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.

A really unusual red wine: Fonte del Re Lacrima di Morro d'Alba

Are you stuck in a wine drinking rut? Sick of drinking stuff that tastes just a bit, well, winey? A bit dull? Here's a weird one to get you thinking while you're drinking. I suspect it might divide people into the "wow, that's really interesting" camp and the "wow, that's really weird" camp, so choose the right time to open it.

Twirl your glass around a bit, stick your nose in and it smells amazing. Very orangey; also peaches; blossom of some kind; lavender, maybe. Floral and perfumed like a hippy's patchouli-scented boudoir, in my mouth sensing a squirt of honey and lemon, a slice of orange peel.

In fact - thinking about this wine from memory now (I had it a couple of days ago) - I suspect if tasted blind you could be forgiven for thinking it a white rather than a red wine, what with all those citrussy and floral flavours, maybe a viognier or something like that.

Did I enjoy it? I loved the experience: the reminder you can get all these different scents and flavours inside one glass of wine, like an Aladdin's cave discovering new things as you work your way through it. With the debate about novelty wine in mind, it was drinkable too.

Fonte del Re Lacrima di Morro d'Alba, £11.99 from M&S

Two interesting cheap wines from Latitude Wine in Leeds

I bought these two from the brilliant Latitude Wine the other day. I've had the garnacha before - it's very good value - and I'm hoping the Paparuda pinot noir from Romania will be a bargain too.

It seems Eastern Europe is making a comeback, with a growing reputation for good value and interesting wines - I remember really enjoying a Hungarian pinot noir at Sam's Chop House last year - so I'm looking forward to trying this one.

Also, a reminder you don't have to shop at supermarkets to find cheap wine: with a Latitude loyalty card giving 10% off, the Paparuda pinot noir cost me just £6.75 and the Borsao garnacha was £5.85.

Clonakilla Hilltops Shiraz 2011 - a brilliant wine

We drank this in the last hour or two of the final day of 2013 - and it might just've been my favourite wine of the whole year.

It smelt and tasted floral and natural, somehow, reminding me a bit of the really good Spanish wines I've drunk. It made us think of weddings: fragrant wafts of perfume; bright flowers; deep, fruity cake.

A brilliant way to end the year, though with the bittersweet realisation there are very few wines of this class left in our rack now and they're not going to be replaced any time soon...

I bought it many months ago at Harvey Nichols, but it looks a great buy at Slurp for £16.95 if your new year budget can stretch to it.

Campo Viejo Rioja 1976

When you see a star, you're seeing the present and the past at the same time. You're seeing it now but what you also see is how it looked a long time ago.

We uncorked this old wine - the cork gently came apart - and poured it into glinting glasses, that very second smelling aromas from 37 years ago. Beautiful.

The liquid was light red and smelt leafy and herbal, a bit tomatoey, a smell of the earth from all that time ago; like beauty in a star that might already have burst. It tasted mellow and made me think of sage, of cloves and raspberries, and maybe of life and the passing of time.

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.

A brilliant rioja - Urbina Gran Reserva 1994

This wine was beautiful.

Somehow had an understated, cushioned power to it; the sweet smell of a library's old red leather chair.

Highly recommended - we got it for £14.99 from Majestic.

That's the kind of price you might pay for a forgettable house wine in a restaurant.

Wine - what's hot and what's not?

Your non-wine geek friend is over for a drink, you reach for a bottle of red from the fridge, and they laugh.

You can't blame them. Putting a red wine in the fridge probably looks a bit daft.

When wine isn't an obsession, you don't tend to do it. Wine's a rare treat you have on a Friday or Saturday night for a cosy night in, just one or two glasses, treating it in the same way as a brandy in front of the fire. A big, deep, rich and oaky red is perhaps what you fancy more often than not.

But then you get more fascinated by wine, and you drink it more often. And gradually, you don't mind your red wines served slightly cooler.

At least I think that's what I've found. Just lately - maybe it's the warmer weather - when I've opened a red wine it's tasted a bit soupy. It has a certain effect on the feel of a red wine in the mouth when it's too warm - a bit like taking a clothes hanger from out of a shirt and letting it crumple to the floor. Putting it in the fridge for even just 10 minutes seems to freshen it up again, gets the shape back.

