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Castillo de Tafalla Angel’s Selection Rose review

… is like a character in a trashy romance novel — for drinking now, asking questions later

Before we start, I’d just like to tell y’all: this is a review of a free sample I received from Naked Wines. Obviously it receives no special treatment as such, but, yeah, just so you know, right?

Okay. Here’s a wine that’s simple, fruity, easy and goes down very readily. In all respects, then, it’s rather like a character in a trashy romance novel.

In contrast to roses such as the Paxton Shiraz Rose I wrote about a while ago, this one’s far lighter, without that reddy tannin, that grip on your gob.

And it’s a real fruit bomb. A fruit bonbon bomb. The raspberry bonbon, obviously. It’s even the same colour. And it’s a bit sugary, too, bit sweet. Yup, this wine is pink as you like. It’s smooth going down, leaving you very little to think about.

Which is maybe how you like it, I guess.

Me, I prefer a bit of intellectual discourse, y’know? Maybe a few minutes’ talk about the likelihood of stable democracy in Egypt, or the merits of the Oxford comma. Before the going down, I mean.

Verdict

This is a wine that fulfils a particular purpose. It’s not really a wine to criticise or review in depth (SPOT THE INHERENT CONTRADICTION IN THE PREVIOUS SENTENCE FOR A MYSTERY PRIZE). It’s a drink-now-ask-questions-later kind of wine. Where ‘later’ may be defined as ‘when you suddenly realise you’ve got reeling drunk without noticing’.

Perfectly decent, simple fare, in other words, if pretty much bereft of complexity. And very easy.

Buy it to take along a barbecue or something. Yeah, you’re always going to bloody barbecues, aren’t you? You strike me as the chilled out kind of individual who’d be coming down with barbecue invitations.

And with a bottle of Castillo de Tafalla rose in hand and an enigmatic smile, who knows what romantic plotlines you might kick off. You old dog.

Rating ** (2 stars)
ABV 12.5%
Price £7.99 from Naked Wines (£5.33 to members)

Momo Pinot Noir 2008, Marlborough review

… is stuffed with more fruit that a small child at a pick-your-own fruit farm. But matures a hell of a lot more quickly

Another day, another pinot noir.

This time, it’s from New Zealand — Marlborough, specifically. And quite a different specimen from the last pinot noir to cross our threshold, the restrained, poised Palataia Pinot Noir from Germany. A good few quid more expensive, too, I might add.

Momo is a far more extrovert manifestation of the pinot noir grape. Like a small child on the way back from a Pick Your Own fruit farm, it’s stuffed with red fruits. Unlike the small child, though, Momo isn’t going to start bawling for your attention in about an hour with a stomach ache. Thank Christ.

Instead, give it an hour in the open air and it’ll get a fair bit more serious. Some bitter undertones develop, a savoury, smoky complexity. Which is most welcome.

Texturally, it’s delightful: that silky, silky pinot noir seduction. And whilst it may be accessible, thanks to all that fruit, it’s far from simplistic. As well as the smokiness, there’s pepper, cinnamon, roses, soil. And a smidge of caramel (but only a smidge).

Verdict

A very enjoyable, stylish kind of wine. Nothing, I must say, to set the Parn palate ablaze — but very creditable, very accessible. Closer to an airport paperback than a penguin classic, admittedly. But a pretty good airport paperback.

What’s more, it’s a wine you’d have to work a lot less hard to love than a squealing toddler with an upset stomach and a stained mouth.

Rating *** (3 stars)
ABV 14%
Price £11.95 from The Wine Society

Muscat Tradition, Hugel, 2008 Review

… An insecure Alsatian that needs to see a canine psychologist — but has the sweetest breath you could wish for

If I say this wine smells very Alsatian, I trust you won’t think I’m talking about dogs.

No. If there’s a dog that smells like this, that critter can breathe in my face any time. It’s floral, perfumed, with soft, ripe tropical fruit overtones.

If you drink wine from Alsace (and, Christ knows, you should) you’ll most likely be guzzling Gewurtztraminer — a grape variety for which the region is renowned. Yeah, and so it should be.

This, though, is a wine made from another grape: Muscat.

From a whiff at it, though, you’d be pardoned for taking it for its more celebrated sibling. Get it in your gob and the similarity to Alsace Gewurtztraminer remains, with that trademark aromatic richness, that stillness — but this has a greater degree of crispness. You’re greeted by a definite citrus bite, and left with a lingering marmalade bitterness. The effect is of a dryer, less indulgently swooning wine than your average Gewurtztraminer.

