USA: beyond the Golden State

California is the leviathan of US wine, accounting for 90% of production and, despite exporting seemingly limitless quantities of Blossom Hill and Gallo here, making 3 out of every 4 bottles sold within the US.  The state basks in the reflected glory of its nickname, The Golden State, a name that betokens glamour, riches, sunshine and the good life.   However, there are plenty of other wine-making parts of the US, including California’s more northern West coast neighbours :  Washington and Oregon. 

Washington State is perhaps a surprise runner up in the wine production states, though it’s a distant second and hardly clipping at California’s heels, with only 5% of the total.  Its nickname is the rather more homely The Evergreen State – fair do’s, the name evokes the expansive wilderness of conifer forests nurtured by the plentiful rain that falls here (we’ve all seen Frasier, right?).  The state’s highest peak is even called Mount Rainier.

The Columbia River, Washington State

However, if you’ve visited the area around Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula and experienced the mile upon mile of forest, including one of the world’s rare areas of temperate rain forest, you might be surprised to find that the state produces any wine at all – it’s too cool and damp, surely?

Vines in arid Washington State

The answer to the conundrum is the Cascade Mountains:  these stand between Seattle and the interior and act as a barrier to the cool, wet conditions that prevail on the coast, sheltering the Columbia Valley, where most wine is made.  They do such a good job that the Columbia Valley has rainfall levels that class it as desert (only 150-250mm annually, compared with just under 800mm in southern England).  The plentiful sunshine means that warm climate varieties thrive here, including Syrah, and Bordeaux stalwarts Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

Sandwiched in between California and Washington, Oregon is known as The Beaver State.  I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by saying any more on that topic.

On the subject of wine, Oregon is, counter-intuitively, the coolest and wettest of the three west coast wine producing states.  While the Cascades continue south into Oregon from Washington, most winegrowing areas sit between them and the lower Coastal Range, which provides only slight protection from the prevailing weather.  The vineyards are correspondingly cooler, cloudier and wetter than their more northerly neighbours.

Mist in cool climate Oregon

Oregon is largely synonymous with a single variety – Pinot Noir, which represents a staggering 66% of plantings, ahead of Pinot Gris in second place at 14%.  Pinot Noir is renowned as a cool climate variety, so it makes sense that it should find a home here, but it is also a tricky grape to nurture and in these marginal areas vintage variation is marked.

Autumn colour at Sokol Blosser estate, Oregon

Neither of these regions provides the kind of cheap wine thrills that California can, whose size bestows the ability to mass produce branded wine.  Both Oregon and Washington are more boutique-y in feel and the prices of their wines (especially once they’ve been exported here) are more like high end California.  The small scale of producers, especially those from Oregon, means that they generally won’t pitch up on the supermarket shelves and a visit to a specialist independent merchant will be in order if you want to taste them.

Wines from Washingon

Eroica Riesling 2011 – Slurp and Winedirect both have the 2010 for £17.95, Fareham Wine Cellar stocks the 2008 for £19.10

Eroica is a joint venture between Chateau Ste Michelle, Washington’s largest wine producer, and German Ernie Loosen, master of the Mosel and Riesling guru.  Riesling has a bit of a problem, apart from the main one of its unfair image as a low quality variety.  Off-dry Rieslings tend to have bags of fruit, balanced by crisp acidity, but are terribly unfashionable.  Dry Rieslings can sometimes sacrifice the exuberant fruit, leaving searing acidity that sets the teeth on edge.  This wine happily manages to combine the incisive and linear acidity of a dry Riesling, without sacrificing charm and peachy fruit.

   

L’Ecole 41 Columbia Valley Syrah 2009 – older vintages available from Noel Young Wines (based in Cambridge or online), Winedirect has the 2008 for £23

Columbia Valley is the powerhouse of Washington wine growing, with surprisingly warm and dry conditions that favour heat-loving varieties such as Syrah.  L’Ecole 41 have a well-deserved reputation for quality reds.  This Syrah has beautifully pure blackcurranty fruit with a peppery kick and enough acidity to balance the richness of the fruit.  Beware:  its elegance belies its 15.5% alcohol.

Wines from Oregon

Bergström Old Stones Chardonnay 2010 - £25.95 from Roberson Wine (shop in Kensington or order online)

A classy Chardonnay whose inviting nose promises ripe fruit with its wisp of honey and aroma of yellow Mirabelle plums.  The palate delivers this and more, with savoury, flinty lees character and wonderful freshness.

