W e have two Christmas offers this month, both from top-ranking
wine merchants. The first is by Lay & Wheeler. Nearly all the wines have been reduced by 10 per cent (with free delivery); there are further discounts if you buy more than one case, and two of the reds represent astonishing value.
Both are over-production of famous names. The strict French appellation system limits the amount of wine that can be sold under any particular label. This must be infuriating if, for example, you make white wine in one of the great Burgundy districts and in a particularly good year you produce more than you’re allowed to sell under its real name. It ends up labelled as a generic Burgundy. The rules are to stop growers being tempted to sacrifice quality to quantity, and they work very well, even if they cause gnashing of teeth in the vineyards. By contrast, they are very good news for us. More on this story later.
We start with two great party glugging wines. Both are from Montagne Noire in the Pays d’Oc: the Sauvignon Blanc 20051 at £4.73 is zesty and flowery and can be drunk for a long time without making your mouth pucker like some Sauvignons I could mention. The red Merlot 20055 is gentle and soft, wonderful value at £4.46 — your guests will leave replete, warmed and happy.
Our New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, a 2005 from the excellent Lawson’s Dry Hills vineyard2 is pricier (a fraction over £8) but well worth it. A really good Kiwi Sauvignon brings ripe tropical fruits to the regular mixture of grass and gooseberries, and this would be gorgeous with fish, or cutting through the fattiness of goose or pâté. It’s an exhilarating wine.
And so is the Tilly’s Vineyard 20043 from Australia’s leading independent wine-maker, Stephen Henschke. His most celebrated wine, a Shiraz called Hill Of Grace, sells for hundreds of pounds a bottle, but this one has been reduced by 15 per cent to a mere £9.14. It’s delectable, a blend of Semillon, Chardonnay and Sauvignon, plump and packed with lovely crisp fruit, made with terrific attention to detail. I have met Stephen Henschke and know it would be agony for him to use a single sub-standard grape.
Our last white is a Burgundy from Patrick Javillier, his 2004 Bourgogne Oligocène4. The 2004 vintage was one of the best in the region, and he has used the grapes to create something that has all the buttery, nutty, vanilla and peach richness you expect for a higher price. I love turkey at home on Christmas Day, but for some reason find the words ‘traditional roast turkey with all the trimmings’ deeply depressing on a restaurant menu. Not if it were accompanied by this.
The Plan Pégau N.V. from the Domaine de Pégau6 is delicious, and so it should be, since, as explained above, it is a Châteauneuf-duPape, with a tiny quantity of grapes (Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre) from the Vaucluse. If it were sold as C-du-P it would cost you a tenner a bottle more; as it is, it’s wonderful value at £8.78. We decanted it, and the gorgeous perfume soon worked its magic. The Malbec Grande Reserve Alta Vista 20047 from Mendoza in Argentina is quite fabulous, and I urge you to try it. It has none of the roughness associated with cheaper Malbecs; instead it is almost creamily smooth, with cedar, damson, biscuits, smoke and cherries. At under £9 a bottle it is less than a third of the price of the same estate’s premium wine, but almost as good. I can’t imagine anything nicer with cold ham, beef, turkey, game pie, pickled walnuts.
Finally the Lay & Wheeler red Burgundy, Bourgogne Pinot Noir 20038, is another delicious surprise, being over-production of one of the region’s classics, Chassagne-Montrachet. It is scented, velvety, powerful yet easy to drink, and sold under its real name would cost £15 a bottle. Our price is £8.96.
Delivery, as I said, is free, and there is a further discount of £10 if you buy two unmixed cases or more, plus another £5 for each unmixed case after that.
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