Canned Wine has all the allure of a tin of Baked Beans

 I like to think that I am an open minded fellow so I thought that I would taste some canned wine. Canned wine is a new development. The wine comes in 250 ml cans which are a third of standard 750 ml bottle. 

I went down the local supermarket and selected a wine which I knew quite well, Terre di Faiano Primitivo Organic Italian red from  Puglia, but in a bottle.

The price of the wine in a can was £3.79, but this has been temporarily discounted to £2.79, which meant that 750 ml would cost you £9.97. This compares to the cost of a glass-bottle of what appears to be the same wine at £9.99. 

https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/shop/browse/groceries/beer_wine_and_spirits/wine/wine_in_a_can

However, what about  the taste of the wine? The canned wine is non-vintage, it tastes good but has nowhere near the concentration and complexity of the bottled  vintage wine.  My wife and I enjoyed the wine with some beef stew but we both agreed that the canned wine had nowhere near the quality of its bottled sister. Also, it was nowhere near the value for money.

Terre di Faiano Primitivo Organic Red from the bottle is one of my favourite wines; I often buy a bottle when I visit the supermarket and I agree fully with its description. It is easily worth £10 a bottle and I enjoy this wine more than some bottles of  pricier French and Italian wine. A recent vintage  will age for a few years more, but I am always tempted to drink it straight away.

https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/terre-di-faiano-primitivo-organico-puglia/607989-348541-348542?msclkid=2a56ad2a225912e2a556ced6a102ca88&gclsrc=3p.ds

What are the advantages of tinned wine? For me there are few unless I am going on a rare picnic or more rarely travelling to a football match. At home, I am not going to drink wine from a tin or a can especially if it is of lower quality  and at the same price as bottled wine.

There are advantages for the wine producers who can now sell inferior wine dressed up in fancy branded bottles at higher prices.

For the supermarkets there are the advantages of lower transport and storage costs. They also benefit from selling less costly wine, for them, at higher prices to the consumer so it is a nice little earner.

The wine suppliers claim that tin cans are better for the environment, but probably most of the discarded tins end up in land fill.

I have nothing against tinned products and I often eat tinned baked beans with my breakfast at a local café and enjoy them.  I also enjoy a can of Guinness at  home but prefer to go to a pub and have a pint drawn from a barrel. 

Let's face it, drinking a classy vintage wine from the bottle, and sharing it with friends over a  meal cannot be beaten.  Tinned or canned wine has all the allure of baked beans and we must know its place.

Dry January again

 Once again we are being treated to nudge politics. The healthy living lobby is trying to get everyone to reduce their consumption of wine and other drinks by saying that it is worthwhile not to drink in January. I am not going to listen to this. If, I felt that I was drinking too much then I would not just give up for January, but I would give up entirely. I shall stick to my routine of not drinking at all for two consecutive days a week. Last Sunday at a dinner party I went "over the top" by drinking a whole bottle of wine. I did not wake up with a hangover, my skin had not gone pale and I did not have a bad conscience. Common sense now tells me to give my liver a rest and not to drink until my next dinner party which will be next Sunday. My wife will do this too without any prompting from me and we won't even discuss it. I believe that we have both got a healthy attitude to drinking and that we are not in danger of damaging our health or becoming alcoholics, neither of us drink and drive.

Of course there will always be problem drinkers even if alcohol was banned. I feel, however, that there is no reason to be accusatory to people who simply want to enjoy a glass of wine or two with their meal and their friends.

Chȃteau Ducru-Beaucaillou 2001red Bordeaux Deuxièmes Crus (Second Growth)

We had some guests around for duck stew and I thought I would open a decent bottle of wine to go with it; in their honour; Chȃteau Ducru-Beaucaillou produce some of my favourite red wines from St Julien in the Medoc. I carefully decanted the wine before they arrived. The wine was excellent even if it was not one of their best years and it cost me a pretty penny: to buy a bottle now will cost you well over 100 GBP.

The wine has its own particular taste but it represents the terroir very well. If you tasted it blind you would easily tell that it is a Bordeaux wine if nothing else, and you would also tell that it is superior to most wines from across the globe. Whether it is worth the price is debatable as you are almost certainly paying for the name and some of the better years of this wine are held as investments. The wine went down great with the duck and I enjoyed it enormously.

After finishing the duck and the Bordeaux I opened a bottle of Alain Mathias Epineuil 2018 from Bourgogne. This is one of my favourite wines which comes from the north of the region. The soil here is almost unique to France and is based on limestone marls. My wife and I can recognise the wines from this area when we taste them blind. This is not because we are great wine tasters but because we have drunk so many of these wine, and some of my wife's family come from the area. 

https://www.carteblanchewines.com/alainmathias

https://domainealainmathias.fr/nos-revendeurs/

For me the Epineuil is of similar quality to the Bordeaux which costs much much more owing to its reputation as an investment wine. The Bordeaux will keep longer and will develop further in the bottle.