Obviously as always it depends on the wine, the mood, the weather and the occasion and there are definitely no set rules. Each to their own; no two people will have exactly the same preferences in anything.

But it made me wonder - has my taste/palate evolved as I've got more into wine, or is it simply that when you drink the stuff a bit more often, refreshment becomes more important? As wine is more of an everyday drink, you want it to refresh you?

It also made me wonder about wine tastings, wine scores and wine awards.

Wine writers, rightly, are always telling us about the importance of serving wine in the right way to get it at its best - not just the right temperature, but also the right glass, letting it breathe, and so on. All of these variables are different for different wines. After all, it's the main selling point for wine glass makers and retailers - certain wines seem better in certain glasses. Different wines also taste better at different temperatures and some need more exposure to air than others.

I've never judged at a wine awards, so I don't know the ins and outs. But I gather that generally every wine is served in the same glass as all the others, and presumably at the same temperature. I don't know whether they're all given the same amount of time to breathe.

At first glance that might look fair, as you're treating them all the same. But equal opportunities isn't about taking a uniform approach. Think about an office building - to give everyone the same opportunities you need to provide different options. A ramp at the entrance; the chance to adjust our chairs to different heights, and so on.

Think about the best drama you've ever seen on the telly. For me, maybe The Killing or Six Feet Under. Amazing TV, but we all need the volume turned up to different levels to appreciate it equally.

Different wines, even within the same category, might taste at their best when given different treatment.

d'Arenberg The High Trellis Cabernet Sauvignon 2009

What a beauty, and only for about £7.50 as I picked this up in the recent 25% off promotion at Morrisons (it's usually a little over a tenner).

On first sniff you know this is a big one - I seem to drink fewer "big" reds these days, making it stand out all the more - but in contrast to some full-bodied wines that you might tire of after half a glass, this just seemed to get better and better.

Full-on, yes, but it's beautiful, pure, concentrated stuff, and with a lovely minty note in there - which all makes me think it would be brilliant drunk with some rare lamb.

Love this wine: Emilio Valerio 2010, from Harvey Nichols in Leeds

This is so good.

Without wanting to sound too poncey, it tastes like it came from the earth - all earthy and pure; the kind of stuff natural wine fans talk about.

Aromas of rocks, violets and blueberries. Fresh in the mouth, a slip of acidity.

You somehow know it's been made with care.

Well worth pouring this one into a jug for a while before drinking - any aroma you don't want should flutter away, leaving behind the deliciously pure drink. I remember going to an inspiring tasting once at Gaucho in Leeds led by Phil Crozier, and he used the great analogy of opening a teenager's bedroom door to get some air in. That's what you want to do here.

Interesting side note - I don't think I've ever seen as much sediment around a cork as there was with this particular bottle on opening.

I bought the Emilio Valerio 2010 - from Navarra in northern Spain - for around £11.50 at Harvey Nichols in Leeds.

Handmade Pasta and Italian Wine Night with Yorkshire Wine School

I really enjoyed this event, which I attended as a guest of Yorkshire Wine School. A cookery demonstration from chef Tom Guise and a tasting of six Italian wines with Laura Kent – a welcome glass of Prosecco, three more whites and two reds.

The pasta was absolutely superb. If I'm honest I'm a huge fan of plain old dried pasta dressed in a good sauce – I love pasta – and sometimes find the fresh stuff to be a slight disappointment, but this was just brilliant. Linguine with clams was excellent; later, a small bowl of spiced squash ravioli in sage butter was an absolute beauty - really supremely good, top-notch stuff. Very impressive.

On to the wines. Of the whites, the slightly off-dry Roero Arneis Malvira 2010 (£10.99, Waitrose) from Piedmont was my favourite, evoking warmer climes as it swished around with the clams like a leisurely breaking tide.

My stand-out red - and favourite wine of the night - was the Langhe Nebbiolo Renato Ratti 2010 (M&S, £13.99), again from Piedmont. I love this kind of thing: big, earthy, savoury aromas mellowing and melding together, just calling out for a fireside swirl in a nice big glass and, I imagine, it'd be great alongside a deep meaty stew or a joint of meat falling from the bone.

