserable yet discerning alkie you are

One of the reasons I love the Wine Society is its good selection of half-bottles. I often drink wine on my own, y’see (I just wanted an excuse to tell you that, really, as I’m fairly sure it makes me sound sort of cool) — and a half-bottle has that much less (round about half less, in fact) precious liquid to oxidise.

But if you take your lonesome arse into a supermarket and look for half-bottles, all you’ll find is a lamentable selection of mass-produced syrup- and vanilla-fests.

The Wine Society is virtually alone in the quality of its semi-sized selection.

And this — Paul Jaboulet Aine’s Parallele 45 Reserve Cotes du Rhone Villages — is one of the best of ’em.

So, it’s another Frenchy French wine. Full, strong, and (like our friend Domaine Font de Michelle) unapologetically gallic. Its aroma is hoofing enough to make you cough a little, should you avail yourself of a particularly generous snoutful.

Or maybe that’s just an early symptom of consumption.

Dans le gob, il y a beaucoup d’oomph. It’s simultaneously charmingly smooth and a gritty old bastard. It’d be great at film noir.

Loads of depth. Coffee-bitterness. Vegetation. A little oak to smooth it off. And wafting over the top of that are swoons of blossomy violet. Then, long afterwards, just as you think it’s all died down, a distant echo of tinned peaches and cream.

Verdict

Even if it weren’t for the boon of its half-bottle enclosure, this would be a winner. With, it, it pretty much has the rostrum to itself. I should probably add that you can also buy full-sized bottles. But that’d only mean sharing. Pah!

Here’s my advice: if you want to be cool, stick to the half-bottles. Alone.

Rating ★★★★☆
ABV 14%
Price £5.75 (half-bottle) from The Wine Society (Agh! Bastarding hell! It’s no longer available!); £8.95 (full bottle of the 2008) from Wine Direct