A tasting of Foncalieu wines hosted by Yorkshire Wine School

Tasting Foncalieu wines with Yorkshire Wine School

A fancy Big Mac style burger from Original Fry Up Material

This was a good way of cheering up a Monday night in February: tasting eight sunny wines from the south of France. From work I take a train from Bradford to Leeds, call in for a tasty hipster burger at Trinity Kitchen and then head up to the Radisson Hotel for the tasting. I'm always excited trying wines that are new to me. Life's all about retaining that excitement for new things isn't it?




The wines are from Foncalieu, a big cooperative of more than 1,000 wine estates, whose winemaker and marketing supremo Isabelle Pangault appears in person to help bring them to life. Yorkshire Wine School's Laura Kent is also on hand to provide expert titbits; Laura is hosting the event and has kindly let me experience it as a guest.

French wine often projects an image of bringing the landscape to the glass - terroir - but I'm interested to hear Isabelle talk a bit more pragmatically about how Foncalieu's agronomist (soil and plant man) Gabriel Ruetsch tailors the wines to the market where they sell them; in other words they look at what sort of stuff British drinkers tend to like and they try to satisfy that demand. That's not to say they aren't reflecting the land though - they have lots of different landscapes and microclimates to choose from, a mosaic of terroir as Isabelle nicely puts it, giving them scope to create different styles of wine. And it is encouraging to hear Isabelle emphasise that it's elegance and freshness they're looking for, in other words they're keen not to obscure the pure fruit with too much oak. The more I'm a wine fanatic, it seems the more I enjoy fresh tasting wines over big oaky ones.

I really enjoyed these wines - in particular the three from Chateau Haut Gleon we tried, especially the white - and it'd be great to try them again with a meal which I bet would make them even better. Here's a quick run-through of my thoughts as I tasted them on the night:

Le Versant Viognier 2013, Pays d'Oc
Smells champagney; tastes like peach, lemon and lime with elderflower freshness. Reminds me of vinho verde.

Le Versant Pinot Noir 2013, Pays d'Oc
Smells of strawberry, or maybe raspberry, and mint. Easy-drinking, a touch dilute?, round and soft texture, nice and fresh.

Griset Sauvignon Gris 2014, Pays d'Oc
Fresh, light rose coloured, a nice refreshing summer drink. Agree with the suggestion of watermelon, rose water and rhubarb from the YWS and Foncalieu tasting notes.

Les Illustres 2012, Coteaux d'Enserune IGP
Smells of Marmite, blackberries, oak and leather. Also brings to mind blackberries in the mouth with black plums and parsley and coriander! Dry finish, would be good with slow cooked beef I think.

Le Lien 2012, Minervois AOP
Smells great - to me of liquorice and lavender - which mixes with coffee and cigar smoke in the mouth. Tastes of expensive oak. Again would be good with beef. Enjoyed this more with a slice of the Friends of Ham salami provided on the table.

Chateau Haut Gleon Blanc 2013, Corbieres AOC
Really like this wine. Reminds me of an Australian semillon. Tastes of nuts to me - hazelnuts, almonds, pistachio with apricots. Really good.

Chateau Haut Gleon Rose 2013, Corbieres AOC
Also really enjoyed this one. Light but with a faint peppery spice, bit more to it than a standard light rose. Tastes and smells of strawberry and pepper, fresh tomato and gooseberry.

Chateau Haut Gleon Rouge 2009, Corbieres AOC
Smells of blueberry and blackberry or blackcurrant and scrubby herbs, rosemary and thyme, with a taste of liquorice.

As I understand it, Le Versant wines will cost around £7.99-8.99 in shops; Les Illustres and Le Lien around £25 (or £60 in a restaurant); and the Chateau Haut Gleon wines around £23-25 each.

25% off supermarket wine: Terres de Galets 2012 Cotes du Rhone for £4 and McWilliam's Semillon at under £7

McWilliam's semillon and Terres de Galets Cotes du Rhone

It seems like all the supermarkets are offering 25% off six bottles of wine at the moment - I've taken advantage in recent weeks at Tesco and Sainsbury's.

McWilliam's Mount Pleasant Elizabeth 2005 is really brilliant at £6.75 a bottle, a proper white wine that warranted its original £9 price in the first place. Speaking of real wine, that's how Jancis Robinson described the red I went for to complete the Tesco case with the McWilliam's semillon - Finest Somontano, a Spanish region that was new to me and an unshowy wine that had a savoury finish, like tea without sugar.

