Bargain Booze: Esprit de Puisseguin Saint-Émilion from Waitrose

Today’s Bargain Booze is a Bordeaux from Waitrose. 1/3 off at the moment. It may not set your meticulously curated world alight, but it’s pretty good. A proper everyday Bordeaux.

Consider this a weary, ambiguous gesture in the direction of topicality. Another occasional series of posts wherein I’ll highlight alcoholic offers and deals that you might find interesting.

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What I’m Doing (mid-Feb edition)

All the stuff I’m up to that I either haven’t been concentrating enough to write about properly, or else can’t quite be bothered to. If that sounds like a compelling pitch to you, god help you. Cocktails at Hide Below, Oysters at Bentley’s, alcoholic wisdom from Morgenthaler and more…

You ache, don’t you, for further insights into my almost inconceivably rich and varied lifestyle?

Well let that ache be soothed! Here’s a new series in which I rifle through the receipts crumpled in my wallet and the memories crumpled in my brain. To be published at a frequency of whenever-I-can-be-arsed. Here’s what I’ve been doing so far in February.

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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.