In vino veritas - what wine are you drinking?

Will bump this thread onto the new site with a bank holiday wine mixed case deal from Wines of the World.

6 bottles below delivered for €78 (rrp €90).

Kylie Cava - Spain

Champteloup Rosé d’Anjou - France

Marieta Albariño - Spain

Fat Bastard Rosé - France

Casa Silva Reserva Pinot Noir - Chile

Picpoul de Pinet, Petit Ronde - France

Sticking with LIDL, I think I picked this up a week before the Iberian picks noted above.

Might have disappeared from the shelves by now but if you spot a bottle and are a fan of Pinot Noir pick one up.

Chloe - California Pinot Noir from Monterey County.

I thought this was a very nice old world style Pinot Noir, great value at €12.

It has the classic dark red fruits and 'earthiness' flavour.

Considering this... good value I thought

LIDL have a nice Corbieres in their limited run wine bins at the moment for €8.

It's an AOP Corbieres from 2018, blend of Grenache and Syrah. Very typical of the region and comparable with what you'd get for €12 - €13 in an off licence.

Well if you go back to the 1970s the world of wine was a lot smaller.

It was France and the rest, the only ones that would have been talked about were Chianti from Italy, Rioja from Spain and Riesling from Germany.

For a long time they would have been the only wines considered worth aging.

If you only drank the wines of France you would probably get an appreciation for the majority of wine styles, given the diversity of its wines from cooler climates of Alsace & Loire, classic zones of Champagne, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rhone down to the Languedoc and Provence & that it is French grapes that are predominantly used in Chile, America, Australia, New Zealand.

Guardian article on it here makes for interesting reading... they drank a lot of it in the 70s

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/oct/20/german-wine-curse-blue-nun

Well, from reading books by veteran wine writers like Oz Clarke and Tom Doorley, in the 1970s the choice was paying top pounds for your premium Bordeaux, Rieslings etc versus the affordable supermarket wines which seemed to come from grapes in France, Germany, Spain, Italy which tasted like they never set eyes on sunshine or yields had been stretched too far and which were by all accounts utter rubbish.

When affordable wines started coming in from the New World in the 1980s, those utterly rubbish Old World were the ones displaced.

At a time when wine sales & imports were increasing in the US, UK etc German wines disappeared off the shelves.

I think you should be asking yourself why that happened, and I don't think the war explains it given that in the 1980s German brands in cars etc sold well.

Have you considered the possibility a lot of German wine in the past was rubbish? At least what they tried to export to those markets?

Other countries stole a march on them with mass produced wines made with modern techniques, but at least it was drinkable plonk. Those other countries had perhaps more natural advantages in terms of more sunshine especially back in the 1980s, although New Zealand would have similar climate.

Maybe Germany's problem was it tried to get too earlier into the branded wines with Blue Nun etc before they really had enough drinkable plonk to put into the bottles, so they compensated with sweetness - mass marketing but without the modern wine making techniques to support it.

Mateus Rose from Portugal suffered a similar fate, huge in the 1970s, seen as passe in the 1980s and now coming back as part of the Rose boom but with a drier style.

Was it in the decanter for 24 hours?

Kicking off what will be a week of O'Briens California wines is Murphy Goode Cabernet Sauvignon.

I'll crib some tasting notes from Vivino: Blackberry and dark fruit flavor forward with a nice smooth oak finish. Medium acidity and black currant. Plum and BlackBerry scent.

At €22.95 I would say a little over-priced, Califorian wines come at a premium but a very nice and thoroughly enjoyable Cabernet Sauvignon.

The O'Briens California virtual wine tasting was good fun, perhaps a little rushed.

The Kendall Jackson Chardonnay (not too oaked), Cabernet Sauvignon and La Crema Sonoma Pinot Noir were all lovely though the RRP has the California premium attached. The surprise of the night for me was the Kendall Jackson Zinfandel, which was complex and well balanced.

https://www.obrienswine.ie/products/kendall-jackson-zinfandel

And now to followup with a reliable midweek wine - Messer del Fauno Primitivo, available in independent offies for €10 - €12. This is from Italy, and Primitivo there is the same grape as American Zinfandel. I'd usually associated Zinfandel with over-powered blockbuster reds, but both these expressions were well balanced, more depth to the Zinfandel and more fruit in the Primitivo.

https://whelehanswines.ie/products/masseria-del-fauno-primitivo-w00171-1

Can this be bought in Ireland?

Couldn't see it anywhere

Very interesting article on JancisRobinson.com on how the reduced use of suplhites in so-called natural wines can ultimately lead to higher quantities of natural histamine. Sulphites can cause a reaction in some asthma sufferers, and histamine can be a factor in wine intolerance. More details on the research by Master of Wine Sophie Parker-Thomson in the article:

https://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/light-shone-wine-intolerance

ALDI Ireland have launched a free online wine course, probably more for people starting off on their wine journey but thought I'd give it a bump.

Designed with wine expert Nadia El Ferdaoussi, this six-module course will teach all there is to know about this favourite drink, from the basics on how to taste wine, right through to the finer points like grape varieties, tasting notes and production methods. Covering still, sparkling, sweet and fortified wines, with this six module Aldiploma, you’ll learn everything you need to know how to choose your preferred bottle of wine to suit your budget, while learning which food pairings work best with your chosen grape.

https://www.aldi.ie/aldiploma