Zibibbo

I doubt that you recall, but when I was first looking for a white Z around a year ago, I could not find any Zibibbo. On that occasion I settled for a Zenit, which was nice, but this time who should come to my rescue but the now famous Tring branch of M&S Simply Food.

Week Z (2015) Zibibbo, Terre Siciliane. 2013 M&S £8.

As I noted (somewhat disparagingly I now find. Sorry) Zibibbo is the Sicilian name for Muscat of Alexandria and I wrongly believed that type of Muscat to be inferior.

This wine is a bargain.

I have discovered that eight of your English pounds buys you a happy wife, assuming that you wife likes full flavoured, aromatic, flowery and honeyed wines.

It also made me happy, but only briefly as I had made the schoolboy error (schoolboy style, I am not encouraging underage drinking. Oh, no. Not me. I never did) of only buying one bottle and opening that in the company of friends, half of whom came from the distaff side. That meant that out of chivalry I felt compelled to drink the, er, well made light and simple red wine (read 'perfectly acceptable, but mind-bendingly uninspiring') that needed to be put out of its misery and make space in my cellar (cupboard).

Made to be drunk young this is enjoyable with or without food and despite the middleweight alcohol is not to be consigned to the 'chill the buggery out of it and drink it with a picnic' list that so many inexpensive whites warrant.

I expect I may well buy a few of these to have on hand when the occasion is right or the mood strikes, but at this price and given it is intended for early drinking there's not much point in holding stock. The only risk is that it will prove as hard to find next time I want a bottle as it was when I couldn't find it last year. I'm counting on you M&S, don't let me down,

Yecla

A kind friend once brought a bottle of wine to share with us during a short stay. 'I don't really like red wine, but I do like Rioja', they said whilst generously handing over their gift.

I had heard of the fashion for people to declare their taste in white wine to be 'ABC', or anything but Chardonnay, and then stating a preference for white Burgundy (made from Chardonnay), but I had not encountered this variant on a theme. The red wine we had been given was Spanish, but not from Rioja, If it had been it would have been made from a blend of Tempranillo, Garnacha, Graciano or Mazuelo, but this was from a small region close to the central south coast called Yecla, and made from a variety known in France as Mourvedre and here as Monastrell.

The bottle in question was not the one I have selected this week, but its name also contained the word 'Roja' although it was in a more flowery script which made the spelling confusion harder to spot. The interesting thing to me is that, as with the abc crowd, our friend enjoyed the contents of the bottle more for not knowing what it was.

Week Y (2015) Tapa Roja, Old Vines Monastrell. 2013 M&S £7

Is this wine like a Rioja? Well, the wines of that region come in a variety of styles; different blends, different ages, different sub-regions and, most importantly, different producers, so it may be that there is a Rioja that tastes like this Yecla but the short and generalised answer is 'no'.

Monastrell is a grape that likes to sunbathe. It needs warmth to ripen fully and that's why it works well here, as it does in southern France.

It isn't what I would call a subtle grape and the wine made from it is robust and rustic. It is full of plums and blackberries with a hint of herby licorice. It is smoothish, but the grip of the tannin is felt in the finish (aftertaste).

The makers suggest drinking it with spicy sausages, rich curries or barbecued meats and I think that is probably good advice. This one disappeared alongside a slow cooked piece of brisket in a rich meaty gravy, my best roast tatties and some honey glazed parsnips. And something green that I can't remember but it kept The One happy.

It has quite high alcohol (14.5% according to the label and wine typists like me can't resist the labels) and that is in balance with the nature of the wine. It isn't competing with the light but complex reds that have enjoyed prolonged oak ageing. In fact, this one has not been in oak at all and given that the grapes were harvested only around fifteen months ago it could be said it hasn't really had much ageing at all, either.

At £7 per bottle this is a fairly priced, everyday wine of its type. I do like Rioja and this is not a serious contender as a substitue and that's not just because I know it's not the same thing.

Xarelo.Lo

There's more to investigating wines than simply trying those made with different grape varieties. I have chosen primarily to navigate through my voyage of discovery by aiming at a different grape each week and there have been a few that have appeared more than once during the first three alphabetic laps, but usually because they have synonyms beginning with different letters used in different regions or because I was desperate (see last week).

Xarel.lo appeared in week X (2014) as a dry table wine. It qualifies for a repeat performance not only because there aren't many white X's and not even because I couldn't find the bottle of Xynistiri that had been winking at me from the shelves in the now infamous (to the non-existent readers of this nonsense) Tring branch of M&S, but because it is here used in a different style of wine altogether.

Week X (2015) Heretat el Padruell, Brut Cava. NV. M&S £8.