Though (let’s be clear) this Muscat still swoons a fair old bit.

Verdict

This is a clear, clean, light wine. It’s rather pure. Transparent, you might say. It’s less grapey than I’d expected (Muscat being pretty much the only variety known for producing wines that actually taste of the fruit they’re made of).

Very creditable and pleasant, but I can’t help but feel that it’s a little insecure in its own identity, y’know. Like it’s trying to out-gewurtz a gewurtztraminer (a task at which it can only fail), rather than playing to its own strengths.

In other words, an Alsatian that — despite its delightful breath — could do with being taken to see a (canine) psychologist.

Rating ★★★
ABV 12%
Price £10.95 from The Wine Society, £14.25 from BBR (for the 2009).

Le Fraghe 2009, Bardolino Review

… will light up all the buzzers on the pinball table of your palate. For under a tenner.

Le Fraghe. A wee blend of two grapes: corvina and rondinella. From somewhere between Venice and Milan.

And if it has Venice’s sunset-laced romance, it also has Milan’s fashionable, metropolitan elegance.

It’s gentle, toned, soft, pristine.

And it’s rather beautiful.

In your mouth, it’s full — yet light, elegant. There’s some subdued tannin; some savouriness, some meaty depth, some spice, liquorice. And a sustained, beautifully controlled diminuendo to finish.

Stick your snout in there and inhale the cooked (but not jammy) red fruits of a summer pudding.

Verdict

I really enjoyed La Fraghe. It’s a wine that lights up all the buzzers on the pinball table of your palate. And I’d say it’s pretty damn good value for under a tenner.

Crack it out with food — nothing too honky or flavoursome, mind; probably lighter meats, fish — simple, honest ingredients, please; simply, honestly cooked …

… and (pooph!) you’re right there between Venice and Milan.

Rating ???? (4 stars)
ABV 12%
Price £8.95 from The Wine Society

d’Arenberg Red Ochre Review

… is an absolute pleasure to hang out with: excellent company. No fart jokes.

I’d rather gladly drink a lot of d’Arenberg’s Red Ochre. I mean, I’d like to think I’d stop before doing myself a mischief. But one never can tell when one’s dealing with such a happy, carefree wine. Such a friendly, obliging wine.

For our mate Red Ochre is good company. He’s a pleasure to hang out with. He won’t do anything strange and unpredictable that might cause an awkward silence and nervous attempts to change the subject. He won’t start talking about politics, or making fart jokes. No, he’ll just help you have a good time.

So what’s he like, one-to-one?

A bit of wood, a bit of caramel, a lot of fruit. But not garish fruit. Some sharpness there — like an unsweetened bowl of fresh raspberries (so not unpleasant, then). Depth and complexity (and some tannin) to match the fruit. And, on your tongue, like silk.

On your schnoz, meanwhile, he’s a crowd-pleaser: a big fruity old dose of blackcurrant. Mouthwatering. He smells good. Not especially complex or blokey. Maybe (whisper it) rather metrosexual, actually. But good, damn it.

Verdict

I don’t think this wine (yes, yes, it is a wine, not a person. You’d almost forgotten — hadn’t you? — so evocative was my prose) is setting out to be tremendously multifaceted, shimmeringly complex. It’s setting out to be very, very good to drink. And I’m very happy with that, thanks.

It’s towards the accessible side of the spectrum (with an accessible kind of price, too), but without any of the sickliness, the formulaicism, the infantilisation that too often goes with that territory. It’s very easy to enjoy, but also rather rewarding, with unexpected depths. Brilliant value.

You can spend a whole evening in its company, in other words, without getting bored. And without a single fart joke, I guarantee.

Rating ★★★★ (4 stars)
ABV 14%
Price £7.25 from The Wine Society

Tor del Colle Riserva 2006, Montepulciano

… will tantalise you with an all-too-fleeting whiff of bubblegum before becoming thoroughly reasonable, easy and — perhaps — a bit less racy than its Nakedness might have you wish for

Wine number two from my Naked case (read my review of Burgo Viejo Rioja Tinto for a smidgin of background about Naked Wines) was unceremoniously cracked open over the weekend. So how fared this plucky little Montepulciano upon the tempestuous seas of Old Parn’s favour?

Not badly; not glowingly. A solid performance. Didn’t disgrace itself. You get the idea.

It was at its funkiest when I’d first opened it — at which point I thought I might be in for something rather special. It had an exhilarating bubblegummy burst to it when I swizzled it round the gob, which I found rather charming.

