Malbec - do you come from a land downunder?

It may have escaped your notice, but last Thursday 17^th April was Malbec World Day. Why Malbec World Day and not World Malbec Day, I know not. Admittedly I have not turned the British Library upside down in my quest for the truth, nevertheless I haven’t found the answer, so the eccentric word order remains a mystery.

I say Malbec. You say? Argentina I’d wager.

Argentine Malbec has become a successful and succinct partnership in our minds. Usually reasonably priced, often generously fruited and with, it must be said, a fair whack of alcohol, this is a wine style that was always going to find a large following in the UK.

Malbec, as a variety, has a much longer history than our fondness for its South American incarnation. It originates back in France, around the town of Cahors in the Southwest of the country. Back in its native land the variety is most often known as Cot. Cahors is its homeland, but it can also be found as far north as the Loire Valley and downriver from Cahors in Bordeaux. The fact that one of the names the Bordelais gave the grape was Malbec (or sometimes Malbeck) gives us a clue that it was from here that it first made its way across the Atlantic Ocean.

Apparently we can be confident that a certain Michel Pouget first brought Malbec vines to Argentina in 1868. It was clearly a raging success and is now the most widely planted quality wine grape in the country. Argentina is a big producer of wine, perhaps bigger than we imagine, sitting at number 5 in terms of global production behind France, Italy, Spain and the USA. Much of what they produce is consumed by their own thirsty local market, with the US the most important export market.

A few Malbec vines have made it across the Andes to Chile, but it remains mostly an Argentine speciality.

Altitude is all important in Argentina – the weather at lower levels is far too warm to produce good quality wine, so vineyards are generally tucked up into the foothills of the Andes, primarily in the province of Mendoza. In fact, looking at a map, it looks like a mere hop, skip and jump from Mendoza to Santiago in Chile – albeit there is a 6,000m Andean mountain ridge between the two.

The other distinguishing feature of Argentine viticulture is dependence on irrigation – the air in those high altitude (often over 1,000m) sites is clear and dry, with the city of Mendoza itself averaging just 200mm annual rainfall, which is getting on for desert conditions. This means low incidence of problems like rot and easy ripening of grapes, but also means a need to find water from somewhere in order for the vines to survive.   

The immigrants who came to Argentina in the early days, many from Italy and Spain, brought with them their taste for wine; apart from the Welsh, who brought tearooms, crocheted teacosies and Welsh cakes to their enclave in Patagonia.

Recommended Malbec (and Cot)

Argentina

Trapiche Pure Malbec - £8.99 from the Co-operative

Pure as in unoaked, this intensely coloured wine is so dense it actually feels thick. Plenty of dark chocolate and black cherry flavours to keep fans of big boned wines happy. If the weather is barbecue-friendly, this wine’s smoky, punchy flavours would be just the ticket.

Bodega Colomé proudly trumpet wines made from the highest altitude vines in Argentina (and possibly the world) from their vineyards in Salta, far north of Mendoza. Their Colomé Estate Malbec is £17.49 in Waitrose and combines full-bodied fruit (and 14.5% alcohol) with altitude-driven freshness in a beguiling way. Their Amalaya red blend is predominantly Malbec, plus some Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Tannat and gives a taste of the same style at a more consumer-friendly price of £10.99 (£9.99 if you buy 2) at Majestic. The price is due to rise to £11.99 from 29^th April, so it would be worth your while to sniff some out sooner rather than later if you can.

The name Susanna Balbo is synonymous with quality, so if you see it, give the wine a punt. Majestic again have Ben Marco Malbec from her Dominio del Plata winery for £15.99 (down to £12.99 when you buy 2). She is also the winemaker behind The Society’s Argentine Malbec (£7.25 a bottle from The Wine Society).

Nicolas Catena was a pioneer of high altitude winemaking in Argentina and his Malbecs are ever-reliable. His Catena Alta label is top of the quality tree but will set you back getting on for £30 a bottle. More readily available is the straight Catena Malbec:  £13.99 or £9.99 if you buy two at Majestic, or £12.99 from Waitrose.

France

Back where it all started, Malbec, or Cot, from Cahors typically has more tannin and acid structure and a more savoury character than the Argentine version. Basic Cahors can be a rather underwhelming experience, but ambitious producers are doing their best to build (or perhaps rebuild) a reputation for quality with concentrated and ageworthy wines.

