A nice bottle of wine

[philsussex]

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

go portuguese,

their economy might be junk but they produce the best wine available under £6 in the uk, becasue it aint fashionable

Never say no to a Port. Never really noticed Portuguese wine around though.

(Port and blue WKD also a v nice occasional mix)

 

[ferring seagull]

My favourite is an Italien wine Vino Noble Di Multipaciano but he pocket doesnt allow me to buy it very often. French wine I like Julienas or Fleurie.

The French wines Julienas and Fleurie are both Beaujolais wines.

There are various categories of Beaujolais and the very very best are those of the individual villages which have their own 'appellation'

Julienas and Fleurie are two of that number of villages in the Beaune region.

 

[The Peanut Roaster]

I can only assume that Edna is working tonight otherwise you would all have been put to rights.

 

[Monkey Man]

Three Mills is a British wine. The term applies to wine that's made in Britain from imported juice or concentrate and the wines are oversweetened, bland and pretty awful.

English wine is wine made in England from English grapes. There are some great examples, particularly sparkling wines, and in Sussex we have some of the very best. Ridgeview and Nyetimber are the most famous, but Breaky Bottom is pretty good in my opinion and there are lots of others.

French wine is the best and worst in the world, depending on what you buy. A lot of people buy decent French wine and find it unpleasant but that's because it doesn't have the sweetness and fruit of a lot of New World wines, and deliberately so. They're intended to complement food and are generally at their best that way. Swigging them on their own is not what they're built for, just as a fruity Aussie wine can often be too sweet for a savoury dish. But some people like that, and that's fine.

Wine prices have hardly moved over the past decade despite all the FX movements, fuel price increases, duty hikes etc which means the big brands have had to take quality shortcuts. In some cases, it really shows. Don't be fooled by supermarket discounts. If you're into your wine, get to know your local indie and see what value you can get for £8 or £9 a bottle.

 

[catfish]

Bought half a dozen mid price range bottles of Cotes Du Rhone in France a while back purely at random. Two were really good but the rest were hardy worth drinking. Dunno what that proves but just thought I'd share it.

 

[gnjd_85]

Regular lurker on this message board but couldn't resist this thread as I am (I suspect) NSC's only wine professional. I've done a couple of years worth of exams in the stuff and work for a pretty top end wine merchant in London. I have two main points to contribute...

1)Re: prices - Firstly the cost of producing a bottle of wine, as in putting it in a bottle, putting a label on it, closing it up, paying the taxes and importing it is somewhere around the £3/£3.50 mark. This means that for a £4/£5 bottle of wine the liquid is worth around 50p/£1.50. If you spend a few pounds more the quality improved dramatically, about £8 is something of a sweet spot where you start getting things that actually represent good quality and value, the wine itself being worth around 5 times the amount that of a £5 bottle.

The other point re: prices is in answer to the questions about 'is there really a difference between a £100 wine and a £500 wine' and I would say that there certainly can be, but like all purchases, there are good value buys and bad value buys, some are unbelievably good and some are not worth it, like cars....art.....clothes....shoes.......anything else you might have an interest in- ask yourself if there is a universal rule about whether price means more quality, I suspect it will do as a general rule but with many exceptions.

2)The best piece of advice in this thread was "Don't be fooled by supermarket discounts. If you're into your wine, get to know your local indie and see what value you can get for £8 or £9 a bottle". Without a doubt the best way to get wine is to find someone good to sell it to you, who knows their wines and knows which ones are of which style and quality. The supermarkets are at the bottom end far more focussed on quantity and 'names' rather than quality in my experience.

Find yourself a good wine shop with good staff-talk to them- and you will find good wine.

Hopefully this made some sort of sense, I have perhaps been enjoying rather too much of my own product this evening

 

[Jimmy Come Lately]

go portuguese,

their economy might be junk but they produce the best wine available under £6 in the uk, becasue it aint fashionable

I'll second this. Portugal is the great undiscovered country of European (red) wine (although some of their whites are none too shabby) mostly because they drink almost all of it in Portugal. Limited export = limited "brand" recognition in UK = good wine at decent prices.