But the bubblegum disappeared pretty quickly (in stark contrast to actual bubblegum), leaving me with a glass of something altogether more, well, normal. I wish it’d stuck around a bit longer.

Taste-wise, it’s kind of purple. And if you don’t know what I mean by that, get with the synesthesia vibe, man. There’s a bunch of black fruits in there, yeah, and some wood, some tannin to keep it from slopping all over the place (metaphorically speaking, natch.) It’s sweet-scented, relatively soft, easy on the mouth — unchallenging midweek drinking, I’d say.

(And, if you’re a Naked member (STOP SNIGGERING, YOU LITTLE RAT) you’ll get it for a relatively unchallenging midweek kind of price.)

Not sure I’d say it’s worth the full whack of £8.99, though. Think how much bubblegum you could buy for that, after all…

Rating ★★ (2 stars — could almost be 3, but only if you’re getting 33% off)
ABV 13%
Price £8.99 from Naked Wines (or get 33% off if you become a Naked Wine Angel)

Churchill’s 20 Years Old Tawny Port Review

… will dose up your old-mannish port prejudices with a dose of ketamine (and a creamy macadamia chaser)

Doesn’t port make you think of big old chaps with gouty feet and snuff-reddened noses?

(Especially when the stuff’s made by an outfit called Churchill’s, for god’s sake.)

Well. Well. Cast aside your old bloke. Kick away his walking stick, crush his pipe and torch his slippers. Because this port is as sprightly as fuck.

In the front of your mouth, there’s a huge burst of bright, sweet, ruby cherry. It glitters. Hell, it’s practically spangly. If this is a codger, it’s a codger on ketamine.

But don’t dismiss it as all spangle; wait a couple of seconds as it sinks and spreads in your mouth like butter. Yum, sweet butter. Toasted butter, nutty butter. Macadamia, almond. Cream.

And before I plough on into the ‘Verdict’ section, may I take a moment to commend the packaging? As you can see above, the label is a model of elegant, typographic minimalism (a few lovely details, such as the apostrophe of Churchill’s). And the whole thing came in a very nicely designed box, left. Beautifully conceived and executed, in my opinion, managing to be both modern and tasteful. Don’t you think?

Verdict

So, yes, as I was saying, allow this port to spread and bloom in your mouth: it’s very long-lived (the only respect in which it could be said to be codgerly). It’s also invigorating and vibrant — yet elegant and poised.

Which makes it the freshest, liveliest, most three dimensional port I’ve had in a good long while.

And if you don’t like the idea of being surprised by port, perhaps it’s you who’s getting a bit doddery.

Rating ★★★★ (4 stars)
ABV 19.5%
Price £24.99 from Oddbins

The Wine Society’s Vin de Pays des Cotes de Gascogne

… is worth knocking over a couple of old ladies for, should you happen to see it at a party

Wine served at post-concert receptions. Not necessarily the most pre-possessing of notions.

I found myself in the Cathedral of Christ Church College on Saturday — for an evening of sacred English choral polyphony from the 16th century, courtesy of I Dedicati, an all-male vocal ensemble directed by Greg Skidmore.

(Now, you may think that sounds niche. However, according to the programme, it offered an opportunity to combine undiscovered gems with ‘very well known’ items of repertoire. There are few places in the world besides Oxford, I humbly submit, in which any piece of sacred English choral polyphony from the 16th century could conceivably be described as ‘well known’.)

Anyhow, yes. I digress. The concert (since you were wondering) was excellent.

… and the post-concert drinks were excellent, too. Not only because they gave me a chance to catch up with the fine old bass who’d invited me, but also because our hosts were serving The Wine Society’s Vin de Pays des Cotes de Gascogne.

As soon as I saw the label, I realised the aforementioned fine old bass wasn’t going to be the only dear friend with whom I’d be reunited that night. Indeed, in my enthusiasm to snaffle a glass I may have knocked over an old lady or two. Never mind. See, I’ve had this wine before. And it’s very, very good.

And the kicker? It’s £5.50. Let me spell that out. FIVE AND A HALF OF YOUR BRITISH POUNDS.

Being relatively low in alcohol (10.5%) it’s perfect for convivial quaffing. It’s clean and verdant. A snap of spring in your mouth. Like crunching raw fresh peas straight from the pod.

And it goes down a treat, let me tell you. Whilst not perhaps quite as swooningly polyphonic as the repertoire of I Dedicati, it is a delight to drink. And is, I daresay, destined to appeal to a rather broader audience.