The wines of two of the best producers, Clos Triguedina (£20.49) and Château du Cèdre Cahors (£17.99), are available at Guildford’s own Caves de Pyrène and other independent merchants. Clos Triguedina is also available through The Wine Society for £16 a bottle.

Lamb and chocolate anyone?

This Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week, the days in the run up to Easter and with it the end of Lent. Some of you, no doubt, have been giving up something for Lent and are probably eagerly looking forward to gorging yourselves on whatever the forbidden fruit has been. I don’t seem to have the constitution for depriving myself of things I enjoy, so I haven’t joined in with any Lenten fasting – but I am ready and prepared to participate in the Easter feasting with gusto.

Lamb is a popular choice for Easter Sunday and the good news (for us, rather than for the lambs) is that it is a very wine-friendly meat.

If you’re eating the first of the spring lamb, such delicate and tender meat would go best with a lighter red such as a Pinot Noir or Gamay, or even a full-flavoured rosé such as a Spanish rosada.

I prefer the flavour of older lamb; and last year’s lambs, now known as hogget, may require more cooking, but offer more meaty flavour too. A trip to Rioja in May a couple of years ago provided more than ample evidence for the affinity of the region’s red wines with lamb. Having eaten more of the tasty little beasts in a few days there than I would normally do in months, I got the message: Rioja and lamb make a good match.

The other prime constituent of most of our Easters is of course chocolate. Wine and chocolate is not a natural combination you might think - and you’re probably right.  Chocolate is quite a challenge for any alcoholic drink, with its dense, rich sweetness, its sheer “sticks around in your mouth for ages”-ness.  Mostly I’d probably go for a cup of tea, or coffee, if I’m eating some chocolate.  But in the interests of research I have been looking around for wines that might just work.

Which leads me to the first issue – chocolate is such a broad term.  There’s a world of difference between your Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and your 70% cocoa solids plain chocolate; what might go with an airy, creamy milk chocolate mousse is probably not going to suit a dark chocolate roulade with raspberry coulis.  Chocolate itself has different characters – and, to add to the complexity, we love to use it in all manner of puddings, sweets, biscuits and to combine it with cream, nuts, fruit – you name it.

So chocolate and wine combinations have more to them than meets the eye.  Here are some suggestions, based on the type of chocolate you’re dealing with.

White chocolate

White chocolate is hardly chocolate in some ways, as it contains no cocoa mass, just cocoa butter, vanilla and masses of sugar of course.  This makes it the lightest and sweetest type of chocolate which needs a light and sweet wine to match.

A fun option would be a Moscato d’Asti, from Piedmont in Italy.  It’s lightly sparkling, light in alcohol (only 5-6%) and definitely sweet.  Treat it as a guilty pleasure – it might be uncool, but its sweet, grapey, pear-tinged bubbles are a delight with white chocolate puddings (as well as fruit salads, incidentally).  The Wine Society lists Elio Perrone Moscato d’Asti 2013 at £7.50.  A less refined version is wine labelled “Asti” rather than “Moscato d’Asti” which you can pick up for between £5 and £10 more widely.

Milk chocolate and light chocolate puddings

If you’re planning on helping the children finish their supply of milk chocolate eggs, then you could do worse than try a glass of tawny port to go with it.

All port starts out life as a deep-coloured red wine, whose fermentation is stopped by the addition of grape spirit, leaving a fortified, naturally sweet wine as a result.  Ruby port, the regular stuff, is aged for a short time in barrel, then bottled while it is still deepest ruby and full of brambly fruit. 

The tawny version of port has a lighter, yes tawny, colour, brought about by long term ageing in barrel.  As the wine loses its deep colour, it takes on a more mellow, nutty character, making it a remarkably versatile drink, one that can stand up to milk chocolate and lighter chocolate puddings.

Look for an aged tawny, at least 10 years old:  the older the wine, the more mellow and complex it will be.  A good introduction to the style is Warre’s Otima 10 year old Tawny Port, around £13.50 for 50cl at Tesco, Waitrose and elsewhere.

An interesting twist on the tawny port style is Mavrodaphne of Patras; Kourtaki’s version is fairly widely available for at around £5-6. It’s made in the same way as port, but from the splendidly-named Mavrodaphne grape, native to Greece.  It has also been aged in casks, giving it that hallmark caramel flavour with a hint of spice.

