Roussanne

What a busy time of year. Christmas day was conducted at a very relaxed pace, with only four of us gathered around the seasonal feast, which somehow was cooked and eaten rather more efficiently than the average Sunday roast and not because any of the trimmings were overlooked.

At some point during the period between Christmas Eve and today, the contents of this bottle were polished off.

Week R (2015) Charles Back Stonedance Roussanne, 2014. M&S £10.

And very nice they were, too. Roussanne is a grape from the Rhone valley where it is often blended either with other white grapes, typically Marsanne, or red grapes such as Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre. Here it appears as a single varietal wine but, rather than coming from the Rhone, or anywhere else in France, this was made in South Africa around the city of Paarl.

It is a medium bodied, aromatic wine with a nice oily mouthfeel. It has quite intense flavours of peach, pear and apple and hints of something herbal. M&S say fennel, but I wouldn't swear to that.

It has moderate levels of acidity and a finish that lasts very well. A small proportion of the wine has been matured in oak, but that does not really make its presence felt to any obtrusive degree.

All in all, this is a pleasing wine and I think it could well become a bit of a banker. I have had few other experiences of Roussanne but all of those that I can remember have been enjoyable.

Quetzal

My father was a keen ornithologist and would take me out to bird reserves at almost any opportunity during my formative years. I enjoyed this greatly and inherited through these outings a love, albeit less passionate than my father's', of all things feathered. In my case this includes duvets.

Probably because of this early exposure to birds that many people will never encounter during their entire lifetimes, when at the age of ten I was asked along with all of my classmates to supply one question and answer for a general knowledge quiz and thought 'what is an Andalusian Hemipode?' to be a resonable contribution. My father was very proud. My teacher disallowed the question, probably because she couldn't tell whether the answer I supplied was correct or not.

This week we have a wine branded with the name of another bird not native to these shores.

Week Q (2015) Quetzal Malbec, Baja California 2014. M&S £8.50

The Quetzal is a colourful chap found in central America and if we're not for him it is unlikely that I would have picked a wine made in Mexico.

Wine education courses teach that the majority of wine grapes are grown between latitudes of 30 - 50 degrees North or South of the equator, as outside these ranges the climate is unsuitable by being either too hot or too cold. Mexico city is around 19 degrees North and far too hot, however, Mexico is a a big country and in its northern most parts, including the peninsula of Baja California, the climate is much more hospitable. So that is where the grapes for this wine grew.

It is a blend of two varieties, one well known and the other less so. They both originated in Bordeaux, but one has become more widely known than the other. It is 90% Malbec, now most famous in Argentina, and 10% Petit Verdot.  It tastes very acceptably like similar blends or at least like other Malbecs from other places and I was pleasantly surprised as I suspected it may have been a bit rough. More prejudice, I am ashamed to admit. I can't say it has much 'spirit of place' about it, but for the price and the interest value of it coming from Mexico then I am happy.
Based on this experience I would be happy to try other Mexican wines, but my socks have not been blown off with the intensity of this first encounter.

Many years after my primary school quiz experience I was reprimanded by a lecturer (that's what they called the teachers at West Kent College) in Communications (that's what they called English....) for answering a general knowledge question 'who was William Morris?' by correctly describing him as a wallpaper designer. I have always enjoyed the obscure.

Pouilly Fuisse

We have enjoyed a couple of white wines form the Maconnais this year, so here is another!


Week P (2015) Marc Dudet Pouilly-Fuisse, 2009. Waitrose £14.99

This one comes at a premium price because it comes from a specific village, Pouilly-Fuisse, which is generally considered to be in the best part of the region for producing good wines.

It is 100% Chardonnay, once again proving the 'anything but Chardonnay' crowd to be small-mindedly misguided, and delivers an experience to please many of our senses.

It looks pleasingly golden and bright. It smells beautifully aromatic and shows peach, pear and hints of vanilla. It tastes as good as it smells and feels full and rich in the mouth with some creamy notes backing up the fruit.

Its finish is long and lingering and has some of the 'minerality' that wine type bang on about.

I chose this one to compare with the Macon Village we had in week M (2015) and also the Uchizy we had in week U (2015). They cost £9 and £11 respectively, so this week's wine is expensive by comparison. The producer hasn't provided any information about the methods of production used, the vineyards sites from which the grapes have been harvested or, indeed, anything at all that would justify the higher price. This leaves us to rely on the most important criterion; what do I think?

Well, I do like it and I would buy this if I wanted to be i) reasonably certain that my guests would enjoy the wine and ii) a bit pretentious, but I can't say that the difference from the other regional wines we tried earlier was so distinct that my enjoyment of either of them would be spoiled now that I know what and extra fiver could have provided. 

Ogio

One to test the prejudices today.

As an explorer, keen to keep learning about what makes wine enjoyable for me and what might make it enjoyable for others, I sometimes have to remind myself not to get stuck in any ruts of my own making and only explore those bottles that fit some unspecified but constraining criteria.

One such criterion could be that a wine has to have something that makes it unusual to qualify it for selection. Whilst I have become something of a fan of Marks & Spencer, especially the Simply Food branch in Tring because they stock such a wide range for such a small shop, I don't feel the same way about Tesco. They have, I think, a smaller and certainly less diverse range and have to carry the baggage of being, well, Tesco.

However, a red wine with a strong enough connection to the letter 'O' to qualify for selection is proving hard to find and the day job is doing as good a job of competing for my attention as my two cats usually do when I am trying to read (or type this pointless stuff) that I needed to get on with it and overcome my probably irrational instincts.

Week O (2015) Ogio Primitivo 2014. Tesco £5.50.

First thing to notice is that there hardly any information on the bottle. This usually makes me suspicious but, when studying with WSET, I once undertook an assignment to assess what differentiates 'good' from'bad' wine labeling and I used a very acceptable red Burgundy as the example of 'bad', for exactly the reason that the producer appeared to expect wine drinkers to know everything they should need to know from the word 'Bourgogne'.

In this case there is a bit more on the back label (the Bourogne just had a bar code) and tells the buyer to expect spicy blackcurrant, raspberry and a smooth velvety finish and, to be fair, that's probably all you need to know if you are picking a bottle from the bottom of the wine wall. The name itself reveals the variety ss Primitivo, a red grape known in Califorinia as Zinfandel.

Does it live up to its own billing? Yes, it does. It is a good example of a well made but inexpensive wine. It tastes of what it claims to taste of, doesn't have rough or unripe tannins, isn't either mouth burning with alcohol or mouth stinging with acidity. On the down side, it isn't complex, is of a medium everything from body to finish and doesn't make me want to call or text any of my virtual friends (I don't mean 'on-line' friends, I mean most of them don't actually exist) to encourage them to try it.


A little research on the Tesco website revealed an honest marketing description that declares the wine by suggesting 'served with a big plate of pasta, this is hard to beat' and that it is 'utterly made for TV dinners'. Spot on, I think. My tasting panel and I had this with Liver & Bacon, mashed potato and onions. I liked it, but neither of my associates passed any comment. Always a clue.

Finally, I notice that it was credited to a winemaker named Alessandro Botter, whose business is mostly concerned with bottling, appropriately.