Like most Cava this is made with a blend of grapes, in this case only 30% is Xarelo.lo, another 30% is Parellada and 40% Macabeo. This is not unlike Champagne, a wine with which Cava is prone to comparison, which is also, generally, made from a blend of three varieties.  This is not the only reason for the comparison as the method of production is the same, even if the Champenoise no longer tolerate their international (or indeed regional) wine-making brethren referring to their 'methode' on their labels.

The producers here have used the much more factual description of 'fermented in this bottle' which tells us that it is made by the traditional method, like Champagne, and not in a tank, like the hugely fashionable Prosecco.

One way in which Cava compares very favourably with Champagne is that for £8 we have here a lively sparkling wine with a fine mousse and a clean fruit-driven profile that would be very acceptable at most parties either as an aperitif or for a toast (oh, alright then, or all the way through a meal), whereas if we were to insist on the 'real thing' from France we would be paying twice as much for an entry level bottle.

Where this Cava doesn't compare so well is if you are fond of the yeasty, biscuity aromas that can be found in Champagne and I have to admit that I am. But to write it off for this reason would be a huge mistake. I would argue that the fashion for Prosecco is just that. I like Prosecco for what it is, but what it is is a light simple sparkling wine, usually with coarse short-lived bubbles that doesn't taste too intensely of anything, but is great for a party, especially on a warm summer's day. But if I wanted to keep a bottle of something with a fizz cold in the fridge to be opened for no better reason than the day ends in a y, then I think this will do very nicely and better than Prosecco for interest and better than Champagne for price.

Wairau Cove

When looking for a red O, for week O (2013), I resorted to Otago in the South island of New Zealand and I have gone there again in lieu of a W.

This was something of an act of desperation, as I was running out of time when I found myself in Tescos stocking up on cat food. We get through a lot of that, which is not surprising as we share our home with two cats, and also a remarkable amount of toilet rolls which we put down to sharing our house with another member of the family who is either stockpiling the stuff for when the balloon goes up or secretly insulating the cavity walls with it.

My desperation has also lead me into a corner of the wine world into which I have not knowingly ventured before, but I'll explain that in a minute.

Week W (2015) Wairau Cove, Pinot Noir 2013. Tesco £9

There's a clue on the label about this wine in that it is described as coming from Wairau Cove, South Island, New Zealand. Now, if you got to Google Maps and search for Wairau Cove (I know because I have) you are not immediately transported to the southern hemisphere but instead offered some alternatives. These alternatives are influenced by the location from which your search is conducted. In my case that's near Tring at the north-east corner of the Chilterns, so my options were: Majestic Wines in Berkhamsted, the Wine Society in Stevenage and the Oriental Express takeaway in Weybridge.

Why the hell is that, I hear you thinking? (You aren't? Hmm, curious.) Well the answer is as simple as it is obvious. Wairau Cove is not a wine growing region but a brand. The labeling of the wine as coming from South Island, New Zealand, means that the grapes that have been squished into this bottle could have originated anywhere in the lower half of their home nation.

The back label reveals more home truths. 'Imported and bottled by Kingsland, UK' and that tells us that after fermentation this wine made its way by sea all the way from the antipodes to Manchester in a 20,000 litre bag-in-box, otherwise known as a shipping container before being bottled and distributed to supermarkets.

What's wrong with that? Absolutely nothing, however, this is the previously uninvestigated corner of the wine world; 'bulk wine'. Now, from a carbon footprint perspective there is a strong argument for transporting wine without also having to transport 28,500 glass bottles but that's not the only feature of bulk wine.

Part of the charm of wine, for me, is the opportunity to investigate of all of the influences that influence what sits (usually briefly) in my glass. These grapes didn't come from a single place and so the notion of the style of the wine representing the site in which they were grown is invalidated.

Does that matter? Well, the romance of the subject is diminished, but if the drink is still as pleasing then so what? Like most Pinot Noir wines this is a pale to medium intensity ruby red wine (ok, an expensively aged Grand Cru Burgundy will have more interesting hues) with clean, fresh red fruit aromas. It tastes smooth and fruity, isn't sharp or jarring, but does have a slightly confected, almost Jelly-Baby fruit tones. It is not unpleasant.

There was a little part of me that wanted this wine, which was selected quickly without knowledge of what it was, to really challenge my preconceptions and prejudices about bulk wine which had been based only on reading rather than experiment. It didn't. I said it wasn't unpleasant, and it wasn't, but that is an example of something being damned with feint praise. It's simply not exciting in any way and that's a pity because for a drinkable Pinot Noir, £9 is a steal.