For similar reasons, my other tip is the Bierzo region of Spain. This was my favourite discovery of 2011. Wines from Rioja are horribly expensive in the UK: you can pay £15 or more for something that would be 5 euro in Spain, simply because the Rioja name is well known. That's not to say that all Rioja is a rip-off but the name does attract more customers and the producers can and will charge extra for it. Bierzo wine isn't well known here (or in Spain!) so you get much better wine for the same price. The down side is that it's not easy to find and there's not as much cheap stuff around.

Speaking of value for money, it's always worth remembering that in the £3-£10 range you (generally) get dramatically better wine for your money the more you spend. Of a £3 bottle you're probably only spending around 25p on the actual wine: the rest goes on duty, bottling, shipping, retailer's markup etc. A £6 bottle might contain £2-worth of wine, so for twice as much money you get eight times "better" wine.

 

[Phat Baz 68]

And for Rose, the only choice is:

A man after my own heart !
Great choice my fave !!!!!!!!!

 

[The Buttery Biscuit Base]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian_wine

 

[Colossal Squid]

I agree that the Chileans can make a decent red, particularly their Tempranillo, BUT there's still nothing to rival a good and proper SPANISH Rioja

 

[Vankleek Hill Seagull]

I visit the Niagara region here in Ontario regularly purchasing various bottles of reds and whites for personal consumption. Canadian wines have improved over the past few years and it's a pity the only export seems to be ice wine (which is excellent) but I think the Canadian wine making industry is missing a trick by not exporting their best wines.

I've found that the smaller the winery, the better the wines. Some excellent Riesling and Gewürztraminer wines are produced here and are extremely palatable.

 

[big nuts]

Go to majestics in old shoreham road to buy your wine. Knowledgable and friendly staff but you have to buy a minimum of 6 bottles. They also run wine tasting sessions in their stores which are useful.

 

[Daddies_Sauce]

Regular lurker on this message board but couldn't resist this thread as I am (I suspect) NSC's only wine professional. I've done a couple of years worth of exams in the stuff and work for a pretty top end wine merchant in London. I have two main points to contribute...

1)Re: prices - Firstly the cost of producing a bottle of wine, as in putting it in a bottle, putting a label on it, closing it up, paying the taxes and importing it is somewhere around the £3/£3.50 mark. This means that for a £4/£5 bottle of wine the liquid is worth around 50p/£1.50. If you spend a few pounds more the quality improved dramatically, about £8 is something of a sweet spot where you start getting things that actually represent good quality and value, the wine itself being worth around 5 times the amount that of a £5 bottle.

The other point re: prices is in answer to the questions about 'is there really a difference between a £100 wine and a £500 wine' and I would say that there certainly can be, but like all purchases, there are good value buys and bad value buys, some are unbelievably good and some are not worth it, like cars....art.....clothes....shoes.......anything else you might have an interest in- ask yourself if there is a universal rule about whether price means more quality, I suspect it will do as a general rule but with many exceptions.

2)The best piece of advice in this thread was "Don't be fooled by supermarket discounts. If you're into your wine, get to know your local indie and see what value you can get for £8 or £9 a bottle". Without a doubt the best way to get wine is to find someone good to sell it to you, who knows their wines and knows which ones are of which style and quality. The supermarkets are at the bottom end far more focussed on quantity and 'names' rather than quality in my experience.

Find yourself a good wine shop with good staff-talk to them- and you will find good wine.

Hopefully this made some sort of sense, I have perhaps been enjoying rather too much of my own product this evening

Very Much This!!!

We go across to France on shopping trips 2 or 3 times a year. We are convinced that the likes of Auchan and Carrefour know how thick the Brits are, and stack the Calais hypermarkets with cheap rubbish, put a special price label on it, like 6 bottles for the price of 5 or buy a box and get 2 boxes free, and the Brits cannot get enough it. Most of this stuff is bottled urine, yet coaches and cars are filled with trolley loads of this junk. How many of the French do you see buying it?

