Two Wines from Portugal

Two elegant, stylish and good value wines from Portugal - Manz and Quinta da Romaneira 

Portugal does not so much have a quality problem as an image problem; when I think of Portuguese wine, I'm not really sure what it stands for.

There's port - of course - in all its wonderful guises. And Vinho Verde, the light, fresh, Atlantic wine.

But with numerous regions, climates and terroirs, hundreds of native grape varieties and a history of somewhat rustic methods, it's hard to fix on something and say "That is typical Portugal!" in the way you think of kiwi Sauvignon, Aussia Shiraz or Argentinean Malbec.

Every time I taste Portuguese table wines, I generally find them to be well-made, elegant and balanced. But I am still searching for that one, single, defining thing that makes them typically Portuguese.

These two wines prove to be typically modern Portuguese - made from native grapes with a clean, pure elegance.

They are also great value for the price; the flipside of Portugal's lack of a strong identity is that the good wines do not command the same premiums as better-known wine regions. As a reference point for the Jampal, think of a white Burgundy; the red blend has the structure and sophistication of a Bordeaux.

Manz Dona Fátima Jampal 2017 (£16.50, Oddbins) made from the rare, revived grape Jampal; floral with ripe exotic fruits, citrus, saline minerality and buttery, oatmealy, nutty spice. Fresh, pure and very adept with a Burgundian elegance.

Very Good and good value.

A versatile wine, match with fish, vegetables dishes, creamy pasta or white meats.

Sino da Romaneira (£15.95, Lea & Sandman) a table wine made from a blend of port grapes by Christian Seely; dark, plummy fruit, garrigue herbs, fresh with a mineral backbone and fine tannins. Very elegant.

Very Good and good value.

Match with red meat, especially darker game.

Ninety Six Pinot Grigio - Virgin Wines

A Hungarian Pinot Grigio from Virgin Wines

Ninety Six Tears - Question Mark & The Mysterians

Pinot Grigio is the same wine as Pinot Gris - the Italian form of the name here is no more than a stylistic indicator. You can reasonably expect a Pinot Grigio to be taught, citrussy-mineral and fairly neutral.

By contrast, a winemaker who puts Pinot Gris on the label is giving you a hint that it will probably be fuller, richer and more perfumed.

This Hungarian Pinot Grigio sits somewhere between the two; Hungary has a fairly warm climate resulting in more fruit ripeness, so although labelled Grigio, it's bigger and fuller.

You could call this a slightly confused Hungarian that does not know whether it wants to be French or Italian - but then a Hungarian friend of mine thought I was writing about her ...

Ninety Six Pinot Grigio (£8.99) ripe stone fruit and a waxy, honeyed florality that is just held in check by a saline-mineral acidity; shows the warmth of its climate.

Match with roast chicken or pork rillettes.

Rex Mundi Shiraz Grenache 2017, Laithwaites

A stewed, extracted Languedoc wine from Laithwaites

Another trip up to my parents', another bottle of heavy-handed Laithwaite's wine.

If the three stages of palate development can be summarised as: expressiveness, complexity, elegance, then Laithwaite's wines generally show well for expressiveness (often over-delivering in this area) with moderate amounts of complexity and very little elegance.

So, the question can be framed not so much as "Is this a good wine?" as "Do you have a Laithwaite's palate?".

Not to put too fine a point on it, if you are not bothered about elegance or complexity and want a wine that makes a BIG statement, then this is perfectly fine for you.

To my mind, it's heavy-handed, unsubtle and over-priced. Languedoc can do much better than this.

That said, Laithwaite's customers give it 4.4 out of 5 and 93% approve. Clearly, I don't have a Laithwaite's palate.

Rex Mundi Shiraz Grenache 2017 (£9.99, Laithwaites) stewed plums, porty eucalyptus, spice and alcohol; it just doesn't hold together. It promises everything, like a newly-formed Conservative government, then falls apart just as quickly.

Rigal Oltesse, Cahors, 2014

A Cahors wine with a bit of age to go with a dish of prawns

On holiday just outside Cahors, Mrs CWB asked to try a bottle of something local so I picked out a range of award-winners at the supermarket.

Back at Tour de Belfort, I realised that dinner was seafood, so I picked out one of the older wines I'd bought and gave it some time in an impromptu decanter to soften up.

As it happens, it also has a lower alcohol content and some Merlot in the blend, so worked well for the classic Bond-villain combination of red wine and seafood.

Rigal Oltesse, Cahors, 2014 (€5, widely available in France) Malbec/Merlot blend; red fruits, cherries, dried green herbs, old leather and oaky spice. Supple and fresh with fine, firm slightly drying tannins. Warming on the finish, despite just 12% alcohol. Becomes more adept and harmonious with aeration.

Good.

Match ideally with darker game or cheeses; also shellfish

Two Wines From South West France

Two local wines on a holiday in South West France

My rule of thumb for buying wines when on holiday in France is to go for something local for around €5 from the supermarket with some sort of award.

If time allows, tasting and buying directly from the producer is even better, but family holidays are holidays, not wine-tasting-and-buying trips.

