Extra-ordinary ordinary Claret at just £3.99

Chateau La Foret

2008

Bottled by Yvon Mau

Booths £3.99

Normally on a Saturday night at this time of the year I'm downloading my brain to a pile of cerebrally-lite TV drivel, usually in the form of X Factor. However tonight I am sacrificing these simple pleasures, in every sense, to tell you very briefly about an amazing discovery on the second shelf down in the French section at Booths in Clitheroe.

Right now, if you follow my instructions and wait for your nearest Booths store store to open at 10am tomorrow, you can get your hands on a gem of an ordinary claret at just £3.99 - on special offer down from £5.99.

This little number from Entre Deux Mers, the southern area of Bordeaux between the highly revered Right and Left Bank territories (respectively home to Cabernet and Merlot). In Claret terms, wines from EDM command far less commentary and observation than they truly deserve which explains why charming, supple numbers like this slip under the oenolgical radar.

Harry and I had this bottle (and yes it has all gone) with a takeaway curry this evening (and yes it has all gone) back at Chateau Blogspot and we both agreed this was an amazing, young, supple and elegant little number with a finely honed balance of Cabernet and Merlot. Yes, it's young and yes it's relatively light. But with this comes a hugely drinkable, pliable wine that is really everything I look for in a so-called ordinary Claret. This isn't even marketed as an ordinary claret, by the way, but it is so cheap and so good to drink that it's a simple and affordable pleasure.

In fact this is so good, I am going back to clear the shelves. OK so it's a blended claret but expertly done by the team at Yvon Mau. It does extactly what it says on the tin.

Clean, young, fresh and hugely enjoyable - comme moi.

Very Decent Wine: 10/10 Outrageously so, for the price

Dinner Party Appeal: 8/10 Lovely with a credit crunch home made beef burger meal with friends

Probability of Buying Again: 10/10 I'll be knocking on the door tomorrow

Well crafted Dr Loosen - the sweet taste of success

Dr Loosen

Reisling 2008

ASDA £5.48

Make no mistake, Ernst Loosen, the man behind the multi-award winning Dr Loosen brand of wines, is a superlative winemaker who has accumulated an array of glittering prizes. In 1989 he won Reisling of the Year by German wine magazine Feinschmecker; this was followed by an award from Gault-Millau, the prestigious and highly influential French restaurant guide which named him German winemaker of the Year in 2001. And to top it all, he was named as Man of the Year by Decanter Magazine in 2005.

Every Dr Loosen wine you buy is always a 5* sure fire bet. They are beautifully structured, clean and simply elegant. The wine that Harry, Mrs W and I had on Saturday night was all of these things with a mix of pineapple, honey and elderflower coming through on a long clean presentation on the palate.

To me, the sign of a very well made white wine is its ability to deliver its full palate of flavours when severely chilled. Personally, once white wines start to warm up I find them slightly sickly and cloying.

All credit to Ernst Loosen, his very young 2008 Reisling had impeccable manners, an exceptional flowery bouquet and a very subtle effervescence. Reluctant as I am to offer any criticism to this supreme master of wine, my only concern was a possible over-sweetness on the finish. Mrs W would have none of this and adored every mouthful but Harry and I felt that a dryish counterbalance was needed to calm down the swarm of sweet flavours.

In this month's issue of Decanter the recent panel tasting of Alsace white wines came in for heavy criticism for their residual over-sweetness and I just wonder (even though Dr Loosen's wines are over the border on the banks of the Mosel) whether this elegant wine has suffered a similar drift in the same direction. I don't recall my last Dr Loosen Reisling, about two years ago, being quite so sweet.

That said, for Reisling lovers this bottle is a masterclass in outstanding wine craftsmanship and will, I know, continue to thrill many existing and future fans of Dr Loosen. And at its current price in ASDA, this first class example of Reisling elegance is not to be missed.

