My twice-monthly online wine column continues. I’m looking for excitement, value and brilliant food matches. Here’s the latest dispatch from the front line….
French wine sales have become a bit of an annual fixture with the supermarkets ever since Superquinn got the ball rolling some years back. The latest offering is a very interesting one from Lidl – and if you’re reading this overseas I have to warn you that these special offers are currently unique to Lidl in Ireland.
I was mightily impressed by the overall quality. There isn’t a duff bottle in the whole offer. Here are three that really stand out for me…
La Belle Blonde Macon-Villages
€9.99, Lidl
This is 100% Chardonnay, but don’t let that put you off! It’s not at all like the stuff coming out of Chile or Oz and there’s no oak or tropical fruit salad in here.
This is a white Burgundy from Macon, part of that famous and ancient wine region that is known for value, certainly, but also for a certain blandness. Not so with this example, however.
In La Belle Blonde (what a name!) you have very clean, pure fruit in an overall dry and grown-up style that is distinctly French. It makes a great aperitif and is lovely with shellfish or smoked salmon. It may be simple but it’s also delicious, refreshing and impeccably balanced. How often can you say that at €9.99?
Bourgogne Hautes-Cotes-de-Nuits La Perriere 2011
€12.99, Lidl
Red Burgundy can be tricky stuff. All too often the potentially fabulous Pinot Noir grape (remember it in the movie Sideways?) turns out thin, sour, nasty and waaay over-priced. You can easily spend €25 on a bottle that you wouldn’t even cook with.
Full marks to Lidl, though, for finding this little gem. At first it seems nicely delicate and fruity, almost light if you’re used to big, brawny Merlots and Shirazes. But drink it slowly and the wine really does evolve in the glass and you get an inkling of what the Burgundians mean when they say their reds are like “an iron fist in a velvet glove”. There’s a lot going on this wine if you give it a bit of attention and much of its finer qualities are just too hard to put into words. However it does one thing that I find only too rarely in modern Burgundy and that’s the classic whiff of violets. That is truly remarkable at this kind of price.
Saint-Joseph
€12.99, Lidl
Syrah is what they call Shiraz in France and the home of this famous grape is the northern Rhone Valley. As with most grapes the taste varies, depending on where it’s grown and here, where it’s very hot and the soil is poor and the roots go very deep, the wines are distinctive.
This is a classic northern Rhone red. There’s no Grenache here, like you would get further south, just 100% Syrah, dark, rich, intense, almost brooding. And they say in Saint-Joseph that the local reds are so dark they stain your teeth.
Well, this one is certainly very dark, almost black. Most of the wines here take years to soften out and become drinkable but this youngster has been made in a more modern, accessible style. It will get even better if you can bear to hang on to a few bottles for two or three years but it’s magic with a rare steak right now. It’s all about black pepper, damsons and just a touch of spice and, like the red Burgundy above, will open out in the glass if you can resist glugging it!
Read Tom Doorley every Saturday in the Irish Daily Mail.
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