SPECTATOR WINE CLUB
Simon Hoggart
AS Christmas hurtles towards us, we need plenty of good wine for entertaining. Not, perhaps, the very grandest wines to go with Christmas dinner, but the kind you can offer friends, family and neighbours who pop round during the long holiday. These are Christmas Eve and Boxing Day bottles; delicious enough to help the festive mood, powerful enough to work magic on cold left-overs, yet so reasonably priced that you can keep everyone happily topped up without reckoning the cost.
They come from WineFinders, which has always been one of my favourite merchants. Their list is short and almost haphazard, since their buyers are interested only in excellent, fully flavoured, highvalue wines found one by one in almost every wine-producing country in the world — including some remarkable bottles from England. With your order you'll get their informative catalogue, which rates wines out of 100, and gives to each stars out of five for value.
Take the five-star Bouvet Ladubay sparkling Saumur, 1998w. At a mere £7.25 this is better than many champagnes. It's rich and toasty and spicy, and I doubt if many people could tell the difference between this and a bottle costing twice as much. Perfect at a small drinks party for people you like very much.
Now for a tremendous discovery. The Chittering Estate Chardonnay 1998'') comes from one of the great wine regions of Western Australia. The estate had a dreadful reputation until it was bought in 1997; since then the new owners have done heroic work and the result is astounding value for £5.75, in itself a 17 per cent discount. I have had Oz Chardonnays at £10 or £11 which were no more perfumed, flavourful and mellow than this beauty. After drinking it, you will never want to touch Jacob's Creek again.
Nor will you after drinking this other Chardonnay, Terres Dorees 1999', made by Jean-Paul Brun. This is a real curiosity, since it's made in Beaujolais, on a limestone outcrop overlooking all those vineyards growing Gamay for the more famous red. This is much more in the French style: dry, smooth, scented, buttery, and wonderful with food. A white burgundy of the same quality would cost far more than the £6.25 they are asking for this.
Finding three reds was agonising, since the standard was so very, very high. No wonder the poor Bordelais need to run ad campaigns suggesting that if you drink their wines, beautiful women will strip to their underwear and cover you in kisses. In this price range, they simply cannot compete. Take the Falesco Vitiano 2000', made by Riccardo Cotarello at Montefiascone, in southern Umbria. This needs to breathe a while before you drink it, when its richness and depth will knock your socks off. A wonderful wine, rich, dark and complex, at an incredibly reasonable £6.49.
Back to France for the Domaine de la Co'ambler City& 1999) from Vacqueyras in the southern Rhone. This is lovely — deep, rich and scrumptious. The thirteenth plate of cold meat and bubble-and-squeak would be a royal feast accompanied by this. I was reminded of the most celebrated of all RhOne wines, Cote-Rotie, though at just £6.75 it is a fraction of the price.
Ribero del Duero is the finest red-wine region in Spain, and Prado Rey's Crianza 1997''' is a superb example. Here is the catalogue description; 'a veritable fruit cake of flavours, including baked plums, cherry jam, cinnamon and clove-spiced prunes, coffee, woodsmoke and tobacco leaf nuances. Velvety, long.' I couldn't possibly have put it as well. In fact, I wouldn't have dared. It's clearly breakfast, afternoon tea, dessert, a roaring log fire and a good cigar all at once. And it really is amazing value at £7.75.
All wines are discounted, some heavily, from the catalogue price, and delivery is free. The sample case saves you more than £10. There's a further discount of 5 per cent if you order two cases or more
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