Best ‘offer’ wine we bought in Carrefour was some Haut Medoc, very drinkable. We now (for the last 3 or 4 years) use an independent in Calais for our ‘French’ vins, who we have got to know and steers us away from the vinegar and/or petrol, after a relaxed tasting you can then buy or walk away, no pressure. And the car park only has 1 or 2 Brit cars, the rest are French customers.

Day out, stock up on quality wine and other French goodies and its a winner.

For our Chilean or Argentinean wines, we research the costs and now mostly buy in Majestics in Calais, or in the UK after Tesco Vins Plus was closed. We no longer buy Australian.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Now I'm no connoisseur by any stretch, I choose by price.

But I have discovered that when buying wine, (only red or rose cos I hate white) you have to go for the New World wines.

European wine, especially French, is bloody horrible.

But it's probably just me.

Are these two statements related by any chance?

 

[ArcticBlue]

Give me a bottle of Brouilly any day, hoever.

One of my absolute favs. Drop a piece of Roquefort into the equation for maximum effect. mmmhhh.

A Pinot Noir from Bourgogne is up there for me too.

 

[wakeytom]

As a wine to 'sup on after a hard days work, I often enjoy a glass of Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cabernet Sauvignon, which is generally around 9.99 but often on offer, but can [MENTION=13907]gnjd_85[/MENTION] tell me if the offer is on as it is really cheap crap, or is it just supermarkets selling at cost or below to keep you shopping?

 

[Lord Bracknell]

My favourite is an Italien wine Vino Noble Di Multipaciano but he pocket doesnt allow me to buy it very often.

About £13 a bottle from Waitrose.

If you like Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, try Rosso di Montalcino. Usually cheaper than the Vino Nobile and better. It's basically the same wine as the legendary (and ludicrously expensive) Brunello di Montalcino - but with a shorter maturation before bottling.

And don't be misled by any Montepulciano d'Abruzzo wine. It come from a totally different place and has hardly any of the Sangiovese grapes in it that make Vino Nobile and the Montalcino wines what they are.

If you are looking for cheap Italian reds, and enjoy Vino Nobile, it's always worthwhile to choose something with a preponderance of Sangiovese grapes. You can pick a decent bottle up for around £6.

 

[Surf's Up]

I agree that the Chileans can make a decent red, particularly their Tempranillo, BUT there's still nothing to rival a good and proper SPANISH Rioja

Look beyond Rioja for spanish reds now - the best imo are now from Ribera del Duero. They're not that common in the UK yet - the last time I was over I looked in Tescos and they only had one - but trust me, they are lighter and smoother than Rioja + highly fruity and well worth seeking out. Spanish wines are classified by age with Reserva being the most expensive because they've been barrelled up the longest but try a mid-price Crianza, you will not be disappointed.

 

[Notters]

Go to majestics in old shoreham road to buy your wine. Knowledgable and friendly staff but you have to buy a minimum of 6 bottles. They also run wine tasting sessions in their stores which are useful.

I'd recommend the Winehouse down Shoreham Harbour. Much better value, some fantastic wines. Also you can just buy one bottle unlike majestics.

 

[jakarta]

As a wine to 'sup on after a hard days work, I often enjoy a glass of Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cabernet Sauvignon, which is generally around 9.99 but often on offer, but can [MENTION=13907]gnjd_85[/MENTION] tell me if the offer is on as it is really cheap crap, or is it just supermarkets selling at cost or below to keep you shopping?

I'm not a wine professional, just a dedicated wine drinker, but would say there is nothing wrong with Wolf Blass, a consistent not horrible everyday wine but far, far better Aussie wines out there for a bit more.

You are right, normally priced at £9.99 but there is always somewhere with it on offer for £5-6!