The Beautiful South.Lidl. Crowdfunding.

 

Image shared by Wines of The Beautiful South

There’s lots happening in the wine world as the holidays draw to a close and the autumn selling season begins.Hamish Anderson in The Telegraph reviews the new range of Bordeaux at Lidl which has been attracting a lot of attention.

Meanwhile Chapel Down has launched a crowd funding operation to raise a minimum of £1 million, with aspirations for £3.9 m, to invest in new land, wine making, a brewery and distribution facilities in Kent, as reported by Decanter.com

And the wine trade tasting season continues with Wines of The Beautiful South, a two-day event at Olympia which showcases the wines of producers from Argentina, Chile and South Africa. MyWine Daily was there and can vouch for the fantastic range and variety of quality wines from these countries at all prices!

Weekend Wine Round Up

Andre Kientzler, Alsace Grower. Shared by Bancroft Wines.

As David Williams says this weekend in The Observer, Alsace wines tend to divide opinion amongst wine drinkers – so what better reason to review such wonderful wines as Gewurztraminer, Riesling and Pinot Gris? MyWineDaily is not sitting on the fence here! Over at The Guardian, Fiona Beckett‘s eye has been understandably attracted to the incredible value for money that is now consistently offered by Spanish wines below £10. This post focuses on various red  varieties from different regions.

Prosecco has been all the rage for a while, but do you know about Italy’s Franciacorta sparkling wines.?They use the champagne method of fermentation and the same Chardonnay, Pinot Noir grapes, along with Pinot Blanc. Susy Atkins at The Telegraph reports on a mouthwatering tasting at the Italian Embassy. So here you have a diverse variety of wines reviewed by top writers!

New Wine Waves

 

September signals the start of a new wine tasting season for the trade, at which lots of wines from long established and newer origins are poured for buyers, bloggers and journalists.They take place under different banners, be they country-specific trade support organisations, shows aimed at the many  independent wine merchants, or like today, a relative newcomer – the Emerging Regions tasting.

This is quite small and concentrates on countries and regions producing lots of good wine from local and international grape varieties, who are trying to gain or increase their foothold in the British market. Some lovely wines were on show from countries as diverse as England, Cyprus, Greece,Turkey, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia Slovenia,Lebanon,Israel,Brazil, Uruguay and India! Plus a few regions from more familiar origins.It’s a big wine world – look out for reviews on MyWineDaily.

Something a little more different?

 

Image shared by winecarboot.com & winechap.com

This weekend’s wine reviews on MyWineDaily show once again the incredible diversity of wines that is available to us,especially in the UK and the interesting ,increasing variety of retail outlets where they are sold. Austrian wines are a case in point. In The Guardian, Fiona Beckett highlights a couple of specialist retailers,  Newcomer Wines and Alpine Wines,along with their varied selections. There are plenty of different, good wines, but if you haven’t done so yet,as she points out, it’s certainly a good idea to get started with some Gruner Veltliner.

Victoria Moore in The Telegraph profiles a new retailer in London, The Winemakers Club, who search out small numbers of extremely rare wines, while Jancis Robinson in the FT reviews the highly innovative and rapidly growing London tasting events run by Ruth Spivey, known as Wine Car Boot! So much to explore…

 

Wines and Recipes for Potato Salads

Dry rose, shared by Domaine Montrose, for Moroccan salad.

Despite the unseasonally bad weather, blogs appeared  on MyWineDaily over the weekend full of great wine and food ideas. Potato salads could be a good comfort food  on  a wet day as well as perfect for a picnic, so Susy Atkins’ Telegraph piece was spot on. She came up with suggestions for wines to go with four of Diana Henry’s salads: potato, roast pepper and chorizo, potato, egg and bacon,lemon roast potato and grean bean; and Moroccan potato salad.

For most people this kind of approach is also  a really handy way of getting into food and wine pairing, or trying ideas out if they’ve already got a feel for it. With salads it’s quite low risk, so why not give it a go?

Answers for Food Wines, Cheap Reds and Those Scores!

 

“Does Wine Make You Fat?” Shared by WineFolly.com

If you haven’t seen the ‘Wine School’ page on MyWineDaily, it’s not a series of lecture notes, but a great place to pick up lots of tips and bits about wine by bloggers who approach their subject from a fun angle. Chief among these are the people at Wine Folly, led by Madeleine Puckett, 2013 Wine Blogger of the Year in the prestigious International Wine & Spirit Competition.