Bergström also have a delicious range of Pinot Noirs, available from Roberson and Noel Young Wines.

Firesteed Oregon Pinot Gris 2011 - £15.79 from Christopher Piper Wines; Slurp has the 2010 for £14.30

Chardonnay undoubtedly has more cachet than Pinot Gris, but well-made examples like this give plenty of food friendly enjoyment.  And if buying Oregon wines is starting to look like a rich person’s past-time, then this is a relative bargain.  Crisp, juicy tropical fruit with a hint of peach, melon and the variety’s trademark gentle spice.

Sokol Blosser Estate Pinot Noir 2009 – Guildford’s own Caves de Pyrène has the 2008 for £30.36; Noel Young Wines has the 2008 for £25.64 or the 2007 for £35.10; Winedirect stocks the 2009 for £32.50

Oregon’s Willamette Valley (one of my favourite regions in the world to say: it’s WillAMette, to rhyme with dammit) does have variable weather from year to year, so the other vintages may not display the same seductive fruit as I found in the beguiling 2009.  There’s plenty of oak drapery too, but the quality of the fruit shines through.

Cheval Blanc: the making of a thoroughbred

Warning:  arcane French wine labelling discussion alert.

In the rather stolid rubric of the St Emilion wine classification system, Château Cheval Blanc is a Premier Grand Cru Classé A.  Some French regions have Grand Cru as the very top of the quality tree; over in the Médoc in Bordeaux’s left bank, it is the five Premiers Crus who reign supreme.  In St Emilion, however, it looks as though a committee of strong-minded people couldn’t agree which way to jump and so went for both.  Then, because so many producers ended up being given the highest accolade of Premier Grand Cru Classé, they had to divide this top tier into the very top producers, of which Cheval Blanc is one of four, who are awarded an A rather than an ignominious B, to round off their official nomenclature. 

There are 14 Châteaux on the Premier Grand Cru Classé rung of the quality ladder, with another 64 properties at the next level down, Grand Cru Classé.  If you are sipping a bottle of red Burgundy labelled Grand Cru Classé, your nose (if not your wallet) should tell you that you are at the top of the tree, quality-wise.  But if you find the same thing on the label of your St Emilion, then  you are not supping such rarified nectar (and have not happened on the bargain of the century either).

If you, probably very wisely, skipped over those first couple of paragraphs, here’s a quick summary:  Château Cheval Blanc is a bit special.

Like most St Emilion producers, their wines are made from a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc – but unlike most of their neighbours, they have no limestone in their soils.  Instead they have plots with a mosaic of soils based on sand, gravel and clay – in this they have more in common with their near neighbours in Pomerol.

Cheval Blanc’s vineyards are made up of slightly more Cabernet Franc (58%) than Merlot, which accounts for the remainder.   This high proportion of Cabernet Franc also sets them apart from most of their St Emilion cohort, where Merlot tends to take the lead role.

Now, you might think that it was a pretty straightforward task to blend just two varieties to make a wine, but of course it rarely is.  

At Cheval Blanc grapes can end up in one of four destinations – as part of the “grand vin” Cheval Blanc; second wine, Le Petit Cheval; their 3^rd wine or, finally, sold off in bulk to be subsumed into generic St Emilion wines.

Château Cheval Blanc covers 39 hectares (that’s around 100 acres) and is made up of 44 different plots, each of which represents one of the two grape varieties, growing on one of three soil types:  sand, gravel or clay.  At a recent tasting in London, guided by Pierre-Olivier Clouet, the impossibly youthful-looking Technical Manager at the Château, I was able to taste samples from the different parcels from the 2012 vintage:  Merlot and Cabernet Franc from each of three soil types.  Now these wines are a long way from being finished and still have another year or so to age in barrel before their final fate is decided, from grand vin to bulk sell-off, so we were not really getting a sneaky peek at Cheval Blanc 2012 – but it did sort of feel that way.

It was instructive to taste how the same grape variety can perform so differently on the different soils.  Merlot grown on sand is earthy and metallic with a touch of green stalkiness.  Yet on clay and gravel soils that unripe, green note disappears and there is a rush of ripe berry fruits instead.  Cabernet Franc followed the same pattern, with the sandy soils producing the poorest wine, and clay proving to be the perfect growing medium.