The other wines we tasted on the night all went down well: the softly textured Greco Sannio 2011 (£6.95, The Wine Society) white wine from Campania represents very good value; the Primitivo A Mano 2008 (Latitude Wines & Spirits, £8.99) a touch on the sweeter and jammier side of things for me but went down very easily; and the Prosecco Collezione NV Brut (£7.99, Waitrose) simply did what Prosecco does and nicely relaxed the tasting muscles for the main event.

As well as the food and wine tasting, an interesting feature of the night was a talk about the 'flavour wheel' and the principles of food and wine matching. Laura said that, while different people will have their own tastes in terms of the kinds of drinks they like to match with different foods, there are certain effects that always tend to take place when you combine different things. For example, eating salty food can make a wine taste less bitter, it can play down the acid and can make the wine feel smoother or "bigger" in the mouth - certainly the clam linguine eaten along with a slurp of Soave Classico Pieropan 2011 (Latitude Wines & Spirits, £12.99) appeared to give the wine a bit more richness, a bit more body than when I tasted it on its own.

It's all really interesting stuff – a good reminder of the fact that, yes foods and drinks objectively have flavour properties, but how we taste or experience those flavours will vary depending on when we taste them. As well as the chemistry that comes into play as in this example of salty foods, there are also psychological factors that sway how we experience flavours. Think of the "holiday effect" when you bring back a case of wine that seemed delicious at the time, but then you taste it when you get back home…

Oh, and one final point, this was also the first time I'd had the chance to taste monosodium glutamate (MSG) in its naked state. A strange experience! Converting flavour experiences into words is notoriously tricky anyway, but with the umami, savoury type thing that MSG is all about, it's almost impossible to put into words. It doesn't taste of a whole lot on its own - although it does taste of something - it's more like a bass note that delivers a bit of oomph to everything else; enhances other flavours as opposed to adding something immediately definable in itself. Parmesan cheese and soy sauce are packed full of it.

Bourgueil Les Cent Boisselees 2003 - cabernet franc from the Loire

I love how a wine that was made 10 years ago can still retain some freshness. More mellow and less lively perhaps than it once was - slippers on, sitting back and settling down for its retirement - but with its own qualities gained over time that a young wine has yet to experience.

This one tasted of strawberries, raspberries and cherries just before they've been left too long, easing out a little juice. It also smells and tastes a bit like vine tomatoes. Got this for somewhere close to a tenner from Majestic.

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.

Berrys' Extra Ordinary Claret '09 and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

I've just finished reading a very good novel called The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, which is about an elderly gentleman who sets off on an unlikely walk from south-west to north-east England with the aim of saving the life of a terminally ill friend who is in a hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

There's a line in the book where Harold says something to the effect of "we're the post-war generation - we don't talk up our achievements". There's a theme running throughout the book that ordinary people might go unnoticed because at first sight they may seem unremarkable, but beneath the surface they're of course extraordinary in one way or another. As the proverb says: "Be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle." Everyone is so alike, and yet unique. Seemingly trivial things can have the most meaning. Something understated, less obvious, can have quiet depths that are all the more meaningful or rewarding when reached.

This kind of classic red wine isn't loud or showy, but the more you give it the chance to open up, the more you gain from it. Everything in balance.

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.

Good value Christmas Wine

Happy New Year!

Here's a quick round-up of some of the very good wines we had over Christmas and New Year. In the spirit of the current financial climate, we weren't exactly necking the Cristal this year. Not that we ever do. Some good value wines lately though.






First up, some Portillo Malbec. Actually, we had this in early December. I remember making a really poor political/geek's joke in my head about this wine - given its name - thinking it might be harsh in its youth but somehow meld into something smooth and easygoing with age. Got this for £7 a bottle on offer at Majestic.










A few days later we went to the brilliant Stockeld Park Christmas Adventure. And then, back home late after a crisp and wintry cold day out, we braved a Morrisons £10 meal deal. For that, you get a main, side and dessert plus a bottle of wine. Yep, that's all a tenner for two people. You don't expect a Michelin starred experience. Then again I bet loads of Michelin starred chefs sometimes eat a McDonald's. Yes you can cook something proper for far less and spend the difference on a real wine to go with it. Blah blah. I agree. But that kind of misses the point here. Horses for courses. It did the job at that moment. That's the wine to the right - origin unknown but bottled in Madrid, I remember from the label. That's about all I remember of it.


