Sherry, of course. And probably Port too. Talking to some wine merchants, and this is the only time they sell any of the stuff. If I were to pick one, I’d go for a Sherry. The great thing about Sherry is that you can go from bone dry to sweet, it’s literally a world of discovery. I’d go with a dry Puerto Fino sherry, perfect as an aperatif and available just about everywhere from independent wine shop to supermarket. Look out for Lustau.

Bubbles must make an appearance. There’s plenty to choose from. Tattinger has been walking out the door at Tesco where they have it down to €25, sometimes back to €60, then back to €30. That’s a bit of a bargin. But even at €25, you can get two bottles, almost. of Jacob’s Creek Sparkling. Blanc de Blancs is the ultimate crowd pleaser and perfect for parties.

Hosting a party?

For a ridiculously drinkable red, La Mano from Mencia (the grape) grown in a place called Bierzo in northern Spain. Not massive on the wine scene here, so you’ll pick up some novelty points. It got the brambly fruit and the rustic spice which will appeal to Cotes du Rhone lovers too. At €7.50 it’s also the wine to replenish your cellar with after the seasonal depletion. 

If there’s still a deal on (and even if there isn’t), try the Shiraz or The Fergus (a blend) from Tim Adams from Tesco. He’s a top bloke and makes great wine. See the interview I did with him last year.

For the white, I’m a fan of Le Courlis Sauvignon Blanc from The Corkscrew. There’s an interesting story behind this one. The winemaker and owner, Aynard, sent me some samples about two years ago now while I writing for the Tribune. He was looking for an Irish importer so I brought the bottle over to the lads and we tried it together. It has been continuously selling out since then. If I’d just become that importer, I’d be doing quite alright now.

As for fizz, look no further than the above Jacob’s Creek. Available in most convenience stores and supermarkets.

What to drink with the big bird?

For starters, whatever it is, it must be paired with Gavin Quinney’s Chateau Bauduc Bordeaux Blanc Sec. Austerity used to be a good word before the recession hijacked it. The French were the best at it, keeping overly generous tropical flavours in check in favour of elegance and complexity. While the French were at that, along came an Englishman and began to show them what’s what. A really stunning Sauvignon Blanc, quite unlike any of the new world styles we’ve grown accustomed to. Favoured amongst Gordon Ramsey, Rick Stein and TV’s Oz Clarke. This is a million miles from Oyster Bay and it’s all the better for it too. Down to €11 at the moment.

Onto the main event. I find it a challenge matching the turkey, trimmings and a wine. Classic matches are Pinot Noir or Chardonnay, but they can get crowded out by the brussels sprouts, chestnuts, cranberry sauce and whatever you’re having yourself.

I like something a little more robust and my wine of the year has to be Mas de Daumas Gassac. At €38, it’s expensive, but Michael Broadbent has been placed it in his top ten wines of the world. That’s good enough for me. I met the affable winemaker, Samuel Guibert. He’s a regular visitor to Ireland too, so it’s definitely buying local!

From not too far away, two other reds I love are from the same stable. First, the little brother, Les Orbiers de La Peira. It was my wine of the year last year and the 2009 is arguably better. For €20, it’s hard to find better. That’s not all folks, it has a big brother, La Peira Las Flors 2008. Both hail from the little known Terrasses du Larzac appellation, uncovered for us by Gary Gubbins who has an uncanny knack of seeking out amazing wines from the Languedoc. He’s like a pig with truffles! They’re both listed here on rednosewine.com.

That’s the old world taken care of. What about the new world? I was bowled over recently by three from South Australia’s Langmeil. They have some of the oldest vines in the world.

Typically, it’s Shiraz and in particular their Valley Floor and Orphan Bank. The Valley Floor really sings and at €17 you’ve got serious quality going on. Very polished wine. A step up in price at €36 and history is the Orphan Bank.

The vines were planted in the mid 1800′s and were to be torn out to make way for property. That was until Langmeil stepped in and transplanted them to a safe place where they continue to make great wines.

Worth mentioning too, the grandfather of both is the Freedom Shiraz from Langmeil. I tried it back in May at the Wine Australia tasting. Barack Obama was in town that day and this is a wine fit for a president. At €63 (down from €70) it’s a wine only our recently retired politicians on big pensions can afford to be drinking. It would be wasted on them too, tut!

For the classic fans, I’d go straight for Mischief and Mayhem’s basic Chardonnay available from The Corkscrew. At €19.95 it’s a glimpse into Meursault, toasty, minerals, creamy. Beautiful.