Another option is Nuy Red Muskadel (£8.95 a bottle from The Wine Society), a fresh yet very sweet fortified dessert wine from South Africa, with the emphasis on red fruit with a hint of rose petal.

Dark chocolate and rich, dark chocolate puddings

These can be some of the most difficult things to pair with wine, because of their full-on flavours and richness.  You might come across some surprising matches, however.

You could echo the richness and slight bitterness of the food with a wine with similar traits.  Ruby port could work here, as could wines from Maury or Banyuls in the Southwest of France: another form of sweet, fortified red wine made in a similar way to port – who knew there were so many of these things around? – the young versions of these wines combine a bitter chocolate character with a trace of black fruit.  If this sounds like the pudding you’re eating, then give a Maury or Banyuls a go.  Waitrose have an own label Seriously Plummy Maury at £10.99 for a half bottle.

In all these matches I’m obeying the food and wine matching premise that the wine should be sweeter than the food that you’re eating.  Though I’m generally not a fan of rules when it comes to choosing wines, I do find wines that are less sweet than what I’m eating end up tasting overly dry and lacking in fruit.

However, it’s horses for courses (as the frozen lasagne manufacturer said to the food inspector) and people who baulk at the idea of any sweet wine might prefer to have a dry red with chocolate.  Again, it makes sense to look for wines which have plenty of ripe, dark fruit with a hint of chocolate flavour – full-on Zinfandels from California, for example.  I would also recommend an Amarone from Italy:  these wines are made from partly dried grapes, which give a full-bodied wine with masses of dark, ripe black cherry fruit and an edge of bitter chocolate.  Not a cheap option (£20 and up), but Phil Jones of The Vineyard in Dorking is a fan of the style and should be able to point you in the right direction.

If all that sounds a little overwhelming, remember it’s hard to beat the great British cuppa with anything sweet.

Little and Large in the Languedoc

Bad news stories about French wine are ten a penny: falling consumption, losing ground to the New World, too much poor quality stuff still made. However, the picture is not entirely bleak and there are also many success stories to be told – and I do not just mean Bordeaux First Growths lining their pockets thanks to cash-rich Far East investors.

The Languedoc, the world’s largest wine-making region, covering a vast swathe of southern France, has, as you might imagine, its fair share of what might politely be called unambitious wines. However, it is also home to quality-minded producers, proud of their unique terroirs, their old vines and confident in the region’s ability to make top notch wine.

Languedoc is also a stronghold of wine-making co-operatives, organisations which unite independent growers who provide their grapes (or sometimes juice) to a central facility which makes, matures and bottles the wine; and finally, markets it. It’s clear that such a model does not automatically drive high quality production – in less switched-on co-ops, where growers are paid based on the amount of grapes they deliver, there is little incentive to focus on quality, by maintaining vineyards with lower-yielding old vines for example – or on such concerns as sustainability.

In today’s competitive wine market there is ever less room for such a quantity-driven approach, however. Those wine co-operatives which are thriving nowadays are those which are dynamic, forward-looking and who embrace modern technology, but who also respect what growers with valuable vineyard plots are able to provide them, focusing on quality rather than quantity. Off the top of my head I’d point to Plaimont Producteurs in France’s Southwest, the Caves de Turckheim and Ribeauvillé in Alsace and Mailly Grand Cru in Champagne as co-ops which fit this description.

Vignobles Foncalieu, headquartered near the impossibly picturesque medieval walled city of Carcassonne, near Toulouse, have also showed that they are determined to aim higher in their quest to provide a market for their 1,200 individual growers stretching from Gascony to the Rhône Valley. Those growers tend 5,000 hectares of vines and produce 23 million bottles of wine annually.

At those levels of production, it would be foolish to say that quality is uniformly high, but it is certainly true that Foncalieu, under the leadership of President Michel Bataille, is focused on driving up quality and moving away from the “stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap” mentality.

As part of their push towards the top, in 2012 Foncalieu bought the well-regarded Corbières estate, Château Haut-Gléon, which it now runs as a kind of business within a business. Its wines are hard to find in the UK currently, but if you would like a taste of what the sleeping giant of Corbières is capable of, keep your eyes peeled for them. Perhaps the best way to sample Haut-Gléon’s wines is to go and stay at the Château itself, which has been refurbished to provide luxurious accommodation.

