Casablanca Sauvignon Blanc 2002

Made by Joseba Altuna in Chile's Casablanca valley I had high hopes for this - despite Sainsbury's discontinuing it! However despite looking the part (straw with a touch of green) and having aromas of gooseberries and apricots, once in the mouth it sadly failed to deliver - it wasn't a bad wine, it just wasn't very good either - it was a touch too tart for my liking and tasted sour which was a great shame - however that is life and sometimes things taste good and sometimes they don't!

Les Traverses 2001 - Paul Jaboulet Aine'

A Cote de Ventoux, which is sometimes a source of good value Cote Du Rhone and at other times a source of cheap rubbish, however this happily falls into the former category - I bought a couple of these a few years ago and the first one I tried then was lovely, and was bought to try and replicate what I'd been drinking on my honeymoon - which thankfully it did! This time round it was a different wine - the colour had moved towards being tawny, and whilst the spice and oak were still present the fruit had transformed into dried fruit and liquorice flavours. Personally I preferred the younger wine, and this might had just been left too long whilst not being stored particularly well!

Montana Sauvignon Blanc 2005

This is currently on offer in Tesco at just £4.99 a bottle - and it's a real bargain at that price - decent quality New Zealand Sauvignon can be pretty pricey and I bought this 10 minutes after buying a Cloudy Bay Sauvignon from the local wine merchants who had a few bottles left - straw coloured with a hint of green in in, it displays youthful aromas of tropical fruits (passion fruit) and gooseberries and has flavours of sweet gooseberries (still dry though) with a hint towards grapefruit, this is high in acidity making it crisp and clean and is surprisingly full bodied. Made by Julia O'Connell from Montana this is a masterpiece at this price - a wine which in 1990 won the Marquee de Goulaine Trophy for best Sauvignon Blanc in the world. Comparison with the Cloudy Bay will come when I get around to tasting it!

Unwins goes under!

Unwins the wine merchants, which has been around since 1843 has ceased trading with the loss of 1400 jobs and closure of 350 stores. Whilst part of the blame can be laid at the door of increased competition from the supermarkets, it would be fair to say that all the off license chains and independents that are doing well also suffer from this same competition. The fault lies elsewhere, for the last month my local store has had virtually no wine on the shelves and distribution and cash flow have been cited as part of the reason. How can a chain that has grown so large go so badly, the buyers need to take some of the blame, an inability to differentiate themselves is part of the story - in order to get customers to visit the store rather than go to a supermarket they needed a unique selling point - which from the outside looks like they failed to have. Oddbins sell better, more interesting wines than the supermarkets with staff who know their stuff, Majestic have a similar strategy but by getting cheap premises and having a minimum order of one case have made it work. From my visits to Unwins, the range tended to be small, (something a specialist cannot afford to do), uninspiring, and very ordinary - it appeared they wanted to compete head on with Tesco in a battle they were destined to lose - too many wines in the £5 price point and not enough in the £9 plus bracket.

Back after the Christmas break

Well I'm back after a short break over Christmas, and I'm ashamed to say that I haven't recorded all the wines sampled during the festive season, however I will be adding over time some of the backlog of wines I've tasted over the last year prior to starting this Blog.