Now for some pictures of the Christmas Adventure at Stockeld Park. Why not; it was great. A magical fairy wonderland in a forest; ski trail; ice rink; Santa's grotto.

Back to the wine...

Le XV du President from Laithwaites, received as a present. A hefty 15% - some wine fans might predictably retread the well-trodden ground about high ABVs here - but there's a good amount of freshness here to balance it all out. It's good, and I can see why it's popular.

This next one was very, very good. Been so impressed with a number of Spanish reds around the £10 mark lately. I bought this at Harvey Nichols in Leeds and I think it was about £11. Lovely.

Speaking of Spanish reds, this next one - a 1994 Rioja - was a New Year's Eve treat. Again, only around a tenner for the bottle. Before you say that's a lot for a bottle of wine - go out on New Year's Eve and you'll pay that for two rubbish drinks after battling through a sweaty queue for half an hour. Well worth it for an old wine (old compared to the vast majority of wines we drink).

I think drinking an old wine isn't just about the aroma and taste. This liquid was made from grapes that grew when I was - ahem.. a bit younger. It's then relaxed in the bottle for almost 20 years while I've done stuff in my life, trivial and poignant, before it found its way into my hands and was opened and drunk by me and my wife in the hours leading up to 2013. Lovely stuff - mellow but still amazingly fresh. On the border of the past and the future. I'm really glad we had it.

 I can sense I'm going on a bit now. Here's another good value Spanish wine. Got it for £8 from Majestic on offer. Again if you expect a big wine drowning in over-baked fruit here then you're way off the mark: this is fresh and tasty, with a balancing level of acidity that keeps your lips coming back to the glass as if drawn by a magnet.

A bargain cheap red wine – Aldi Côtes du Rhône 2011 at £3.65

Côtes du Rhône, £3.65 at Aldi

I think this is brilliant value at £3.65. Yes, if you can afford a tenner for your "house wine" then fair enough, but if like many people you don't have loads of cash and you want a decent red wine for glugging on the sofa, I think this is better than many bottles you'd get for five or six quid.

At this price I'd expect a wine to go one of two ways: too sweet and jammy if from the New World, or completely dilute and lacklustre if, as in this case, it came from the Old World. But this manages to avoid both – it's got nice red fruit flavours, it's balanced and it's easy drinking.

At this price it's obviously not going to be amazingly complex, but it's like one of those great value house red wines you'd be served in a carafe at a low-key French bistro. So it works a treat with an easy midweek meal – a ready meal maybe, a pizza, something else that takes minutes to make. It went nicely with pasta and pesto.

Maybe we should be concerned at how anyone can sell a wine this cheap. Who's losing out somewhere along the line? But then again, there are not necessarily any ethical guarantees if you splash out silly money either.

When you think of clothes I do cringe when I see Primark or Asda selling tops for, say, £3 – sweatshops come to mind – but then again expensive high fashion ain't necessarily ethical either. And perhaps there's a lot of corruption in expensive wine too – drinkers of fine wine will have to be sure their own bottles are super ethical before they criticise poorer shoppers who have less choice in what they buy. But you do wonder what the producers get from wine at this price.

Anyway purely from a bargain point of view this is a great buy. It also gets better after it's been open for a bit, so maybe try pouring it into a jug for the full Parisian bistro effect to get a bit of air to it, or just leave it in your glass for 10 minutes or so while your food's cooking.

Freddie King's Ain't No Sunshine and some nice Italian red wine

How good is this; the epitome of cool. Freddie King doing a version of Ain't No Sunshine.

Freddie King tragically died at 42. I love the story on his Wikipedia page saying he would drink bloody marys "in lieu of solid food so as not to waste time when setting up shows".

Copertino 2008

I think this video calls for a bittersweet, dusky, honest Italian red wine. Something that tastes real.

Really enjoyed this Copertino 2008 Masseria Monaci the other night, which I bought for a bargain £6.39 a bottle (when buying two Italian wines) at Majestic. Was perfect with a mushroom, lemon and thyme risotto topped with a bit of creamy, earthy cheese.

I find it's the amazing savoury aromas draw you in with many good Italian reds, an earthiness; olives, herbs. I think I once saw these kinds of wines described as walking through an olive grove in and out of dusky shadows.