Then over at Sainsbury's this week I picked up some of the Terres de Galets 2012, a Cotes du Rhone that makes for a good house red at the daft price of just over £4 a bottle when you buy six. It's a wine I like, especially for the price, but you don't have to take my word for it as a quick Google search shows it's won a medal or two.

Morrisons, Waitrose and M&S are also currently offering similar 25% reductions on their wine selections, so it's well worth stocking up on a few bottles. Depending on your finances, you can pick up some good cheap wines or you can take the chance to try something more interesting than you could usually afford.

These offers are great for consumers - but not without concern for independent wine shops which presumably lose out on a fair amount of trade as a result.

Vidal-Fleury Cotes du Rhone 2009 on offer at Majestic

I enjoyed the slightly retro label on this one; could imagine them quaffing this at Abigail's Party. Not a bad wine at around £7 on offer at Majestic.

Steak & chips with French red

My version of a January detox: steak, chips, a glass of southern French red wine. Hopefully the French paradox really does exist.

Secret Wine: The Tasting

There is a great emphasis on terroir in French wine - the concept that wine should have a sense of place, that it should taste of where it comes from - but this doesn't mean that wines from each region necessarily have common defining characteristics that give away their identity in a blind tasting: there are so many variables in winemaking. But each region does of course tend towards a certain style. And what wine lover could resist the challenge of uncovering some secret wines?

So, I tasted the three mystery bottles, mulled it over and posted my answers on the Secret Wine site. It was really enjoyable tasting the wines without knowing anything about them, trying to work out where they came from.

There has since been a message posted by the Secret Wine team to say that a number of bloggers (from various countries) have entered their votes - but as yet no-one has provided the three correct answers. Zut alors.

Here are my findings on the mystery wines.

Wine #079
This was the first wine I tasted, and it was very impressive - it turned out to be my favourite of the three. A really classy wine. Pouring it into the glass it was very dark, almost inky black in colour (triggering a thought of Cahors down in the south west of France, famed for its so-called 'black wines'). An enticing aroma of blackcurrant and plums with a raisiny, almost brandy-like undertone precedes a gorgeously balanced taste of slightly sweet purple fruit, very smooth, powerful yet with a soft mouthfeel. This wine was so good I wondered about Bordeaux, St Emilion perhaps, but opted in the end for the Languedoc region. My answer was Grands Vins de Languedoc - although in retrospect a more specific answer may have been Minervois.

Wine #390
This was the most powerful of the three and I'm fairly certain it was at least 14%ABV. Again a very dark red, purple colour, but this time with an almost syrupy full body. A port-like aroma with meaty and minty notes, with more menthol and herby flavours and some oak coming through in the mouth, with a slightly overpowering alcoholic hit. I toyed with it perhaps being a Chateauneuf du Pape, but settled on Cahors, partly because it reminded me slightly of an Argentinian malbec - a grape common to Cahors (albeit known as Auxerrois or Cot).

Wine #714
Just a touch thinner than the other two this one, and not as powerful on the nose. Aromas of raspberry, blackberry, blueberry and black pepper were followed up by raspberry and blackberry on the palate. Fairly easy drinking. In terms of grapes, I half wondered about pinot noir, or cabernet perhaps, but it reminded me of a Rhone GSM (grenache-syrah-mourvedre), so that was my thinking when I opted for Cotes du Rhone.

It'll be interesting to find out how close or far away I am. Looking at other people's answers on the Secret Wine site, most have had similar thinking around the south of France. But who knows. That full bodied #390, for instance, could even be Californian or Australian. I'll report the results when they're announced. We don't yet know who wins the prizes if nobody calls all three wines correctly.

Capucine, Les Ollieux 2009 (£8.49, Oddbins)

This is a superb wine from the Corbieres appellation down in the Languedoc in the south of France. It's a region that traditionally had a reputation for workmanlike full-bodied reds, but I'm increasingly finding it to be the source of some brilliant value wines that are sometimes similar in style to ripe Chilean reds, thanks to the hot sunshine the area enjoys.

This wine - a blend of Carignan, Syrah, Grenache, Cabernet and Merlot - has an alluring dusky aroma of faint bonfire smoke and savoury olives, followed up by bags of pure concentrated fruit on the palate.

A delicious and complex wine, and nicely packaged too. The tasting note on the back label says: "Capucine is a funny wine with flavours of cherry and red fruits, soft spices and a round full bodied palate." Funny in a good way.