Thoroughly Decent Wine: 10/10

Dinner Party Appeal: 9/10 (perfect with fish or Asian cuisine)

Probability of Buying Again: 9/10 (it's a sure fire bet - just want to check on the sweetness)

One red and three whites - where's the corkscrew

Chateau Caillou les Martin, 2005 - Lussac St Emilion - £7.99 Booths

Vignes de St Pierre, 2005 - Vin de Pays d'Oc - Aldi £3.99

Dr Loosen, Reisling, 2008 - ASDA £5.48

Philippe Michel, Cremant du Jura, 2007, Chardonnay - Aldi £6.99

Here at Chateau Blogspot we've just unloaded the shopping from our Saturday tour de supermarche here in the rain swept North West and amongst all the usual mix of sundries (washing powder, Jammie Dodgers, coffee, shower gel, carrots etc) we have four ace-rated stonkers from the wine racks of Aldi, Asda and Booths.

On the menu tonight, we're defying the great British autumn weather with a warm salad of free range chicken, rocket, peppers, parmesan and Brie de Meaux which will be accompanied by the legendary Dr Loosen Riseling which will be even more enjoyable than usual as it's currently on sale in ASDA at a wallet-loving £5.48. Exactly the same thing elsewhere will knock you back the best part of £8 so get down there and snap some up. Incidentally, talking of bargains, Nescafe Alta Rica (the poshest and strongest of their everyday instant coffees) is on offer at £2 a jar which is why I ended up procuring a double brace of these along with a handful of Dr Loosen.

From Aldi I picked up the double award winning Cremant du Jura sparkling Chardonnay which, like Dr Loosen's Riesling, has been tried before here at Chateau Blogspot and is an absolute humdinger of a drink - one that, in my opinion, is vineyards better than some low entry champagnes. This will, I know, be our seaonsal festive tipple on tap to get us through the so called festive season. Also in the trolley is a Vin de Pays made with Vermintino and Sauvignon Blanc which will accompany a fish dish (kippers or fish fingers) either tomorrow or Monday.

Finally, from Booths (the northern and eminently more friendly version of Waitrose) comes a half price St Emilion which, apart from sailing in half price at £7.99, comes with a medal from the Challenge International du Vin 2008. I can see this doing some nifty accompanying along with a sweaty mature cheese and a slice of my newly made, and mildly impressive home made bread.

Will report back on tastings very soon - in the meantime I'll get the kitchen team at Chateau Blogspot to help me prepare that salad. Yes chef.

Let's commiserate with Chateau La Reine Pergason

Medoc

Chateau La Reine Pergason

2006

Aldi - £4.99 (previously £5.99)

As you will have read in my previous blog, we were all on standby on Friday to open a bottle of Chateau Reysson 2005 in the happy event that Harry passed his driving test which he took, somewhat ominously, on Friday 13. Well thanks to a few 'serious' and one or two 'dangerous' errors on his part, largely down to observation (or lack of it), the bottle remains unopened here on the review desk at Chateau Blogspot and will remain so until our next scheduled meeting with our friends from the Driving Standards Agency on December 11.

In the meantime, Harry will practice looking and observing anything that moves in close proximity to his vehicle (when driving at least) and I will continue tasting and observing anything half decent that remains hitertho undisturbed in a wine bottle.

Over the past 48 hours I've had a weekend away in deepest Cumbria on a course to learn the art of bread making. Located on the outskirts of Penrith, the Watermill at Little Salkeld is an absolute gem and well worth a detour if, like me, you enjoy wholesome, natural food sourced and prepared in natural surroundings. Without wishing to sound over-worthy or right on, in a Hoxton-Square, Guardian-Food-Monthly kind of way the place is a truly authentic champion of green enterprise and is absolutely first class in everything it is trying to achieve. It's quirky and unique and is just quietly going about its work in a small but ferociously determined way. Check out http://www.organicmill.co.uk/ to discover this amazing working mill which dates back to 1760 and is still milling flour. Anyway, from bread on to wine.