But as any student of marketing knows, there is always more than one strategy for success in a market. To say that Domaine Jones is at the opposite end of the scale to Foncalieu is to risk understatement. Founded, owned and run by Katie Jones, this pint-sized winery in the Fitou region of Languedoc makes just 20,000 bottles of wine a year from 10 hectares of vines.

Katie moved to France just over 20 years ago and spent most of that time helping to market and sell the wines of the Mont Tauch co-operative. In 2009 she made the leap and bought her first parcel of vines in Maury just over the “border” in Languedoc’s neighbour, Roussillon. A small and isolated plot of old vines with blocks of different grape varieties, as Katie says “The very things that make my small vineyard unattractive to the big growers make it a paradise for me.”

Although size-wise these two producers may be poles apart, they do share some common ground. The vast majority of the wine they make goes to export markets – 80% for Foncalieu, 98% for Domaine Jones.  They are also, in their different ways, part of the process of helping the Languedoc to climb out of the cheap wine ghetto.

Foncalieu and Domaine Jones wines in the UK

Katie Jones’ wines are available through Majestic, Naked Wines and The Wine Society – though, as they are necessarily made in rather small quantities, they are not all always in stock. Some of Katie’s most exciting wines are her whites and unfortunately, due to an act of vandalism last year, when the vats were deliberately emptied, all of her 2012 white wine production was lost.

Domaine Jones Côtes Catalanes Grenache 2012 - £11.95 from The Wine Society

At its most basic, Grenache makes wines that are fairly simple, combining strawberry fruit and white pepper. However, old vines such as these bring greater concentration and full-bodied, ink-tinged fruit.

Katie’s biggest production is of the red blend, Fitou, though currently both Majestic and Naked Wines have sold out of their stocks of 2011 – the 2012 will be on its way. Naked Wines customers can currently enjoy the simpler charms of her Le Petit Train Corbières 2012 (£9.99/£7.49)and Le Petit Train Syrah 2012 (£10.99/£8.25).

Domaine Cambos Gros Manseng 2012 – on offer at Hennings Wine Merchants for £5.50

From the Gascony end of Foncalieu’s production, Gros Manseng is a white grape incapable of making boring wines – fresh with a distinct grapefruit tang and a surprising amount of weight and persistence on the palate (and ony 11% alcohol).

Le Versant Viognier 2012 - £8.50 from Hennings Wine Merchants and other

independents

Le Versant is Foncalieu’s core range of varietal wines, which you might come across on many a restaurant wine list. This Viognier is their top seller in the range and supplies plenty of the variety’s typical stone fruit and honeysuckle aromas, with a more savoury feel on the palate.  Also look out for Le Versant Syrah, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon at around the same price.

Darth Vader winemaking in Chile

If I ask you what comes to mind when I say Chilean wine, what pops into your head? I am betting that excitement, experimentation and risk-taking are not at the top of the list. Perhaps you are thinking more along the lines of reliability, good value and consistency?

If ever I find myself a contestant on Pointless and the category of Chilean wine comes up, I reckon I’ve got that round pretty well sewn up. Never mind that neither occurrence is ever likely to happen.   

But back to the matter in hand. Given my hypothesis viz a viz wine from Chile, what would drive an established producer, with a proven track record of critical and commercial success for their international style wines (for want of a better description) to turn their back on all that? What happened to “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? Marcelo Retamal, Iron Maiden-loving winemaker at Chile’s De Martino winery for the past eighteen years, puts it simply: he didn’t enjoy drinking the wines that he was making. They represented what he now calls “the Dark Side”.

 

Marcelo Retamal and some of his large oak foudres

He pinpoints 1998 as a year of change, when the arrival of international winemaking consultants in Chile and demand from international buyers led to a very different approach to winemaking from what had gone before. The trend for soft, sleek and powerful wines meant that grapes were picked later (up to two months later than previously) in order to get super-ripe flavours, which in turn led to the need for routine acidification to correct the low acid levels in such ripe grapes; 100% new oak barrels and selected yeasts became the norm in the winery.

Devotees of this column, should there be any of you, might recall that I wrote about De Martino’s wines back in 2011 when Marcelo Retamal and Sebastian de Martino visited the UK and told the world about their plans for the future. Their 2010 vintages which I sampled then contained tantalising hints of what was to come, but now they have come back to show us the full picture with their 2011 and later wines.

To illustrate his point, Marcelo led a vertical tasting of a Carmenère from De Martino’s Alto de Piedras vineyard in the Maipo Valley.