So should you find yourself throwing a party — for Oxonian polyphonists or otherwise — look no further.

Rating ****
ABV 10.5%
Price £5.50 from The Wine Society

Paxton Shiraz Rosé 2009 review

… is a spirited and jolly bid to make pink and green go together. And is sort of successful.

Yep, it’s a pinkie.

And this one really is pink. It’s deep and dark and vibrant. No pallid blush here; this is a full-on crimson. The difference, I guess, between the colour your face might turn if someone paid you a flirtatious compliment, and the colour your face might turn if you accidentally exclaimed the name of the female genitalia in a class of 13-year-olds.

So. It’s very pink. It’s also green — on the face of it at least — judging by Paxton’s membership of something called 1% For the Planet, and the fact that the wine is made biodynamically.

Which sounds good, even if you’re not really sure what it means.

Meanwhile, fittingly given its colour, it leans more toward the red side of things than the white. You’d not want to chill this’n more than a tad, or you’ll kill off its plump, rosy jollitude.

Because, yeah, it’s pink; it’s jolly. Just like every stereotypical rosy-cheeked wench of tiresomely unimaginative fantasy fiction. Nose-wise, it’s all raspberry and strawberry — almost disconcertingly so, if you’re wary of Kia Ora wine syndrome, like me. And in your mouth, it’s very bright and full.

What surprises is the amount of body (which is what makes it more reddish than many rosés). There’s a good welter of matt tannic action. It’s potentially a mite confusing, even, given the sweetness of the initial mouthburst.

Verdict

I’d very happily drink this wine without thinking too much about it. That sounds a bit of a back-handed compliment. I guess it is. But sometimes you don’t want to be challenged, right? Just ask President Mubarak.

I can imagine drinking it outside in the sun and having a fine old time of it.

But given its rosy-cheeked barwench simplicity, I’m not sure it’s wholly worth £11.99, though — unless you really, really like pink and green together.

Rating ??
ABV 11.5%
Price £11.99 from Oddbins

Spy Valley Gewurtztraminer 2009

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

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?

Millton Te Arai Vineyard Chenin Blanc, 2007, Gisborne

… sheds its steely heiress exterior, switches on some jazz and dances west coast swing

The body, weight and supple finesse of a good chardonnay; the aromatic fruit explosion of riesling. That’s a pretty damn fine combination.

A pretty damn fine combination embodied in this Millton Te Arai Chenin Blanc, which deftly combines many of the attractions of the two top white grapes.

Take your first whiff and you’ll think it’s going to come down much more heavily on the chardonnay side of the scales. It’s got that fat, unapologetic nose-punch — edged about with vegetation. Despite the overtones of candyfloss and blossom, it smells serious, heavy. No messing.

But get it into your gob and you’ll be surprised. The stern, steely heiress suddenly switches on some jazz, necks a couple of martinis and, before you know it, the two of you are dancing west coast swing.

(Sorry, I know my wine personifications are invariably feminine. What can I say?)

Anyhow, yeah, take a gulp and your mouth is instantly greeted by a burst of sweet fruit and mellow aromatics. The sweet-yet-dry fullness of flavour is very like that of a fine, well-balanced German Riesling, but is underpinned by that butter-smooth, well-bred indomitability I expect of a Chardonnay.

(Yeah, see, our heiress doesn’t ever let herself go entirely.)

Verdict

Metaphors aside, all you really need to know is that it’s delicious, that it’s exquisitely balanced and that it’s quite unlike the last Chenin Blanc you had.

(Unless, um, you last had a bottle of this. Obviously. No need to be a smart alec.)

That balance is brilliant: there’s a very considerable acidity to this wine, but it’s absolutely checked by the honeyed, dewey fruit. The two do not cancel one another out, but coexist harmoniously — keeping your tastebuds dancing between sharp and sweet.

Imagine a mug of lemon and honey where the combinations are absolutely perfectly judged. Then forget that, because this is way fucking nicer.

Almost five stars, y’know. Almost.

Rating ★★★★☆
ABV 12%
Price £12.95 from The Wine Society

Oyster Bay Merlot Review

…will alternately patronise and assail your tastebuds

I was about to give Oyster Bay Merlot a bit of a break. But then I looked it up to find that a bottle (admittedly of the 2009 as opposed to my 2008) goes for £9.99 at Majestic. So no break for you, Oyster Bay.

But let’s start at the beginning.

The only reason I have this bottle is that I was given it. By an organisation, I hasten to add, not an individual. A ‘thank you for your business’ kind of thing.