Before we moved on, I couldn’t resist having a go at blending my own Cheval Blanc 2012 – the core being Cabernet Franc grown on clay, plus a proportion on gravel, with Merlot from clay soil completing the picture.  Pretty delicious I thought – I wonder if I’ll get the chance to compare it with the real thing?  Of course my slapdash sloshing of wines from one glass to another is a world away from the minute deliberations that actually determine the final make-up of the wines.  Pierre-Oliver told us that they have never made a perfect blend of Cheval Blanc, showing what a complex mixture of art and science go into the blending process.

Having looked at the bones of an as-yet-to-be-born wine, we then went on to taste the final result from previous vintages of Cheval Blanc and second wine Le Petit Cheval.  We were comparing wines from 2004 (a cool and wet vintage) with 2010 (a cool and dry one).  Incidentally it’s good to know that it isn’t just the UK that has had so much lacklustre weather in recent years.  I digress.

Le Petit Cheval 2004 was a beguiling wine, its tannins beginning to soften at nine years old.  Cheval Blanc from the same year was more imposing, with a solidly built structure underpinning the fruit, obviously a wine with a long future ahead of it.

The 2010 wines are clearly close to Pierre-Olivier’s heart and show great freshness and elegance, but it would be a crime to drink them any time soon.

And if you would like to squirrel a few bottles away for some special occasion in the future, what will they set you back?  It is both a blessing and a curse of those in the wine trade that we are often treated to tastings of wines which we could never afford to drink (or at least I couldn’t).  Deep pockets are required in this game:  Cheval Blanc 2010 is available for upwards of £750 a bottle.  My favourite wine from the tasting for current drinking, Le Petit Cheval 2004 is a snip at around £120.

I returned home and came down to earth with a bump and a glass of a 10 quid Argentinian red – very delicious it was too.

From Bordeaux to Burpham: Neal Martin

“Kraftwerk,” says Neal Martin, “I’m going to see them.” in reply to my question of which live band he’s going to see next.  No big surprise there, perhaps, as the series of concerts by the Teutonic techno pioneers at Tate Modern has created an excited ruffle of feathers among (mostly, it must be said) men of a certain age.

As a regular-looking bloke of a certain age, Neal may pass unremarked by Guildford residents on his way up the High Street on a head-down bitterly cold day, but his is one of the most well-known faces in the wine business.  He the UK contributor to The Wine Advocate, creation of the world’s most famous, arguably the most powerful, wine critic of them all:  Robert Parker.  And he lives in Guildford.

He has been here for over five years now and, in between trips to London to be wined and dined at Michelin-starred restaurants (that’s all wine critics do, right?) he has written his first book, a hefty tome on Pomerol. 

Pomerol, the place, is something of an enigma.  Geographically it is firmly embedded within Bordeaux, but it is somehow not of it.  Textbooks usually slot it in alongside its neighbours, the other appellations of the Right Bank, such as Saint Emilion.  Merlot is the lead variety, with Cabernet Franc most often seen in the “Best Supporting Actor” role. But Pomerol doesn’t play the wider Bordeaux game – there is famously no classification here, no official attempt to grade the relative quality of the many, mostly tiny, producers.  The area is small, with little in the way of geographical features to delineate it, no palatial Châteaux worthy of the name – easy to overlook, hard to grasp.

And yet Pomerol is home to Petrus, Bordeaux wine royalty, a First Growth in all but name, and among the most expensive wines in the world – a bottle of the 1982 is currently £6,900 from Berry Brothers. Though as my 9-year-old son was quick to point out, it’s “much cheaper” to buy by the case of 12 bottles, which is a mere £68,427.36.  Good mental arithmetic there, son.  So there must be something special about the place, something that will reward digging deeper.

Neal Martin has spent much of the past three years of his life digging deeper into the soils, vineyards and lives of the vignerons of the area.  And what kind of book is Pomerol?  Thorough, comprehensive, informative:  you’ll find details on proportions of Merlot planted, size of vineyard holding and vinification techniques as you might expect.  But it’s also personal, sometimes fanciful and often entertaining. Throughout you are reminded that this is a book that could never have been written by committee – Neal’s voice is ever present, describing not just the vineyards and their wines, but telling us of his best ever goal at football (aged 9), or his fondness for KFC (yes the Colonel’s finest).  His focus on the people behind the wines reminds us that the human element is what makes places – and wines – special.  Do not go looking for scores out of 100 here.

Music is, as you might have gathered, important to Neal and he peppers his narratives with mentions of the songs he was listening to on his many visits to the area.  In fact, he has even produced a soundtrack (available on Youtube:  search for Pomerol soundtrack) of songs matched to each winery featured in the book, and more, so that you can listen along as you read.