The 2005 epitomised what Marcelo calls “the Dark Side”: there is plenty of oak and ripe, slightly pruney fruit, but also a swingeing tannic structure, jarring acidity and a lingering flavour of alcohol (which stands at 14.8%). It felt like a wine at war with itself.

In 2010 Marcelo, in partnership with Sebastiàn de Martino, decided that he had had enough of making what he now calls “bad wine”. That meant no more new oak barrels, earlier picking dates, no acidification, use of natural yeasts (that is naturally occurring yeasts which are present all around us and provide, for example, the lift in sourdough bread) and lower alcohol.

The 2011 Alto de Piedras wine illustrated the new thinking. It is light on its feet, with lively fruit and fresh acidity. Alcohol is down to 13.3% and acidity is naturally higher, thanks to earlier picking (20 April compared with 10 May in 2005, some 20 days earlier). The wine is aged in 5,000 litre foudres (huge wooden barrels) instead of new oak barrels holding 225 litres, so the effect of oak on the flavour is minimal. It demonstrates the move towards a more authentic, natural and gastronomic style of wine.

De Martino’s other project is a number of wines fermented and aged in old giant clay amphorae (known as Viejas Tinajas in Chile) from vines grown in the southerly Itata Valley. It may sound wilfully eccentric to use such antique techniques, which would not have looked out of place in ancient Rome, but amphorae (and their modern equivalent, cement “eggs”) are actually becoming, if not commonplace, at least not freakish, in wineries around the world.

Itata is home to some of Chile’s oldest, dry farmed bush vines and the De Martino Viejas Tinajas range comprises a dry white made from Muscat and two reds, one a 100% Cinsault and the other a Carignan/Cinsault blend. Production is not high – only 6,000 bottles of the Cinsault are made – but it could mark the arrival of user friendly Chilean natural wine, with its soft structure and lifted sweet/savoury flavours. 

De Martino wines to try

Gallardia Cinsault Rosé 2013 - £8.95 from The Wine Society, £11.65 from Caves de Pyrène of Guildford

From Itata, but not part of the Viejas Tinajas project, this is a more mainstream, but effortlessly enjoyable wine. It looks and tastes like a classic Provence rosé, with fresh, marine flavours and a gentle finish.

Gallardia Muscat 2012 - £11.65 from Caves de Pyrène

Muscat can be a bit of an in your face variety, with its intensely grapey aromas, which can then seem out of synch with a dry palate. Here, the aromatics are more restrained, with hints of candied fruit. It tastes beautifully fresh and would be a real crowd pleaser (especially if you don’t let on that it’s Muscat, to avoid people like me thinking they won’t like it).

La Aguada Old Vines Field Blend 2011 - £22 from Caves de Pyrène (The Wine Society currently stocks the 2008 for £14.95)

Planting an entire vineyard with a single grape variety is actually quite new technology in many parts of the wine world. It was once common practice to plant a range of varieties together (without necessarily even knowing what those varieties were), though it’s now increasingly rare. This vineyard is predominantly Carignan, usually a despised variety, thought to bring nothing more than colour, alcohol and rusticity to a wine. Old, dry-farmed vines such as this, though, can make wines of real character and depth – and the smattering of Cinsault and Malbec help to give lift and perfume.

Spring is here - or is it?

Pity the poor wine writer. As I pen this column, the weather is looking fairly Spring-like. I can hear birds tweeting (“our” Greater Spotted Woodpecker was heard for the first time this year a couple of days ago), the snowdrops and hellebores are in full swing and the buds of the first daffodils are swelling. Skies may be grey but the rain, thankfully, has let up and the sun, when it appears, has a growing warmth to it.

However, what the weather will be doing by the time you read this is anyone’s guess.  Spring may have well and truly sprung and we could be seeing signs of incipient Summer to come; or the battering of Atlantic storms may have returned; or we may have been given a dose of the proper Winter weather that failed to arrive at the usual time – or indeed anything in between.

Pity me, then, having to make suitable wine recommendations for this time of year. I know, in all our preoccupation with flooding , storm damage and potential loss of life, no-one (quite rightly, before you get a lynch mob together) stops to think of the impact on wine writers – even ones with their tongues firmly in their cheeks.

So when is Spring, officially? In calendar terms, the year is divided into the four seasons, each lasting three months, with Spring spanning the beginning of March to the end of May. This is solid enough logic, though I cannot remember when we last had a Summer that lasted from the beginning of June until the end of August.