On the back seat of the car all weekend was a bottle of Medoc from Aldi. I meant to down it with a chunk of the bread I made on the course and some cheese when I returned to the hostel I was staying at in Patterdale. However, things didn't turn out that way and I ended up entertaining myself in a remote pub with a copy of The Times, a pint of beer and a packet of cheese and onion crisps. So, back at Chateau Blogspot it has just turned 5.30pm on a Sunday evening, my shirts are in the washing machine, a pizza is in the oven and I have just poured a glass of this very sound, classic Bordeaux red.

At first I thought the tannic structure was a bit too firm and undeveloped but after a quick excursion to the local garage to get some milk for tomorrow morning's Honey Nut Hoops I returned to find a wine that had opened up to deliver a really dark inky, full palate flavour with a surprisingly spicy floral bouquet. For a wine with 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, a 2006 vintage is relatively short space of time in which to achieve silky tannins like these and allow the Merlot to come through in the background. The wine has been blended by famed Bordeaux wine maker Benoit Valerie Calvet whose eccentric website (even more so when translated by a Google toolbar) can be found at http://www.bvcbordeaux.com/

This is an easy drinking Claret which not only shows off M Calvet's expertise in developing such an enjoyable and well structured wine in such a short space of time but shows ALDI's expertise in pulling in serious winemakers to deliver excellent value everyday wines that would give other so-called 'ordinary' clarets from grander supermarkets (did I hear someone say Waitrose) a real run for their money.

Dinner Party Appeal: 7/10 (for an informal cheese and wine or posh burger event)

Probability of Buying Again: 9/10 (this is good, better than ordinary Claret)

Class Act: 9/10 (M Calvet has produced the wine equivalent of cheap chic)

If he passes we crack open the Chateau Reysson

Chateau Reyson

Haut Medoc (Cru Bourgeois Superieur)

2005

Tesco £10.99

Sitting on my review desk here at Chateau Blogspot is this hugely tempting little number from the left bank of Bordeaux which is a 50:50 blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Now as regular and attentive readers of my blog will have come to learn, the basic rule of Bordeaux wines is that Merlot (predominantly grown on the right bank where clay soil dominates) is the full bodied wide boy while the Cabernet Sauvignon, with its greater concentration of tannins, is the more complex and sometimes aloof aristocrat, which prefers dryer, gravelly soil.

So here we have a straight down the middle spilt between Trevor (Merlot) and Tristan (Cab Sauv) but grown on the loftier left bank where Cabernet dominates and where the more complex, longer to age Bordeaux wines emerge, often with huge price tags to match.

What will be interesting to taste is whether the deep berry burst tongue coatings associated with Merlot are calmed down by the loftier Cabernet Sauvignon whose characteristic tannin substructure gives Bordeaux wines their intellectual complexity and texture. With a vintage just four years old we are asking quite a lot from Tristan and his tannins so I'm hoping they have matured enough to give the wine a silky refinement while additing a touch of austerity to Trevor's full on, up for it Merlot-fest.

Anyway, all this is purely a wine tease of the highest order and the answers to my oenological speculations will only be fully known if Harry's passes his driving test tomorrow and Ruth gets a day's home leave on Sunday. I shall keep you posted. Glasses and cork screws at the ready.

In the meantime, the beefy, mouth exploding Roc de Lussac St Emilion (see my blog of 1 November) that I bought at £7.99 is now back to its full price of £13.99. Quel horreur.

A very fine country wine

Nathalie & Co

Syrah Carignan 2007

Vine de Pays du Gard

Co-op £6.99

In these receessionary times £6.99 is a relatively steep price to pay for what, by French wine classifcation terms, is nothing more than a country wine.

However, Nathalie Estribeau, who is based in Montpelier but has made wines all over the world, hales from a wine-making family in Bordeaux so this wine does come with some very reassuring provenance and the additional cachet of winning a Gold Medal in the Top 100 Vin de Pays wines of France.

After a more fraught than usual Friday evening (balancing hospital vists to Ruth, trying to find a half decent fish and chip shop and then checking Mrs W's soon-to-be 88 year old dad had been put to bed by his carers), we sat down to this unusual bottle of wine with mixed expressions of relief and bewilderment - not so much at the wine, but more at the events of the past three hours.