She puts out a steady stream of highly user-friendly information with entertaining visual aids that help her get a point across and us to  remember some of the details. The latest offerings include some easy dos and don’ts of wine and food pairing, how to find good cheap red wine and  deciphering wine scores.  All very useful stuff to help you with your every day wine decisions from this month’s featured blog!

 

Weekend Wine in the Balance

 

Image shared by Steve Dingwall, via Iconosquare.

It’s always good to see quality wines at reasonable prices given some space in the media. MyWineDaily likes to highlight a broad range of these, including those that are sometimes unfairly ignored by some drinkers.  This weekend Hamish Anderson in The Telegraph picks out some attractive-sounding Chardonnays from good and interesting regions. Like the grape itself, Chile is admired as a source of good wine by those in the know – and not only at the lower end of pricing. Also included are the Pays d’Oc, which again is now a wonderful provider of a wide variety of good quality, good value wines; and a rare Beaujolais Chardonnay.

At The Observer, David Williams has a piece which is excellent in its simple explanation of the consequences of one of the key areas of judgment in grape-growing – when to harvest, how much sugar ripeness to allow. In his discussion of higher alcohol wines – of which he recommends six – he considers the other elements which are affected and concludes rightly that everything – and the great winemaking skill – lies in the achievement of balance.

 

 

Lingua Vini – or The Language of Wine

 

Image shared by michbalderas via Iconosquare

Wine language  as highlighted yesterday, seems to be the topic of the moment on MyWineDaily. Along with Jamie Goode, we are discombobulated at the revelation that kissing used to be an eyes-wide-open actvity…. if you think this has nothing to do with wine language, think again. Consider the horrors of self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy (that might be caused by open eyes) and you’ll be somewhere near where Jamie got to at a recent Pinot Noir seminar that he moderated. A group of  specialists gave their views on the perception and communication of the wine-drinking experience. Sounds techy? Have a look at how such an accomplished writer as Jamie Goode came to question his approach and some of his initial responses, which one suspects were unexpected even by him!

Read also his earlier blog introducing the subject and this one on the opinions expressed. This is important stuff for everyone from wine maker to drinker, not least because a big question that lies behind those being addressed by this group of academics, restaurateurs, wine writers – and even a perfumier – is that of how the buyer and drinker of wine would like  to be communicated with. If that includes you – please let us have your thoughts, here or on social media!

Wining into The Future,with South Africa

 

Hartenberg Estate, SA shared by rosalialadu on Iconosquare.

A couple of really interesting, thought-provoking pieces for you today (along of course with all the blogs included in MyWineDaily). How to change our perceptions of wine is one of the major challenges facing many producers of high quality stuff from a region or  a grape variety, say, that has either been saddled with a bit of an ‘image  problem’ or just a particular niche which their wines absolutely do  not fit. Jancis Robinson highlights South Africa as one of these, quite wrongly associated predominantly with fairly generic wines of low price, often bottled in the UK. Whilst there have been plenty of excellent producers for a long time, her piece (free for all) also highlights a ‘new wave’ of growers who are doing interesting things with a new range of grape varieties.

The large off-licence chains that used to exist here are also seriously out of fashion, as Matt Walls points out in his blog for Tim Atkin. He confesses to missing them, along with the greater coverage that used to exist in the national press – and here we have to quote directly: “There’s plenty of information online if you search, but….” Well Matt, we’re here to help with that!!‘Early Drinking‘ takes a  good look at the interesting new ventures with which different entrepreneurs are attempting to attract the new drinkers of wine and which deserve the support of  wine lovers everywhere.

 

Weekend Wine Reviewed

 

Photo of Koshu grapes courtesy of Katsunuma Winery, via accidentalepicurean .com

Our current feed of the month is from Jamie Goode, who cropped up  in  yesterday’s Observer with a fascinating piece. How to create a perfect vineyard is a really good read for anyone wanting to know a bit more about the art and science of bringing grapes to the right level of ripeness,with consistency across the vineyard. As he says, this tends to happen naturally in the great vineyard sites, but modern technology, in the form of ‘precision viticulture‘ might be about to become increasingly important for some of the rest.

If you didn’t know much about these things, this article will give you an insight into just some  of the challenges facing wine growers, along with a positive review of the state of progress of English Sparkling Wine production since its gentle first steps in the 1980s.   Japan has been into  wine,in the  modern era,since the late nineteenth century.  At The Scotsman, Rose Murray Brown reviewed the first Japanese wine to hit the shelves of a UK supermarket (Marks & Spencer). It is made from Koshu, the main wine grape in Japan, but the origin of which is the subject of considerable discussion! So two very different subjects for you to get into today!