On first opening, this wine smelt of history, of old antique furniture, which seemed to mellow and give way to other things.

Virtual winetasting: Palataia Pinot Noir 2011

Palataia Pinot Noir 2011

I took part in a virtual tasting of this German pinot noir with @JacquiWine on Twitter, which was great. We simultaneously tasted the wine and tweeted our thoughts, comparing notes.

I really enjoyed the wine, although Jacqui felt it had just something on the finish she wasn't 100% keen on. Perhaps a gamey or meaty note.

And as she pointed out it has a slightly spicy edge to it, which I definitely picked up on in the aroma: a curryish smell almost, like cinnamon. Though with another glass I decided it was the smell of a bonfire.

Quite a savoury wine we both agreed, and I thought it was a bit irony, with some strawberry fruit flavours and, daft as it might sound, the smell of a damp forest. Lots of different smells and flavours to pick up on. I liked it.

As Tim Atkin pointed out, it's very good value at £8.99 from M&S.

An Argentinian Wine Tasting with Gaucho's director of wine Phil Crozier

This was a great event at Gaucho's Leeds restaurant, not just because of the wines, but also thanks to the knowledge and enthusiasm of our host, Phil Crozier. He has that great combination of being extremely knowledgeable and passionate about a subject but with an ability to speak about it without pretentiousness.

He's an interesting character: having started out as a musician and then going into sound engineering, he sort of drifted into the wine trade. He modestly says a lot of it was down to being in the right place at the right time: it was the mid-90s and Argentinian wine exports were just taking off, enabling him to transform Gaucho's wine list. Phil says he essentially worked through a list of wine importers, going from A-Z, and ended up with a room packed full of sample bottles to work through all on his own. Not knowing much about wine at the time didn't stop him: the best way to learn was to taste, taste and taste again. Here he is now as a successful restaurant chain's head of wine and a leading authority on Argentinian wine.

On to the wine. This tasting was all about showing what Argentina can do aside from Malbec. Not because there's anything wrong with the country's Malbec, far from it, but to show that the country isn't a one-trick pony and to highlight a growing appreciation in Argentina that different grape varieties can thrive in different areas.

We tasted five wines, one white and four reds, and my two favourites were a Cabernet Franc and a Tannat. Two varieties that are less common than Malbec on the supermarket shelves - certainly in the Argentina section - but I think they showed really encouraging signs that there is a hell of a lot more to come from Argentinian wine.

Catena Cabernet Franc 2008, from the Uco Valley in Mendoza, shows the kind of elegance that Argentinian wines can achieve: sprigs of mint and eucalyptus on top of fresh red fruit, creating a really fresh, balanced mouthful. No surprise the 2009 vintage won gold at the recent Decanter World Wine Awards.

Probeta Tannat 2010, from fruit grown at an altitude of 1,750 metres up in the region of Salta, is a beguiling wine with herbal aromas you can't quite put your finger on - rosemary and thyme and sage, perhaps, with some blueberry fruit. The mouthfeel is a touch firm - Phil pointed out you get a sense of green tea on the finish due to the tannin - so this could soften into an even more impressive wine in a couple of years. He also points out that in Salta you have perhaps 50 days extra ripening compared to Bordeaux, giving this tough, temperamental grape more time to ripen into something beautiful. He believes Tannat may well represent the future for the north of Argentina, and with this one I can see why. Really, really good.

The other three grape varieties we sampled were Torrontes, Petit Verdot and Bonarda. Seleccion G Michel Torino Torrontes 2010 was a bit too richly perfumed for my personal taste, but many will love the freshness and floral flavours of elderflower and slightly sweet lime marmalade. Emma Zuccardi Bonarda, another Decanter 2011 medal winner, smelt quite big and alcoholic in the glass, with a menthol aroma too. In the mouth it was packed with jammy fruit that was a touch sweet for my taste but nevertheless a good example of what this originally Italian grape, the second most planted in Argentina, can create. Finally the Pinca Decero Petit Verdot 2006 was a big dark wine with stocky legs that stuck to the inside of the glass when you gave it a swirl - a real winter warmer. When speaking about the aroma, Phil evoked childhood memories of pencil shavings in the classroom, and he was spot on.

It was a really inspiring, enjoyable tasting.