So, to be fair to Mme Estribeau we were not greeting this excellently crafted wine with the calm reverence it deserved. And I think we'd also made the mistake in not allowing it to sufficiently breathe on this damp and dingy evening. That said, Harry senior's house is not too dissimilar in temperature to a sauna so this should have been no problem.

Anyway, after the tensions of the evening, my first glug was borne purely out of medical need rather than considered appreciation but the second tasting was definitely more reflective and proved to be extremely pleasing. Not having tasted the Carignan grape variety before this was a good opportunity to see how it sat along the more familiar Syrah. The Carignan grape is a bit of a naughty so and so, particularly in the European wine growing industry, as its propensity for producing high yields have given it a less than favourable reputation for contributing to the European wine lake. For all this grief, it's also quite a demanding grape to grow - requiring a hot warm climate, yet remains vulnerable to various forms of mildew as well as grape worms.

Not content with these significant issues, Carignan is also naturally high in acidity, tannins and astringency which means that you wouldn't want to try and produce a single grape wine with this variety and expect to win wine friends and influence wine people. The reason I'm telling you all this is that the bottle that sat before us is a testament to Mme Estribeau's exceptional wine making skills. Choosing a tricky grape as the main player in a Vin de Pays wine like this shows outstanding gallic nerve and determination - however, her confidence and bravado has paid off with a ballsy wine that clearly shows she has got this tricky little beast under control. Drinking this Carignan and Syrah blend over two nights revealed a real complexity and sophistication that you wouldn't ordinarily expect from a standard Vin de Pays. The wine balances its big personality with fine sensibilities; it makes a big entrance but knows how to behave once its made its way in to the room.

That said this is no standard Vin de Pays, it really is a stunning fine wine that could trip up an experienced wine buff in determinining its provenance. In terms of taste it offers layers of deep berry fruit with hints of spice delivered through firm but silky tannins. It's a bold and confident wine that smells old but tastes new and, although I hate to use this word, shows supreme competence.

This is a tough act to pull off with such a feisty old grape and on my third glass (on the second night of drinking) reminded me of my old grape friend Zinfandel. The only down-side was the slightly up-scale price which, while arguably well deserved, puts this ordinary country red into the price band of grander wines. Even so, it was worth £7 (minus a penny) to discover this tricky little Carnignan varietal on a wet November evening.

Decent Wine: 9/10

Probability of Buying Again: 8/10 (just tweak the price by 99p)

Dinner Party Appeal: 9/10 (Great looking bottle and something different to talk about)

Goodbye Thresher's

Now let's have some exciting LOCAL wine shops on the high street

The news this weekend that the UK wine merchants Threshers has gone into administration must surely come as little surprise to many people who, if they had any sense, found that their whole 3 for 2 concept was not really the bargain it seemed to be. Not only that but surely it was commercially unsustainable when many UK supermarkets were able to offer even more exciting wines at even more exciting prices.

According to the official administrators KPMG, they have been deluged with offers by various companies eager to grab either part of all of Thresher's massive UK estate of wine shops. My only hope is that KPMG adopts an enlightened approach and sees this as the chance to offer up the UK wide network to financially robust wine retailers who can finally bring us something imaginative to the UK high street.

In my dreams I'd like to see a network of UK wine shops that have a very local appeal but also respect the fact that many more people in the UK know about the wines they like than they did 20 or 30 years ago. We're all now far better informed and we all know what we like - so new wine shops need to reflect this - and give us the chance to have tasting sessions or club evenings. After all, where there's a decent wine, there's often a decent conversation.

In my opinion, where Threshers failed was in trying to offer the widest selection of wines from all over the world (which in many small retail spaces simply isn't possible) regardless of location or local demographic. My approach would be to have stores that celebrated new and exciting wines across all price ranges, from the traditional to the very modern, with each store reflecting (or trying to) the social and economic demographic of the area.

