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.