Meditative reds for later

A red by the fire and a good book. The book is probably on the Kindle, but the wine is still in the glass. Not for long if it’s Zenato’s Ripassa. Normally around €20, you’ll find it in some places on offer at €15. Silky smooth. Available in Next Door off-licences and good wine shops nationwide.

The Mulley’d Wine

For Mulley’d wine, I’ve put up my lovely wife’s recipe a couple of times over the years. I may be sucking up for brownie points, but I’ve yet to taste better.

Most wines mentioned were samples. I paid for those from The Corkscrew. Disclosure: I work on the The Corkscrew’s website. Sorry, award winning website. Ahem.

Bierzo has also has at least one tenuous link with Ireland, it shares the same annual rainfall as the eastcoast. This is definitely “Green Spain”

Wines are typically fresh, fragrant, with good fresh vibrant fruit and a savoury bite. Brambly is a good word to the describe them.

In terms of availability. There aren’t too many on the Irish market . From memory the following are good buys from independents (though Superquinn and M&S are bound to have decent ones too):

• Tilenus
• Petalos
• Cuatro Pasos
• Manium
• Uttaris
• Xestal

La Mano Mencia

So, it was with great surprise and delight that a sub-€10 Mencia has made it to the independent trade.

Available from Curious, Simply, Red Nose and Cases (and potentially a few other spots) for €8.95.

What is it like?

First off, that lovely lavender and “garrigue” smell you get from the Languedoc. Lots of lovely brambly fruit and a greeny freshness that Cabernet Franc fans go mad for.

Delicious stuff and a real bargain to boot. Get your mits on this and discover what Mencia is all about.

Value is a bit of a challenge to me. Does it just mean cheap (sorry, inexpensive)?

Value is “the worth of something compared to the price paid”, and the worth is judged by the buyer not the seller. So, if it’s mentioned anywhere other than a review, I’m a little suspicious.

Anyhoo, the subject of this value for money wine is the Château Boucarut Côtes du Rhône 2009 from Molloys in Dublin who seem to have undergone a rather smart rebrand, at least online.

Côtes du Rhône is the basic classified wine from pretty much anywhere within the Rhône area and it’s normally in the range between €7 and €15 and the quality also ranges.

Grape growing & wine making

The winemaker Christophe Valat has set a premium on using natural wine growing methods and respect for the environment particularly by adopting the use of organic manure and natural pest management.

The grapes are Grenache and Syrah

This can, but not always, be coupled with a premium price, but not in this case, the wine is €9.

Tasting note

Bursting with great fruit, a nice fresh acidity, a hint of the rustic and finishes with a very generous amount of pepperiness. After my first glass, I thought the pepper was a little too much, but on going back to the wine the following night, it had opened up nicely and everything was in check, and nicely balanced.

So, back to the question of value.

Would I be happy with the wine, if I paid €9 for it? Definitely.

Kangaroos, lizards, goats, cats, dogs, frogs, bulls, horses, rabbits and other critters have been used on wine bottles labels for quite a while now. None is more famous is the Yellow Tail ‘roo.

While they may not have been the first, Yellow Tail are certainly the poster child for critter labels.

What made the critters take off in the first place? A simple enough formula of an easily recognisable and distinguishable label. And now they’re everywhere.

The phenomenon has reached such proportions that it reminds me of the high visibility illuminous bottles of detergent in supermarkets. If they all stand out, none of them do.

Despite that, 3 classy critters came across my desk recently. All three are from La Granja, a producer from Cariñena in Spain.

While the labels are cute, they’re also classy. I’m a sucker for such things. It’s not the be all, just enough to get the bottle off the shelve and into the consumer’s hands. Thereafter the wine itself dictates whether the customer will come back for more.

The La Granja critters are:

1. The Zebra (La Granja 360º, Garnacha-Tempranillo) – €8.99
Nice brambly fruit, soft mid palate. Worked very well with the meatfest/BBQ over the weekend.

2. The Pig (La Granja 360º Tempranillo) – €7.99
My favourite of the bunch, quite like a good Rioja Crianza, or at a stretch a Riserva, but at half the price, which is quite nice. Lovely fruit, medium bodied.

3. The Chicken (La Granja 360º Syrah) – €8.99
More juicy goodness, this time from Syrah. A little textbook spice, and another stunner.

What’s interesting about these three wines that they’re not on your supermarket mid shelf, like most other critters. Rather, they’re offered by select independents – but at ridiculously competitive prices. Oh, the quality thing too – for me, at €8-9 they are the best quality you can get anywhere.

Olé.