We are not the same people as our parents or grandparents, but much wine writing doesn’t seem to recognize that fact and has a preserved in aspic feel.  This book, however, feels like it’s written by somebody alive and in the world now, someone we can recognize as one of us, who grew up doing the same things we did, informed by popular culture as we were. 

So although Pomerol is meticulously researched and written by someone who clearly has spent more time tasting the kind of rarified (and just plain rare) wines than most of us will ever do, it retains a personality, never straying into textbook territory.  Neal told me that he likes to read with a dictionary by his side – and it shows, as I had to fetch mine from the kitchen shelf a few times to check definitions.  His writing is lively and idiosyncratic, honed over his years as an online writer of his own blog, winejournal.com.

Neal has self-published Pomerol, meaning that he has been (and continues to be) fully involved at every stage of the book’s production, from the photography to the design and even the paper that it’s printed on.  His lack of a budget to pay a cartographer to produce maps for the book was turned, by a stroke of genius, to his advantage.  Instead Neal spent a fiver on a sketchbook and some pencils in WHSmith and asked the winemakers to hand draw maps of their estates.  The maps add to the handmade feel of the book and it’s a ruse that I fully expect to see turning up in other wine books in future.

Neal was even there when the book was coming off the printing presses, signing off pages.  At the same time, the adjacent press was printing copies of Pippa Middleton’s learned tome, Celebrate – though apparently Ms Middleton herself was not there checking progress. And something tells me she didn’t deliberate over the type of paper it was printed on either.

Pomerol costs £50 and is available from http://www.pomerolbook.com/ - or from Neal’s front door. 

I say PGI. You say, what?

I live in Surrey, which must be a hot contender as the middle, the very epicentre, of middle England. And if there’s one thing guaranteed to get under the skin of middle Englanders, it has to be the EU.  We are as the hobbits of the Shire and Brussels is Mordor – somewhere we would never choose to go and view with deep loathing and suspicion.

However, I like to think of myself as a forward-looking and easy-going pro-European type, not prone to casual Brussels-bashing.  And yet I do have a beef with Brussels on behalf of British wine drinkers – and French wine producers.

Let me explain.  Back in the 1970s, a time when I was innocent of all things winey, and more intent on deciding whether to swap my Blasé perfume sample for a Miner’s metallic green eyeshadow with my friend Tammy (I did, but am still not sure if it was a good move), a new French wine category emerged: Vin de Pays. 

Fast forward to the late 1980s and I, along with many UK drinkers had taken to Vin de Pays like ducks to water.  At about the same time that Australian wines arrived here, brashly brandishing their varietal labelling, Vin de Pays did the same for French wines – Chardonnay Vin de Pays d’Oc gives you a good idea of what to expect in the bottle and provides a general indication of where the wine is from – in this case anywhere in that vast swathe of southern France known as Languedoc-Roussillon.  And it is easy to say, a factor whose importance shouldn’t be overlooked.  Vin de Pays and especially Vin de Pays d’Oc, which accounted for around 85% of all Vin de Pays, came to make up almost 10% of the UK wine market – a success in anyone’s book.

But then, in 2009 along came an EU project to standardise and harmonise wine regulations across all countries.  On the positive side, this resulted in the creation of a new category, “Vin de France”, which allows wines to be sold which are multi-region blends and which can be made of any variety you care to think of.  This kind of wine is commonplace in the New World – any Australian wine that is labelled as coming from “Southeast Australia” for example. 

However, this harmonisation has also left the Vin de Pays category a bit of a dog’s dinner.  That user-friendly term was to be replaced by Indication Géographique Protégée, or IGP – also sometimes “anglicised” to PGI.  Consumers have had to get used to a name that is either a bit of mouthful to say, or an unmemorable 3-letter abbreviation – either way, a definite marketing disadvantage compared to what had gone before.  The EU has since “clarified” that the Vin de Pays wording can still be used, in parallel with the new IGP/PGI, leaving us with a situation where some producers have abandoned Vin de Pays and jumped ship to IGP, others have stuck steadfastly to the old labelling – and everything in between, including the use of Pays d’Oc without the Vin.  Confusion rather than harmonisation reigns.

The idea is that IGP should be used uniformly across the EU for the same category of wine, replacing the different terms that existed before, such as IGT (Indicazione Geografica Tipica) in Italy, or Viño de la Tierra in Spain.  It may not surprise you to know that Italian producers have largely ignored the new, harmonised, regulations and are still labelling their bottles IGT rather than IGP.  Plus ça change, as Delboy would doubtless have said.