But, yes. I don’t buy wines that look like Oyster Bay Merlot. Nail me into a broomcupboard and call me Satan if you wish (and what else would you do with Satan but nail him in a broomcupboard, I ask you?) — but that’s the unvarnished truth. It’s prejudiced, I realise, but my experience of mass-market wines that look like this and are called things like ‘Oyster Bay’ fills me with a dark, viscous dread.

But the misery of it all is that I was going to tell you it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. Yeah! I was going to tell you that. Up until I realised that bottle — had I bought it myself — would’ve cost me a sodding tenner, rather than the £6-7ish I was expecting, given the name/label design combo.

Hell, I was never going to recommend it, you understand. But I was ready to concede that simply not being revolted was a kind of triumph.

Well, at £9.99, excuse me if I’m a little less forgiving.

So. The first thing that hits us? Ribena. Or Kia Ora. Or (Christ save us) Snapple. The kind of thing they’d market as ‘Very Berry’ flavour.

To be fair, this initial bouquet is hands down the worst feature of this wine (aside from its price: did I mention its price?). Because once (if) you get through it, you’ll actually be surprised at the amount of bitterness. There’s a touch of vanilla, but most of the finish is dominated by the woody depths of the tannin.

A schizophrenic wine, then. All kiddy sweetness to begin with, then cagey gruffness to finish. And there’s no transition to speak of: the flavours shift abruptly, without ceremony. Quite bizarre.

Verdict

So, as I may already have implied, a price tag of £9.99 on a wine like this is an absolute joke. At £6, I’d have expected the Kia Ora — but been grudgingly surprised at the unexpected tannic depth. It would certainly not have succeeded in making me commend the wine — but it would have succeeded in being better than most of its ilk.

BUT IT IS NOT £6.

Paying ten quid for this is like paying ten quid to have an unattractive gigolo spend an evening patronising you with syrupy platitudes and discussing Nietzsche. In alternate sentences.

Whatever turns you on, I guess.

Me, I chucked the rest of that gigolo straight into a casserole. Yum.

Rating ☆ (0 stars)
ABV 13%
Price (for the 2009) £9.01 from Waitrose online, £9.99 from Majestic. But don’t, alright?

Côtes-du-Rhône, Domaine Jaume, 2007

…doesn’t pretend to be TS Eliot

Aromatically, Domaine Jaume’s Côtes-du-Rhône isn’t especially forthcoming. There’s a bit of polish, a bit of woodiness. But I’ll admit that, on the evidence of first whiff, my expectations weren’t all that high.

But what a nice gobful it turns out to be. Big, full, confident. Swish it round and round your mouth for several seconds like a godawful prat if you like: it won’t turn to paint-stripper on your palate (unlike many big, roughish reds at this kind of price); it’ll certainly set the front of your mouth tingling like a recovering dead limb. But that’s invigorating, isn’t it?

Yeah, so it’s not a dignified, subtle wine; it’s a hoofer. But a very nice, balanced and (above all) reasonably priced hoofer. I drank it with homemade cottage pie, which was about right, I’d say.

There’s a bit of tannin there, but not lots. Understated but firm. Like a good teacher, who barely has to raise his voice in order to maintain classroom discipline. Or some such tortured metaphor. It keeps the wine focused and structured, prevents slackness at the fringes.

What else? Sweet cherries, varnished wood, liquorice, a not unpleasant hint of vegetation. Accents of black pepper and perhaps even cinnamon. And a very satisfying nuttiness to finish.

Verdict

This isn’t the most complex or subtle wine. But you don’t always want complexity and subtlety, do you? Otherwise you’d be reading bloody TS Eliot instead of this old bollocks, right?

Yeah. Sometimes you want a good, honest gobfiller. That’s this.

And if someone gave me a glass of Domaine Jaume, I’d almost certainly guess it was three or four quid more expensive than it is. Which has got to count for something, right? Especially for a ‘well known’ French region like Côtes-du-Rhône, which is often horribly overpriced and mediocre, relying on name alone.

So, a fine value hoofer, then. Stock up.

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

Thomas Mitchell Marsanne, 2008

… puts on other beverages’ clothing and hangs around in bars

Well, for most of today I have been half-deaf. Yeah, that’s why they call me Old Parn. The mundane and somewhat distasteful reason for my deafness is a blocked right ear.

Anyhow, mindful of those stories that tell of people deprived of one sense enjoying increased acuteness in all others, I wandered (ensconced within my curious, insulated realm of semi-silence) into the Oddbins that nestles mere metres from my doorstep.