Availability

From 4 great independent wine shops:

1. curiouswines.ie (Cork)
2. rednosewine.com (Tipperary)
3. cases.ie (Galway)
4. simplywines.ie (Dublin)

They are looking for wines for their customers rather than looking for customers for their wines.

What do I mean by this? Bear with me for a tick. The greatest trick the recession ever played on us was for us to start equating cheap with value. It must be all those big red or yellow call outs from the supermarket aisles influencing us.

However, what the The Wine Alliance have shown is that with the wines they bring in, they can source wines to enable the retailers they supply to go toe-to-toe with supermarkets on price, while crushing them with quality.

If you’re still reading, well done you!

Here’s a great example of what I mean. It’s the Beso de Vino Macabeo 2009, from Cariñena in Spain.

The wine review bit

Viura or Macabeo (same grape, different names) is a little bit of an odd grape. You’ll sometimes get it as part of a blend in Rioja or with Verdejo in Rueda. You’ll also get it as part of a Cava blend, but it’s rare to see it tout-seule. It’s better as part of a choir than as a single.

But the Beso de Vino is well able to sing solo, and what a song.

Lovely zippy citrus to start to which is added a nice savoury edge and lovely creamy texture. When I think of the style, I think of the love-child of a Clare Valley Riesling and a nice creamy Chardonnay from McClaren Vale.

The geography lesson bit

Cariñena is in Aragón, one of those autonomous regions we don’t hear too much about, until they ban bullfighting and then they just go back to being autonomous, until they come together to win the soccer world cup under the Spanish banner. Anyway, there are many other very decent wines coming out of Cariñena, red and white, and I recommend you check them out. Beso de Vino is a great place to start.

The hyperlinks to more information

If you want to learn a bit more about the producer (set up in 1997), the vines and the product, then I suggest you take the information super highway over to the Wine Alliance site – a site that demonstrates what all importers should be doing – giving great detail, bottle shots and availability of their wines. Heaven for an out of work wine journo who likes to blog from time to time.

First impressions last

My conclusion would read something like “fine if you like that sort of thing, sure to provide a more serious version of wine zinfandel”. I mean, c’mon. A wine from Portugal calling itself “Pink Elephant”? Pleeeze!

But let’s give it a chance. Is this wine from Portugal named after the ghost of Dublin’s nightlife nineties past actually any good, let alone devoting three paragraphs to?

In Top Gear/Jeremy Clarkson style, I decided to challenge the credentials and give it full throttle. It claims to be “the perfect rosé for spicy food”. And on the front label! A bold claim. Let’s see if you can take the power of my Legendary Makey-Uppy Laksa.

Laksa?

Laksa is a spicey coconut based soup from Malaysia. The best one I’ve ever had was not in Singapore or Malaysia, but in the western Sydney suburb of Parramatta. That was 10 years ago and the place was called Temasek. The Makey-Uppy part is that my recipe changes on a whim and it’s never ever the same.

Anyway, the extra component for my Legendary Makey-Uppy Laksa was extra chillis. Most wines can’t cope with heat, though some Alsatians come into their own, as well as some Rieslings and cheeky Grüner Veltliners from Austria.

So, was this the perfect rosé for [really fucking - sic] spicy food?

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: The company behind the wine, 10International, had a seeming impossible question to answer, “Which wine goes with curry?”. Focus groups. Research. Surveys. Gaps in markets. Panel of wine experts. Design a new wine. Indian restaurant. Consumer Taste Tests. Overwhelmingly positive results. PR. Guerilla Marketing. Social Media. Download the PDF if you like stories.

Bloody good wine

Turns out that despite my prejudice wine snobbery this is a bloody good wine (the highest achievable score in my private rating system). It’s made just from red grapes, free run juice (that’s the good stuff). There’s a perfect balance between fruit, sweetness and acidity. A very decent drop. and more than able as a match for spicey or really spicey food.

Despite its “critter name” it’s from quite a traditional region in Portugal previously known as “Estremadura”. The region is still called Estremadura (literally meaning the extreme as it is so far west), but the wine from there is now known simply as Vinho Regional Lisboa.

Pink Elephants and Black Pigs

Why? There’s a Spanish region called Extremadura, which means the same as the Portugese word, as you could probably deduct. It’s famous for acorn-eating black pigs rather than Pink Elephants. So there was some sort of clash or gentleman’s agreement over naming. I think the Spanish should have caved in, as the Portugese region is more extreme, at least in a westerly direction.

Where to get it and for how much?

So you’ve read this and now you want to know where to get it. Good news, it’s available from SuperValu nationwide at a very reasonable €6.99.