Some Vins de Pays, sorry IGP Pays d’Oc wines, to seek out:

 

Paul Mas Vermentino 2011 - £7.99, or £5.24 if you buy two at Majestic

Jean-Claude Mas of Domaines Paul Mas is a powerhouse of well-made and original wines from across the Languedoc.  Vermentino may not be a familiar grape variety – it is mostly seen in wines from Sardinia and elsewhere in Italy.  However, it also goes by the name Rolle in Provence and is responsible for the famous white wines of Cassis (now there’s a confusing name for a white wine). This is a great easy-drinking wine with structure as well as freshness, making it a versatile food match.  At the promotional price it’s sensational value.

Mas des Dames Blanc 2011 - £12.95 from Roberson

Grenache Blanc is widely grown in the Southern Rhône and across the Languedoc, but is mostly added to give weight and alcohol to a blend.  Here it takes centre stage and, given careful treatment including low yields from vines grown in limestone-rich soil and six months in old oak barrels it makes for an original-tasting winter weight white.  The aromas of buttery pear and pear skin lead onto a weighty yet balanced mouthful with a finish of white pepper. It’s also certified organic.

Domaine Gayda, Figure Libre Cabernet Franc 2010 – available from various independent merchants, including Oxford Wine Company (£16.99) and Leon Stolarski (£14.95)

The price of this wine tells you that the IGP/PGI category, whatever its faults, is certainly no barrier to ambitious wine-making.  Cabernet Franc is another largely unsung variety that is usually subsumed into a blend with more assertive partners.  Allowed to show its true colours, it sings (to mix my metaphors):  black olive, violets and black fruit with a dash of bitters make for a cornucopia of ripe and slightly wild flavours – yet it retains freshness and great drinkability.

If this wine knocks your socks off, there are more wines to explore from Domaine Gayda, whose name, to the English ear, suggests an appeal to the pink pound demographic.  Their Chemin de Moscou 2010 is a more typical southern blend of mostly Syrah plus a dash of Grenache and Cinsault, which you can pick up for £19.99 from Leon Stolarski or £22 from Highbury Vintners.     

The red wine diet

So you’re reading a wine column in the first week of January, a time when most people are laying off the booze. That means either:

a.  You are a thorough type who always reads the paper from cover to cover, whether the contents are of interest to you or not. Or,

b.  You are obsessed with wine and pounce on any chance to further your knowledge of the subject. Or,

c.  Following a period of over-indulgence, you are scanning the page for tips on detoxing or, even better, a report on new research which shows that having a glass of wine on each day in January is actually beneficial to your health.

If you chose c., then I may be able to offer some solace. Professor Roger Corder’s 2009 book, The Wine Diet, explains how consuming wine can contribute to a long and healthy life. So grab yourself a glass (a small one mind) of red wine, a handful of nuts and berries and a square of dark chocolate and read on.

The French Paradox, whereby the French exhibit relatively low rates of coronary heart disease, despite high consumption of saturated fat, has been known about since the late 1970s. Since then there have been numerous studies investigating the relationship between wine consumption and general health and longevity. Roger Corder cites certain parts of the world which have an abnormally high proportion of centenarians, and also have a diet which tends to include daily consumption of wine – and especially red wine. Southwest France, Crete and Sardinia all fit this pattern.

Whereas inhabitants of Crete and Sardinia can probably count a typical Mediterranean diet low in red meat, high in fish, fruit and vegetables with olive oil rather than butter as part of their healthy lifestyle, people who live in Southwest France cannot. This part of France is the land of hearty, but hardly healthy, food like cassoulet and duck confit which, you might think, would harden your arteries on sight. And yet the people here are seemingly healthier and more long-lived than their counterparts in northern Europe, even with the same consumption of alcohol.

This conundrum prompted Professor Corder to investigate the possibility that wine, more specifically red wine and, even more specifically, certain types of red wine, may have a protective effect on health. His research has led him to identify a type of polyphenol, known as procyanidins, as the key to protecting the body’s vascular function, itself vital to prevent atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), heart disease and possibly also stroke and certain cancers.

To cut a long scientific treatise short, red wines from France’s Southwest are found to have a high level of procyanidins. The bad news for white or rosé wine drinkers is that they do not occur in these wines. However, many studies have found that a small amount of alcohol (literally a small glass of wine of any colour per day) may have a beneficial effect on health for most people.