The Spring Equinox, on or around 21^st March, is the point at which we reach equal amounts of daylight and night-time in a 24-hour period, so there is a case for making this the official first day of Spring. Ecologists apparently add in a couple of extra seasons to cover those in-between times of the year which are neither one thing nor t’other, referring to the “prevernal” period following the “hibernal” (winter) and preceding the “vernal” (Spring). We must be getting at least prevernal by now I feel.

No matter what the weather is doing, the days are getting noticeably longer and nature is getting on with the business of springing back into life after the cold and wet (OK mostly wet) Winter. Ergo, it is, I reckon, Spring. Sort of.

Springtime-ish drinking recommendations

Peter Yealands Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2013 – usually £9.99, but currently on offer at Sainsbury’s (until 4^th March) at £7.49

It can jar a little to see a 2013 label, when we’ve only just said goodbye to that year in this hemisphere. Downunder, of course, they’re ahead of us in wine terms and are now thinking about getting ready for the 2014 harvest.

This Sauvignon Blanc is made by gifted young winemaker (and fellow glases wearer) Tamra Washington, whose wines for Yealands Estate have garnered many an award recently and show a restraint that is unusual in Marlborough. This wine manages to combine the typical vibrancy of Kiwi Sauvignon with the fine acidity and class of Loire versions. Aromas of elderflower and tropical fruit pave the way for a crisp palate with juicy acidity and mouthfilling fruit, with an edge of blackcurrant leaf. In short, all the verdant freshness of Spring in a glass, even if Spring itself has gone AWOL.

I remember being looked at askance by a French sommelier when I and my fellow diners asked for a bottle of rosé to accompany our lunch. It was early March, the sun was out and the temperature had hit 18⁰C – bingo! Rosé time, we thought. Except, we were in Provence, where, as far as they were concerned, this was still woolly jumper and warming red wine weather; the sommelier advised us that they had not yet taken delivery of any rosé that year, so we tugged our metaphorical forelocks  and ordered a bottle of Vacqueyras. The shame!

However, in this country, days like that are rare enough to warrant being greeted with open arms and a glass of the pink stuff, so you should ensure you have some suitable rosé squirreled away.

M de Minuty Côtes de Provence Rosé – currently £10.99 if you buy 2 bottles at Majestic (usually £14.99) for the 2012. Taurus Wines of Bramley will be getting their consignment of 2013 in soon, which will have more freshness  - and Surrey Advertiser readers can benefit from a special reader offer of £10.99

I have a soft spot for the pale negligée pink rosés of Provence, whose gentle colours and herb-tinged flavours are so redolent of summer days.  M de Minuty is one of the most consistently enjoyable Provence pinks that I’ve tried over the years and has a loyal following in this country – and it comes in one of those curvy “Bardot” bottles.  

Torres Viña Sol – widely available at around £7

The sun in the name and on the label make this eminently suitable for this time of year, when we yearn for the sun to brighten and warm the days. This venerable wine was made for the first time back in 1963 (when it was labelled “Spanish Chablis”; those were the days) by the then young gun Miguel A Torres. Viña Sol was intended to bring modern winemaking to Spain and was made then, as now, without oak, the Grenache Blanc and Parellada grapes fermented at low temperature to preserve freshness and fruit. Crisp Granny Smith apple flavours combine with the weight and white pepper of the Grenache to make a delicious lunchtime wine (especially as it’s just 11.5% alcohol).

Sweep them off their feet - but do your homework first

I claim there ain’t

Another Saint

As great as Valentine. 

-          Ogden Nash

Here we are on that day of the year about which I have mixed feelings:  Valentine’s Day, when we are all supposed to toe the love line and demonstrate our devotion to our loved one. Now who am I to pooh-pooh the notion of a day given over to romance? But the idea that millions, nay billions, of us should all feel the lurve, to order, on 14^th February every year induces a certain sullen bolshiness in me.

Romance is dead – it was acquired in a hostile takeover by Hallmark and Disney, homogenized and sold off piece by piece.

-          Lisa Simpson, The Simpsons

And have you seen the Valentine-themed merchandising?

At a local convenience store I spied such treasures as fake sparkly single red roses (sensible, can be re-used), red heart bunting to adorn your love nest (bit OTT and actually a bit scary) and, bafflingly, packs of twenty heart-shaped napkins. Twenty napkins? I didn’t realise Valentine’s Day was a group activity. Have I missed something? Are we supposed to throw Valentine’s parties nowadays, or are they designed for mopping up extravagant food and drink spillages without breaking the romantic spell by having to make a grab for the kitchen roll?