And decided to pick something I’d never normally: a big South East Australian white.

(I mean a big South East Australian white wine, obviously.)

You know what? It’s not at all bad. Unusual, certainly. Possibly not even to my tastes. But not at all bad.

First thing that hit me upon cracking the blighter open? The smell of beer. Really. I’m not messing around: this actually smelt, at first waft, bizarrely lager-like. You’d think that’d be pretty offputting, non? But I didn’t find it so.

This is a rich, full, golden wine. A wine that has a great deal of heft. It’s butch. But perfumed, all the same. And there’s nothing wrong with being butch and perfumed, let Old Parn assure you right away.

And what perfume it is. So once the beer has subsided, welcome to the land of fruit juice. There’s loads of pineapple (fresh and slightly acid, not cloying and overripe) — in fact, there’s a distinctly cocktailish character to the thing. But not in the same way as that mediocre Friuli from last week. A hint of herbaceousness balances the fruit … and there is a definite fruit pastille presence. The green one.

It’s staggeringly huge in the mouth (yeah, yeah, as the actress said … whatever …) — not remotely subtle or restrained, it throws itself at your tastebuds and wraps them in a matronly embrace. Impressive, if you like that kind of thing. Indeed, its dessert-wine-esque hugeness leads to its most notable downfall: it’s too full-on. I’m more fussy than many about this — but I don’t like my wines to taste alcoholly. By which I mean, to have that somewhat raw, unrefined alcohol blast when left too long in the mouth. It makes them taste cheap.

And this wine otherwise tastes more expensive than it is.

Verdict

For the price, and if you like whackingly domineering white wines full of alcohol and fruit (but still dry), this is a pretty good choice. Don’t pair it with delicately flavoured food, though; I’d probably stick to drinking it on its own, or alongside strongly flavoured/spiced dishes. Don’t worry too much about obscuring its subtleties.

To be honest, it’s not the kind of thing I often fancy. But who’s fighting for the fancies of a half-deaf old codger anyway? Certainly not big, butch, perfumed South East Australian whites.

Rating ★★★☆☆
ABV 13.5%
Price £7.99 from Oddbins

Waitrose Sancerre, Joseph Mellot 2009

… will light up your palate with a triumphant blaze of verdant Spring

If I had to walk into an unfamiliar (or familiarly unreliable) pub and order a glass of white wine, I’d go for Sauvignon Blanc.

It’s a forgiving grape: a bad Sauvignon Blanc (hereafter ‘SB’) tends still to be drinkable, because it’s such a fruity wine. The hoofingly powerful gooseberry-type flavours that almost inevitably dominate SBs can throw a veil over many sins.

But there are two sides, of course, to this. Safety and reliability can all too easily become predictability. And SBs can be a bit like Walkers’ Cheese & Onion crisps: appealingly, tastebud-bombingly gratifying in the short-term, but leaving an acrid artificiality lingering in their wake.

Thank Christ, then, for wines like this damn, damn nice Sancerre (100% Sauvignon Blanc, y’know).

It’s fruity, sure. But it gambols over the pit into which so, so many of its fellow SBs tumble: that of being too fruity — overwhelming, concentrated, one-dimensional.

It slides silkily onto your tongue, before lighting up your palate with a triumphant blaze of pure, verdant Spring — dancing, tingling, mouthfilling — and yet manages to follow this extroverted exposition with a demure, elegant development. Just at the point when a lesser SB would be beginning to strain, to reveal its limitations, this chap eases into a lovely, smooth 5th gear. And goes on.

And on.

It has an excellent finish, in other words: the youthful greenness (gooseberry, yes — but also the crisp spurt of biting into raw green pepper) blossoms into late-summer roundedness. Peach, firm-fleshed young plums — where the golden flesh is turning vermillion, close to the stone. It is mouthwatering, seductive, addictive. So impressive is the lack of any bump in the transition between the initial excitement and the subsequent warm expansiveness that one’s almost mesmerised. I find myself taking mouthful after mouthful (yeah, any excuse), continually marvelling at the finesse with which this transition is accomplished.

Verdict

I know it’s not a cheap wine, but for this level of complexity — this excellent balance — I’d happily pay a lot more than £12. Deservedly award-winning, this is a very fine wine indeed. Serve it to somebody you want to impress — or somebody you’d like to intoxicate in the most beguiling way imaginable.

Rating *****
ABV 13%
Price £11.39 from Waitrose