Women, however, are faced with the iniquitous choice of knowing that a small amount of wine each day may help prevent certain diseases, but that this same “dose” of wine may also raise their risk of developing breast cancer.

The good news, if you are keen to escape from the daily “glass of red wine hell” that drinkers subject themselves to, is that procyanidins are also found in things other than red wine. Strangely enough, red grape juice doesn’t contain them, as the compounds are extracted from the grape pip only during alcoholic fermentation, and not through pressing.

It’s no surprise that super-fruit pomegranate is deemed to be a good source of polyphenols, however, blueberries are not, according to Professor Corder. Chocolate and walnuts are also on the approved list – but don’t go reaching for a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, we’re talking dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids) which has had minimal processing, as procyanidins are often removed during more industrial production techniques. Apples (though not apple juice), cranberries (including dried), various berry fruits, as well as surprises like cinnamon all get the thumbs up.

It’s only natural to react favourably to news stories which tell us that something we enjoy is in fact good for us, without perhaps paying full attention to the whole story. Roger Corder is at pains to point out that moderate daily wine consumption can be beneficial only as part of an overall healthy lifestyle which includes a balanced diet and regular exercise. Sorry about that.

However, if you fancy searching out some of those high-procyanidin wines from Southwest France, here’s a good place to start:

Château Aydie Madiran 2009 £13.49 from Waitrose

The wines of Madiran, on the way to the Pyrenees in the far southwest corner of France, typify the high procyanidin wines that Corder recommends. Made predominantly from the Tannat grape which, as its name seems to suggest, is pretty high in tannin, they are deep coloured, full-bodied and structured wines which can age over many years. The current vintage is 2009 and is a relatively gentle introduction to the style.

Drinking wine with food is a more healthy way to indulge than propping up the bar or slumped on the sofa and these wines positively demand food – their full-on structure is tamed and the freshness of the fruit is revealed in all its glory.

Other producers to watch out for: Alain Brumont is the self-styled king of Madiran and his wines from Châteaux Bouscassé and Montus are long-lived classics. Rivalling Brumont for supremacy is Didier Barré at Domaine Berthoumieu, whose wines, including top cuvée Charles de Batz, are available from Guildford-based Southwest France specialists Les Caves de Pyrène.

If you would like to up your intake of procyanidins, but can’t get on with Madiran, then look for wines with body, structure and tannin (especially those made from Cabernet Sauvignon) and you will be on the right lines.

For the committed, there is much more to read in Roger Corder’s book, The Wine Diet (published by Sphere, £7.99).

Christmas is coming...

So you’ve ordered the turkey and can look forward to queuing patiently in the cold to pick it up at the butcher’s this weekend. 

What?  You haven’t ordered one?  Man, are you in trouble.  If you’re reading this over breakfast you’d better chuck your coat on over your pyjamas, high tail it to your local supermarket and trample the old and infirm underfoot as you fight your way to the freezer section in the hope of wrenching the last frozen turkey in the county from the hands of a little old lady.

And if you’re unsuccessful, then it’s going to be a question of brazening it out with “Oh we thought we’d give turkey a miss this year and try something new.  We’re having festive shepherd’s pie instead – so much less work for the cook, too.”

I well remember the year my parents opted to have roast beef instead of a bird for Christmas dinner.  What, no stuffing?  The memories are still painful.

But you’ve laid in all the wines, right?  No?  Okaaay….then you’d better spend the next few minutes casting your eye over this column, then just tear it out and take it with you on your supermarket sweep.

Ordering deadlines for online deliveries are past, so you are going to be either fighting it out with the crowds in the supermarket aisles, or you could enjoy a more civilised experience at your local independent wine merchant.

To assist you, here’s the shopping list:

• Fizz
• Cheap and cheerful crowd-pleasing wines – red and white
• Wines for turkey (or indeed shepherd’s pie) – red and white
• Versatile wines for “cold meat and pickles”, family games or Doctor Who watching

I’m recommending particular wines but, as time is tight, feel free to take them as inspiration rather than gospel (if that isn’t too blasphemous).

Fizz

Champagne Jacquart – on offer at Majestic for £18 a bottle

This is an easy-drinking Champagne, made by no-nonsense and gifted winemaker Floriane Ezniack for one of the region’s co-operatives.  A blend of the 3 Champagne varieties, Pinots Noir and Meunier plus Chardonnay, this has plenty of lively, appley-marzipan fruit, as well as a Silver medal from this year’s Decanter World Wine Awards.

