Laithwaites is the greasy take-away of wine, the slutty pizza of plonk; heavy-handed, unsubtle and lacking in finesse.
Sometimes, simple-and-uncomplicated is what you want; fish and chips on the beach, Friday night curry, Pret sandwich at your desk.
But - and here's the rub - there's a difference between being uncomplicated and being inelegant. Coco Chanel's LBD is uncomplicated and fabulously elegant. Bernard Manning's comedy act is unsubtle and brash.
Imagine you've made a pot of tea and served everyone; there's now a few teabags sitting at the bottom of the pot in their stewed, dark brown juices and you fancy another cup. You put the kettle on, pour over some boiling water and squeeze the last few drops of flavour out, then add a generous dash of milk hoping for the best.
That's your Laithwaites wine - thick, heavy and extracted all the while claiming to be "sumptuous", "powerful" or "velevety". These are all euphemisms for "unsubtle and extracted".
In the words of Doctor Evil, Laithwaites are not quite elegant enough; they're semi-elegant, quasi-elegant, the margarine of elegance, the diet Coke of elegance, just one calorie, not elegant enough.
Extraction does for a wine what the bass drum does for rock music - it gives you a hit of something substantial that you feel more than hear or taste. But it needs to be used judiciously or it soon becomes dull and repetitive. You need to mix it up a bit with tom-tom, snare and high hat.
And this is where Laithwaites dishonesty annoys me - I've said it before, Laithwaites are a wine seller and not a wine educator, but a more honest description would be "extracted and unsubtle" rather than "sumptuous and velvety".
Granted, they'd probably sell fewer wines and alienate their customers, but hey.
Pillastro Primitivo 2018 (£10.99) dark-berry fruits and sweet spices; heavy on extraction, yet otherwise balanced fresh and long. Becomes tedious after more than a couple of glasses.
It's not faulty or a bad wine; it is popular with Laithwaites customers - the oenological equivalent of a greasy pizza and a best of Bernard Manning DVD.
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