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Taste the charity

by
02 November 2006

AS I WRITE, I am recovering from having entertained a Texan during January. I feel I would be happy not to open another bottle of wine for several months. Nevertheless, I do not want to deprive readers of some good opportunities.

Sainsbury’s is running a Wine & Beer Festival until 22 February (it started last week), introducing some new wines at interesting prices. For me, the best offerings come from the New World, and I am pleased to see two wines from Jekel Vineyards in Monterey, south of San Francisco. These are the Cabernet Sauvignon 2002 and the Chardonnay 2003, both at £4.99 a bottle rather than the more normal £9.99.

When wines from Jekel were first introduced on the British market 20 years or so ago, the Cabernet Sauvignon was shown blind to a number of leading wine-writers, together with some of the greatest Bordeaux wines of the same year. I can well remember the anger on the face of one expert when he did not spot the Californian interloper.

Another of my favourite wineries whose produce is included is Graham Beck from South Africa. The Shiraz Cabernet 2003 should see anyone through the coldest days of winter, as it is a full-bodied heavyweight of a wine. The white on offer is a youthful Chardonnay Viognier 2004, with vibrant fruity flavours. These are available at £4.99 rather than £6.99.

Finally, I would suggest from Chile the El Dorado Sauvignon Blanc from Jacques Lurton. This is made from very ripe fruit, and the first impression on the palate is of a tropical fruit salad. This is £4.49 rather than £6.99 during the Sainsbury’s festival.

I AM regularly asked whether it is possible to support charity while buying wine. Perhaps the easiest way is by buying fairly traded bottles through www.traidcraftshop.co.uk. Here are offered wines from South Africa and Chile: I must admit that I find the latter infinitely preferable to the former. All these wines are made by co-operative cellars, which pass the benefits back to their members.

A range of fairly traded wines is also sold by some supermarkets, the Co-op and Waitrose leading the way.

A new mail-order wine project that is just being launched is Heavenly Wine ( www.heavenlywine.co.uk ; phone 0870 2073 073). While this seems to be a commercial operation, it will donate five per cent of the sale price of any wine to Water Aid ( www.wateraid.org.uk), the charity that brings clean water to some of the poorest communities in the world.

This project is backed by the stocks of a major wine group; so it is able to offer a selection of several hundred wines, which can be mixed in dozens as needed. The list is particularly strong in Old World wines: my eyes lit up at the selection of Domaine-bottled Burgundies on offer. For those who might find all this rather daunting, it offers a shorter list of 60 favourite wines, and a variety of what it calls “pre-ordained” cases.

On top of the cost of the wine, there is a charge of £5 per delivery, no matter how many cases you order. In view of the drive against binge drinking, I am not sure that the company’s slogan, “Drink generously”, is a happy one.

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