Crowd pleasers

Waitrose’s El Guia wines – white, rosé and red, £3.99 a bottle

This could be your “two birds with one stone” wine.  Cheap and cheerful (and believe me, there are plenty of cheep and woeful ones out there), Spanish wines with excellent gluggability.  Keep these on hand for any festive parties, or just to offer drop-in guests.

Sainsbury’s House Côtes du Rhône - £3.99

When I’m pushed for time and faced with the wall of wine in a supermarket, I home in on the Rhône for reliable and good value reds.  This one is at the simple end of the spectrum (don’t go expecting Châteauneuf complexity at this price), but is well made and has some depth of flavour.

Sainsbury’s Vinho Verde - £3.98

Featherlight, gently perfumed, zippy and zesty and off-dry.  A perfect Christmas pick-me-up for jaded imbibers – and at just 9% alcohol it’s practically a health tonic.

Wines for turkey

This is rather misleading, as I am not talking about matching wine to the turkey itself, which is what could be politely described as delicately flavoured.  Rather I’m thinking about matching a wine to the occasion and to stand up to all the flavours that we pile on to our Christmas dinner plates.

Martinborough Vineyard “Te Tera” Pinot Noir 2011 - £17.49 but currently £13.99 when you buy 2 bottles at Majestic

My favoured tipple for the festive bird is a Pinot Noir.  If you have a treasured mature bottle of red Burgundy, then by all means uncork that, but older wines do carry with them the threat of spoilage – so always have something else as a back-up.

I love the pure, expressive fruit of New Zealand Pinots, and those from Martinborough, at the southern tip of the North Island, combine ripeness with depth and structure in a most food-friendly way.

It’s always a good idea to have both white and red on offer for Christmas dinner, to please all tastes.  Chablis often makes an appearance at Christmas, but its lean minerality makes for too weedy a wine for the occasion.  Ditto most Sancerre and Pouilly Fumé. 

Domaine Bégude Terroir Chardonnay 2001 - £8.99 from Waitrose

From the surprisingly cool area of Limoux, north of Corbières, comes this great value classy Chardonnay.  Some of it was fermented in barrel, giving it texture and a subtle gunflint character.

Versatile wines

These are easy-going and adaptable wines that can do more than one thing: pep up a meal of essentially leftovers, accompany a family game of Monotony (sorry Monopoly), or soothe you as you relax on the sofa in front of the telly.

Domaine Zind Humbrecht Gewurztraminer 2011 - £14.99, down to £11.99 when you buy 2 at Majestic

I’d never be without a bottle of Alsace white in the house at Christmas (or any time of year, come to think of it).  If you’ve never experienced the Turkish Delight and pink peppercorn charms of Gewurz before, then let this rich but dry version from Olivier Humbrecht, Master of Wine and PhD, seduce you.

Chénas 2011, Jean-François Trichard - £10.99, down to £8.99 when you buy 2 at Majestic

Beaujolais is such a wonderfully accommodating style of wine – drink on its own or down it with a plate of cold food.  The ripe, perfumed and tangy raspberry/cranberry fruit makes for a juicy palate cleanser.

You could also serve up Pinot Noir here – or indeed have the Beaujolais with Christmas dinner.

I covered sweet wines (and other sweet drinks) last time, so have a look on my blog if you’d like to remind yourself of my sage words on the subject:  http://yourliquidassets.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/dew-drops-on-roses-and-whiskers-on.html

But for supermarket shoppers in a hurry looking for something to go with Christmas pudding, keep your eyes peeled for Moscatel de Valencia.  At around £4 a bottle, its sweet orange peel flavours are a billy bargain match.

Dew drops on roses and whiskers on kittens? These are a few of my favourite (sweet) things

As well as drinking more and, generally, better wines than we do for the rest of the year, Christmas is also traditionally a time when, for reasons best known to ourselves, we decide that a bottle of some luridly-coloured liqueur will be just the thing to make the festive season go with a swing.

Oh the bottles of fluorescent green Midori or sickly Chartreuse that must be languishing at the back of cupboards since someone last touched them, sometime in the 1980s. Only undiscriminating underage drinkers or last gasp partygoers searching for the final drop of alcohol in the house at 5am would surely submit to them now.  Or am I tarring you all with the brush of my own experiences?

While the word liqueur can be used to cover a multitude of sickly sweet sins, there are drinks that can be sugary without being saccharine.