If you have made no particular preparations for your night of romance please do not pick up a card, flowers and a bottle of rosé from the garage on the way home. Nothing says “meh” like forecourt flowers and petrol stations are not renowned for their classy wine choices. Better to go home empty-handed than to bring home gifts that scream zero effort.

Better still is to spend a couple of minutes at your desk researching your options before setting off for home. The best shortcut to celebration is Champagne (I would say that wouldn’t I), though at this late stage you are not in a position to go chasing after a particular grower’s exclusive cuvée. However, there is equally no need to grab a bottle of anything that sports the name Champagne from a gondola end in the nearest supermarket.

May I respectfully point you towards a site called Bring a Bottle (www.bringabottle.co.uk), which provides useful information on where to pick up most of the Champagne grandes marques at the best price from major retailers. My eye was drawn to Bollinger Special Cuvée Rosé NV at £36.99 from Waitrose (hint, hint). One of the things I particularly like about the Bring a Bottle site is that it includes a handy graphic, illustrating price movements over previous weeks for your chosen Champagne – so you can tell whether the best price on offer really is a good deal, or whether you are just getting the going rate. “My” Bollinger Rosé has been pretty consistently available at an average of just under £39, so I’m happy that the Waitrose offer is worth taking up, albeit not a tremendous bargain either.

Other Champagne brands have far more volatile pricing – Veuve Clicquot NV, for example, which frequently varies from between £27 to £35 a bottle. If this is your Champagne of choice, you’d be well advised to wait until the price dips below £30 before buying. The Bring a Bottle site allows you set up an email alert which will advise you when a particular wine drops below its current lowest available price.

If you have more time available to winkle out your chosen bottle then a virtual trip to www.wine-searcher.com  allows you to search across a wider range of suppliers, including many independent merchants who also mostly now offer online ordering. This is often the best way to find the keenest price for any particular wine that you are after.

Pink fizz seems to be de rigueur for Valentine’s Day and it will no doubt not have escaped your notice that you have to shell out more for the rosé version of a house’s Champagne. Viz, Bollinger Special Cuvée is currently £32 at Asda, £32.49 at Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, compared to the lowest price for the rosé of £36.99. It would be a churlish valentine who would turn their nose and Champagne flute up at “merely” the Bollinger Special Cuvée, surely.

If you really want to show that you know your stuff, THE pink fizz of the Champagne cognoscenti is the delicate, understated and food-friendly Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé – though at around £50 a bottle currently it is not a bargain. Another favourite is Laurent-Perrier Brut Rosé (prices range from £44 to a frankly ridiculous £58), which has more overt red fruit and can be happily sipped on its own.

Do chocolates and Champagne mix? In any objective way, of course not. Champagne lacks the body and sweetness (even the sweeter, demi-sec styles) to stand up to the mouth coating sweetness and richness of chocolate. Putting them together is flattering neither to the Champagne nor the chocolates. If you want a wine to match with a box of chocs, then a rich old Oloroso sherry would be a far better choice. But there is undoubtedly something decadent and endearingly batty about showering your loved one in luxury items, whether they should ever be consumed together or not.

And a final piece of advice if you’re thinking of buying something for your female Valentine to wear, remember that, in the words of Dorothy Parker, “Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”

What have the French got down the back of their sofas?

We are told that it’s a good idea to rootle around in our soft furnishings, with some sources estimating that between us we have around £40 million tucked away in loose change between the cushions of our sofas in Britain.

The French, too, are harbouring some hidden gems in their chaises longues. Vinous gems I mean; little-known, often rare grape varieties that can enrich the life of wine drinkers the world over.

France has famously given us grape varieties which have earned the soubriquet “classic” and which have gone on to conquer the world (the wine world at any rate). Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Merlot – these are wines A listers, names that are instantly recognizable and which are grown the length and breadth of the wine producing world.

But France amounts to much more than these wine superstars. If you have a virtual rummage down the back of France’s vinous sofa, all sorts of surprises result: varieties you’ve never heard of, even some that were thought to be extinct.