Saint Mont is a region in South West France of transformed fortunes; formerly a vast brandy-producer, it is now a smaller, more focused wine area cultivating local, often forgotten grapes and dominated by the Plaimont co-op.

Fronton, just north of Toulouse, is an ancient vineyard area dating back to Roman times with a reputation for rustic wines made from a minimum 50% of local variety Negrette.

Duc de Meynan, 2017, Saint Mont (widely available in France, around €5) aromatic Gascon blend of local heroes, Gros Manseng, Petit Corbu and Arrufiac. Zesty lime, white flowers and citrussy tropical fruits with rich waxiness and a shake of white pepper; supple and full with sweet spices and minerality. Very adept, very pure and very well made.

Good.

Drink as an aperitif, a picnic wine or match with salmon en croute or tarragon chicken.

Château Clamens Cuvée Prestige Fronton Rouge, 2016 (widely available in France for €5, £10 at Gerrad Steel in UK) Negrette / Syrah blend from south west France. Black cherry, elderberry and blueberry fruit, dried green herbs, pencil shavings and fine, persistent tannins. Fresh, inky and harmonious.

Good.

Match with darker game, such as duck or venison.

Eugene's Unicorn Wine - Pink Fizz

Tasting a unicorn pink fizz with winery owner Eugene Lismonde of Tour de Belfort

I have written before (extensively) about Eugene Lismonde and his Tour de Belfort wines - in semi-retirement, he renovated a run-down chateau in his wife's village of Belfort de Quercy, then with a consultant winemaker assisting him, he planted a vineyard and built a winery to make the most elegant wine possible.

Cahors is traditionally a deep, heavy, tannic, slightly rustic wine; Eugene's wines are Cahors in name only - and his whites are not even sold as Cahors, but rather as Cotes de Lot because Cahors has no appellation for whites and Eugene refused to sell them as vins de table.

The winery is pristine and gravity-fed on three levels with bespoke fermenting vats that fill bottom-up to reduce air contact. In the vineyard at harvest time, Eugene monitors the separate pickers and basket carriers, keeps them all working at the same rate and in line and arranges for two rounds of sorting, prior to a final sorting in the winery. The vines are planted at greater than standard density to reduce yields and increase concentration.

There is no romance, no tradition, no "we've always done it this way" about Eugene's winemaking - just an absolute focus on quality, cleanliness and the highest possible quality of fruit. The sort of order, hygiene and innovation that you might expect from a Dutch businessman with a Swiss scientist running the place.

After 15 years, however, Eugene decided he was getting too old to manage the harvest and winemaking process himself, so arranged to sell his grapes to the local co-op; he mothballed the winery and sold off his barrels.

Ever the businessman, he refused permission for the wines to be sold under his brand name of Tour de Belfort unless the wines were made to his (rather exacting) standards.

Eugene is now considering his next move, possibly getting in someone to run the winery on his behalf, but one evening we set aside business issues to taste a few museum pieces wines from his extensive library (100 bottles of each wine from each year), which is carved out of the limestone hill on which the domaine stands.

With the sun setting over the causses (limestone plateaus) of Quercy, Eugene explained that in wine just as in life or business, there is no accounting for chance and the Syrah vines that he planted (along with Malbec, Merlot and Cab Franc for reds) did not produce good enough wine; with poor tannic structure, it was just one of those "terroir" things. So he decided to turn it into a traditional method pink fizz.

He picks a week or so early, carries out the first vinification himself and sends off the resulting base wine off secondary fermentation and aging in the chalk cellars.

What comes back is an elegant pink sparkler, one of the best non-Pinot pink fizzes I can remember tasting.

Made from the Rhone grape in Cahors using the Champagne method, it is typically iconoclastic in approach - and typically elegant to taste.

Tour de Belfort Methode Traditionelle Brut Rosé (NV, N/A) vibrant, crunchy red-berry fruits with Syrah spice; citrussy freshness and minerality with a structured, muscular core; harmonious, deft and elegant; very pure and very precise.

Very Good.

Fresh enough for an aperitif, it also has the substance to stand up to canapes such as crostini, goat's cheese tart or quiche.

Bancroft At Virgin Wines

Bancroft at Virgin Wines' Cambridge Tasting

As well as their own wines, Virgin also sell a selection from Bancroft whom I've always found impressive.

Here are four that I got to try at Virgin's Cambridge tasting earlier this year. With the exception of the Garnacha, they are in a higher price bracket than one would normally associate with Virgin.

Domaine Billaud-Simon Chablis 2016 (£22) pure and clean, rounded and supple with citrus and honey; lovely textbook Chablis. Good.

Hubert Lamy La Princee Saint-Aubin 2016 (£37) herbs, citrus and ripe lime marmalade; fresh, vibrant white Burgundy with excellent underpinnings. Will improve further with age. very Good.

Pablo Claro Garnacha 2017 (£10.99) organic, biodynamic Spanish red with a funky nose and ripe cherry fruit. Vibrant and pleasant in a slightly punky way.

Luigi Bosca Finca Los Nobles Malbec Verdot 2014 (£34.99) points-chasing, Argentinian red; something of a Parker-Points chaser. substantial with dark fruits, firm, ripe tannins and spice. Hefty yet deft. Technically very impressive; Very Good.