Vedrenne’s Supercassis Crème de Cassis (£8.50 from Waitrose for a 50cl bottle)

This is what Ribena really ought to taste like.  Bursting with true blackcurrant aromas and with a lusciously sweet palate of lingering fruit flavours, it’s the liqueur drinker’s liqueur.  Crème de cassis is traditionally used to perk up a very ordinary dry white wine, to make Kir – or Kir Royale if you are using sparkling wine.  A little cassis goes a long way and just a dribble should give you enough blackcurrant flavour to balance out the dryness and acidity of the wine.  Too much and you will end up with wine-flavoured squash.

If you ever come across a bottle of Crème de Cassis’ sister liqueur, Crème de Mûre, made from blackberries, then snap it up.  The more musky aromas make for an intriguing twist on Kir.  And incidentally both these liqueurs make great flavourings for anyone trying their hand at homemade chocolate truffles this Christmas – but make sure the kids keep their mits off them!

Port and Sherry

There are some things that I will never be old enough for:  shopping in Country Casuals or seriously considering a cruise holiday spring to mind.  Drinking these styles of fortified wines seems to be something we only adopt in our later years.  The average age of the UK Sherry or Port drinker remains stubbornly high, but I’ve been an out and proud fan of them for many years.

Gonzalez Byass Matusalem Oloroso Dulce – around £18 for a half bottle from Waitrose, Majestic, selected Tesco’s and various independents

Dry sherries are having a bit of a moment, to use frightful mediaspeak.  The sweet ones, though, are unfairly viewed as practically toxic and fit only for the cooking, or unfavoured relatives. 

I urge you to surrender to the unctuous charms of this fine example of lusciously sweet Oloroso.  This spicy, treacly, umami-rich mouthful is the essence of Christmas, in a glass.

For eleven and a half months of the year, nary a drop of Port passes our lips.  But, come the latter half of December, we go mad for the stuff.  Christmas isn’t Christmas without a bottle of Port in the house.

The biggest selling style in the UK is the most basic, ruby Port – though the Port producers tend to dress them up with names like Special Reserve.  This is fine for a quick snifter, or wicked (in more ways than one) in mulled wine, but for something to linger over I’d recommend searching out a Tawny Port.

Tawnies spend more of their life in barrel than other kinds of Port and, as a result, lose that dense purple colour and take on shades of mahogany and chestnut brown.  The flavours change too:  nuts, spices and preserved fruit come to the fore.  The most readily available style is 10 year old, which is an average age of the wines in the blend.

Taylor’s 10 Year Old Tawny – widely available from £22 a bottle

Taylor’s could be regarded as the most conservative Port house, as they alone among the Port shippers have held out against the trend of making still table wines from the famous Port-producing vineyards in Portugal’s Douro Valley.  They prefer to stick to what they know and do best and this 10 year old is a great advertisement for the style. 

Aromas of spice, glacé and morello cherry greet you, with nuts joining the party on the palate.  The preserved fruit flavours last in the mouth, with the alcohol (it is fortified, so 20%) providing mellow warmth.

Warre’s Otima 10 Year Old Tawny – widely available, but currently £10 for a 50cl bottle in Waitrose

This is a complete contrast in packaging and approach: a tall, clear glass bottle and an encouragement to serve it chilled – even over ice.

Serving it cool lessens the sense of sweetness and makes it a refreshing after dinner choice.

Wine-based drinks

I am, I admit, generally rather sniffy about ready mixed drinks involving wine.  Whoever thought up the idea of selling ready mixed Buck’s Fizz had clearly decided this was more profitable than their previous business peddling snake oil.  Come on people!  It’s cheap fizzy wine and orange juice, mixed – how hard can it be, even sleep deprived and hungover on Christmas morning?  A bottle of cheap Cava and really good orange juice are easy to find and infinitely more delicious than the sickly sweet ready mixed supermarket stuff that I’ve tried.  And don’t go kidding yourself that pre-mixed versions constitute one of your five a day either.

Sainsbury’s Williams Pear Fizz - £3.99

Like all zealots, there had to come a moment when my belief that pre-mixed drinks are evil stuff would be challenged.  Despite myself, I was won over by this spooky-sounding “aromatised wine cocktail”.  This mixture of Chenin Blanc wine and Williams pear juice is fun, sweet, fizzy, bursting with really pear-y pear fruit and is just 4% alcohol.  How can you resist?

Next time – normal service will be resumed and I’ll get back to recommending wines for the festive period.