How does this happen? As Kirsty and Phil would tell you: location, location, location. Many of France’s smaller wine-growing regions are in rural, sparsely populated, isolated areas, far from anything that might resemble the beaten track. In “la France profonde” such as this local customs – and very local grape varieties – can persist where elsewhere progress, development and fashion have swept them away in favour of more recognizable varieties.

Here I invite you to embark on a virtual tour of some of France’s hidden gems that are worth winkling out.

Domaine Bruno Lupin, Roussette de Savoie, Frangy 2012 - £12 Caves de Pyrène

 Savoie is France’s only true mountain vineyard and the surprise is not only that it harbours its own unique varieties, but that this snowy, alpine environment is capable of producing wine at all. Roussette is the local name for the variety Altesse and if you’ve been to Savoie to ski then you might have downed a glass of this to accompany your fondue.

The vast majority of Savoie’s wines, most made from the unremarkable Jacquère grape, are consumed locally, much of it by thirsty skiers; as wine writer Andrew Jefford put it, the region benefits from “buoyant and undiscerning local demand”.

Roussette/Altesse seems to originate in Savoie itself and makes mountain air fresh wines with a herbal flavour and rather soft, pear-y fruit.

Château d’Anglès La Clape Classique 2010 - £12.49 Hawkshead Wines, £13 The Cheese and Wine Co (Hampton)

This wine highlights a white variety that is normally found in the role of second fiddle elsewhere in France. Bourboulenc, for it is he (she?), is one of the 13 varieties permitted in Châteauneuf-du-Pape and is grown widely across much of southern France. Only here, in La Clape, however, is it the focus of the white wines.

La Clape is a former island which now forms a limestone massif between Narbonne and the Mediterranean. Legend has it that when it was still an island off the coast of the Roman city of Narbo, Julius Caesar gave Roman legionaries permission to plant the first grapes here.

Whatever the historical truth, La Clape today is a viticultural one-off, its limestone blinding in the strong southern sun, the vines and olive trees that manage to grow in its stony soils blasted by winds. Benign it is not.

And yet this is where Bourboulenc reaches its true potential as a variety. At Château d’Anglès, the situation is also helped by having Eric Fabre as its owner – a man who had previously spent 8 years as the winemaker at a certain Château Lafite Rothschild.

This Classique cuvée, a blend of 50% Bourboulenc with 30% Grenache blanc and a dash each of Roussanne and Marsanne, is made without the use of oak and really showcases the variety’s innate ability to produce wines with as much texture as flavour, combining fennel, a hint of honey and a mineral stoniness.

Domaine du Cros Marcillac “Lo Sang del Païs” 2012 - £7.95 The Wine Society

Marcillac really is in the middle of nowhere – technically it is in the Aveyron, north of Rodez, but middle of nowhere about covers it.

The grape that locals here know as Mansois changes its name in other parts of France’s southwest variously to Braucol, Fer or Fer Servadou and finally Pinenc. You don’t need to know all this to enjoy this delightful little wine though. Its bright, slightly twiggy fruit is a perfect foil to a bit of bread and pâté – and could even be chilled in the summer.

Domaine d’Alzipratu Cuvée Pumonte, Corse Calvi 2011 - £18 The Wine Society

Corsica’s history of being ruled by both Pisa and Genoa before becoming part of France has resulted in an intermingling of French and Italian influences, and this is reflected in its wines.

Nielluciu (the Corsicans seem to be fond of adding a “u” to an obviously Italian word to make it more “Corsican”) is widely grown on the island – but is in fact none other than the classic Tuscan variety, Sangiovese. Here it appears in a supporting role to a variety that can be claimed as one of Corsica’s own: Sciacarella.

Sciacarella, meaning crunch in Corsican dialect, does in fact originate in Tuscany as well, but is all but extinct there. This wine has dark, brooding fruit aplenty with a wild, herbal streak and a structure that demands food.

La Magendia de Laypeyre, Jurançon 2009 - £19.75 Caves de Pyrène

Where better to finish our tour than with a most delicious dessert wine, made on steeply sloping vineyards tucked into the foothills of the Pyrenees.

The variety here is Petit Manseng, whose thick skins permit it to remain on the vine long into Autumn (sometimes even into Winter) without being affected by rot. The grapes shrivel in a process known as “passerillage” and are then fermented and aged in oak. The result is an intense experience combining the flavours of honey, quince, mandarin and grapefruit marmalade, shot through with piercing acidity that gives it a characteristic clean finish. Try it with a tangy blue cheese and die happy.