“Posh beer” comes to sourgrapes.ie and first up it’s “Schlenkerla Helles” lager. This lager is brewed from Bavarian hops from the area around the city of Nürnberg.

It’s lagered (or aged) in century old caves underneath the historic Schlenkerla brewery and maltings in Bamberg.

The subtle smokiness comes from the kettles it’s boiled in, the same ones used in the production of the famous Schlenkerla Smokebeer (rauchbier) which is also available from Deveney’s in Dundrum.

Lughnasa Beer Festival

Don’t forget the Lughnasa Beer Festival in Dublin on the 20th of August. Details from the Deveney’s Beer blog.

You can get tickets for the beer festival in the following locations:

• Deveney’s of Dundrum (or online at deveneysbeer.blogspot.com)
• Jus de Vine, Portmarnock
• Redmond’s of Ranelagh
• Deveney’s of Rathmines
• Sweeney’s of Phibsboro
• The Vintry, Rathgar

At its current offer price of €6.95 in Dunnes Stores, it’s an absolute steal.

The region where the wine is made is a small appellation called Cabardès, a mere 5 minutes drive from the medieval village of Carcassone.

Cabardès: where the Atlantic meets the Med.

What’s interesting is that the appellation calls for wines to be a blend of Atlantic  (i.e. those from Bordeaux, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec/Cot, Cabernet Franc) and Mediterranean grapes (Rhône, Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre).

The mix in this red is as follows: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec, Syrah and Grenache. As to the percentages, I’ve lost the detail, but don’t sweat it, it changes from year to year.

How does it taste?

Bloody good is how. Gorgeous dark fruit, nice acidity and really smooth. Perfect with a bit of duck or cassoulet.

There’s also a rosé, if you feel like picking something up for the missus.

UK drinkers reading?

Also available from Majestic (I reckon they deserve a link as it was there I swiped the bottle shot).

As luck would have it Håkan Eriksson, formerly of enowine, had started that day as shop manager so gave me the tour. If you haven’t been it’s a bit of a mecca for wine lovers, with some great stuff on the shelves. Great prices on classed growth Bordeaux, some of it old stuff and ready for drinking, which you don’t find too much of.

And Bordeaux is where I stayed, spotting a half bottle of Château Beaumont 1998 for about €8. The current vintage (2006) on the shelves of O’Brien’s is around €20, so €8 was pretty attractive so I took her home for the evening. Half bottles are great for that glass and a bit of wine and still feeling fresh as a daisy the next day

Lean, austere style, classic Medoc. Pencil shavings, blackcurrant, smooth and silky and a nice level of acidity, all of which could see it last another couple of years without fading. Interesting too, in that critics would normally recommend drinking the “lowly” Médocs with 4-5 years of vintage and this is going strong after twelve. Purrfect with a simple bit of sweet roast lamb.

The blend is one that varies on the vintage, but it’s classic left bank, with a big share of Merlot than I sensed when drinking.

• 52% Cabernet Sauvignon
• 43% Merlot
• 3% Petit Verdot
• 2% Cabernet Franc

Faith restored in Bordeaux? Getting there. Any Bordeaux rocking your boat?

Without further ado, for this installment of my irregular wine of the week I’m staying with an Iberian wine but skipping over the border to Spain and to reliable Rioja. I’m rarely disappointed with Rioja, particularly those in the “classic style”.

What do I mean by classic style? Typically, lighter to medium bodied wines with a good mouthwatering red berry and vanilla explosion.

The Campo Viejo crianza is the star this week and is one such wine. It was quite a while since I had it and for 10 yoyos, it’s a very decent example of what good Rioja is all about.

Medium bodied, light tannins, smooth silky texture with a high acidity, bursting with raspberry and a hint of vanilla. The lighter body style is perfect for the summer evenings and would go well with anything from tapas, salmon to lamb, pasta. Very versatile as a food matcher.

It also is a featured wine in provocative book, The Wine Trials 2010 where inexpensive wines are pitted blind against some exceeding expensive wines and you can guess which comes out on top. The tasting note from The Wine Trials,

The winemakers at Campo Viejo have clearly resisted the trend for syrupy fruit bombs; instead, they produce subtle, idiosyncratic wines. We recommend that anyone who’s never had a distinctly Old World wine try it. Red fruit, vegetables, barnyard, and even motor oil aromas; spicy dark cherry flavors.

Price: 9-10 yoyo

The good news is that it will only set you back around €9-€10 and it’s available from Tesco, O’Brien’s and many other supermarkets, convenience stores around the country.

Olé.