Alternatively, I can only hope that in some parts where there currently isn't an Oddbins or a Nicholas, that these start spreading their wings to some of the blank areas of the wine retailing map here in the UK. Let's face it we don't all want to be drinking Turning Leaf and Echo Falls after a hard week in the office.

In my wildest dreams I'd like my local Threshers to be transformed in to an easy going wine warehouse-style outlet offering traditional wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Alscace and Languedoc - along with New World offerings from Aussie, New Zealand, California and South America. The idea would be to give buyers the chance to taste new and exciting wines and buy stuff by the bottle, the crate or the lorry load. In my dreams indeed.

In the meantime, cheers to Thresher's and all their dedicated staff for doing a pretty decent job in local high streets up and down the country.

Times do change so lets hope some of your friendly and helpful staff will be found behind the counters of your successors.

Rock on (in a quiet kind of way) Roc de Lussac

Roc de Lussac

Lussac St Emilion 2007

Sainsbury's

£6.99

In his eminently readable guide (no Bible) to the wines of Bordeaux, Oz Clarke writes an interesting piece where he declares that his early sobbery towards the area's right bank wines such as St Emilion and Pomerol were, in effect, denying him of the intrinsic pleasure of what wine is all about - enjoying and celebrating life.

For many serious wine buffs, and here I mean seriously serious (dare I say it snobby) wine buffs, pursuing the highly revered left bank wines of the Medoc is the oenological equivalent of Tony Blair ploughing his ambitions and energies into Europe rather than the UK. His ten year obsession with the latter (rowdy, boisterous and full-on) was just a precursor to the more rewarding but arguably considerably more complex, leathery tannined subtlety offered by European politics.

So just to make my analogy finally come to life, left banks wines (Margaux, Paulliac, Haut Medoc etc) are more subtle and complex than their right bank counterparts, and take more time to reach their full potential - and even then they offer a distinct intellectual experience thanks to their predominant use of the lofty, occasionally stand-offish Cabernet Sauvignon grape. By contrast, the right bank wide boys from St Emilion, St Estephe etc prefer to strut their stuff with lavish blinged up Merlot which makes their wines exhuberant, bursting with fruit and melting with flavour.

Just one more analogy I can't resist - for left bank Bordeaux take as stuffy, stand offish merchant banker from stockbroker-belted Esher. For right bank Bordeaux take as cheeky little up start from the free thinking parts of Fulham and Putney - up for it and ready for a night on the vines.

So last night, Halloween, we had a nice little treat with a wine that is often on offer in Sainsbury's at this time of the year - Roc de Lussac, St Emilion - which was indeed a cheeky unbelted number which went well with a seriously hairy chested Le Rustique unpasteurised cambembert, chunks of French bread and a garlic dressed tomato and lettuce salad.

Harry wasn't drinking, thanks to a dodgy pizza in Clitheroe, but Mrs W was which meant we had equal share of a far too drinkable, gutsy, fruit bursting St Emilion. Thanks to the inside temperature of Mrs W's domain (3 degrees cooler than a sauna) the wine was alive in so many different ways with a really confident 'come and sniff me' aroma and a silky, red berry presentation on the palate. There's nothing overly special or indeed mind blowing about this wine, but it was exactly what I look for in a St Emilion, something that makes me feel and want to drink at least three bottles of the stuff in a single sitting. It's a wine that gets you talking about life, not a wine that gets you talking about itself.

It's exactly what I think Oz Clarke means about the difference between left and right. Last night we had a wine for an evening that was all about fun and frivolity - no one takes Halloween seriously at our place, even the token gesture bag of treat size Crunchies were left half abandoned by the door way, with one handed to the district nurse on the way out!

If you want a decent St Emilion that puts you in the mood for celebrating life (or indeed Halloween) this is the one to do it in bucket loads. It's the thinking person's party wine for people who want a good time without their belts on.

Dinner Party Appeal: 8/10 (relaxed dinner party)

Value for Money: 10/10 (at the current discount price this is very good value)

Probability of buying again: 10/10 (while stocks last at this price. normal price of £13.99 is too dear for what you get)