The Epineuil is exceptional value for money and its quality is easily comparable with the best of wines.

Alan Mathias produces award winning wines.

I can't decide which red wines I prefer Bordeaux or Bourgogne and I suppose that it depends on my mood. One thing is certain you can still find high quality wines at reasonable prices  provided to do your research , use local knowledge and visit the wine producers to taste their products. This is true no matter which country you visit.

https://domainealainmathias.fr/nos-revendeurs/

As an apéritif we drank 2013 Marques de la Concordia 'MM' Gran Reserva Brut Nature Cava. At 11 pounds a bottle this dry sparkling wine from Catalonia is a pure star and can hold its on against many Champagne brands. 

https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/marquis+de+la+concordia+mm+grand+rsrv+brut+nature+catalonia+cava+spain/2013/uk

It pays to look at the label before opening the bottle Chậteau Lagrézette Cahors 2017

 The other night I quickly grabbed a bottle of red wine from the rack without looking at the label and opened the bottle. I had opened a bottle of Chậteau Lagrézette Cahors "Malbec" 2017 AOP. The wine tasted superb but even at 5years old it still would have improved and matured in the bottle. The Cahors appellation is situated in the South West of France and they have been growing vines and producing wine since Roman times. The appellation red wines must be  produced from a minimum of 70% Malbec grapes, but producers can mix Merlot and Tannat  grapse into the wine. I suspect that  Lagrézette is produced from nearly 100% Malbec.  The Malbec grape produces well structured wines which have a high level of tannin which promotes the longevity of the wine.

This wine is superbe even though we should have kept it longer. Never mind the bottle was opened and we had to drink it. It had all of the flavour of the appellation and it lingered well on the tongue; it was fruity, concentrated and complex and had all the attributes of a great wine.

This is the first time I opened up a bottle of wine without looking at the label. My wife had finished cooking our chicken and expected to be served wine. Cahors goes well with rabbit stew and if you ever visit Cahors you will find at least one restaurant serving this delicacy along with the wine for excellent dining.

You will pay a good price of over £25 for  Lagrézette even if you can find it. Our wine was a present from France and it would be cheaper to buy it there. Whatever the price I can highly recommend this wine as good value for money. I really should have saved it to drink with the friend who gave it to us, but I think she will forgive me.

https://www.chateau-lagrezette.com/en/products/chateau-lagrezette

Wine and drought and other types of severe weather

 Winemakers in France and other countries are celebrating this year's hot weather and the very early harvest. This is especially true in the UK where the hot sunshine is also ripening the grapes early and providing a high quality harvest.

Wine makers should not be celebrating too soon, as the prospects for grape growing could be taking a turn for the worse in the near future. Climate change is happening faster than expected. We are all going to suffer the effects of severe weather owing to extreme weather. Not only is excessive drought bad for grape growing but also excessive rain.

With regard to drought, irrigation is not regarded as an ideal solution the vines may produce undesirable higher yields which reduce the quality of the grapes. Irrigation can also damage the soil itself as it often results  in excessive salinity which can only be cleared by natural rainfall. In fact, countries like France and Spain ban irrigation although this policy is now under review. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrigation_in_viticulture

If, drought is a danger to viticulture then so is  persistent heavy rain which can damage the soil in the vineyard and damage  the grapes in the form of mold.

Extreme weather is also affecting the vineyards in the form of hail.

Viticulture requires a fine climatic balance of sun, humidity and rainfall. Frosts at the right time of year also help to kill insect pests in the vineyard.

About fifteen years ago I read a book by Fred Pearce, a climate journalist, called the "The Last Generation" which journals the dire consequences of human induced climate change.  I was rather sceptical then that I would see the his predictions come to fruition in my life time, but I was wrong. This book is worth reading. We could lose our fine wines altogether if we our not careful and be faced with the prospect of drinking industrialised wine made from grapes grown in gigantic irrigated cloches - no thanks.

The first page of Fred Pearce's book quotes James Hansen a climate researcher of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies - made in 2005:

"We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption".

The heatwave and wine

 Recently ,we went to a wedding in the Champagne region of France; right in the middle of a heatwave. When we arrived at the château where the ceremony took place our car thermometer registered 38 degrees centigrade and it then got hotter. Can you imagine tending the vineyards in 38 degrees plus heat and which are much hotter in direct sunlight?

At the wedding ceremony,  I spoke to a champagne producer who is a friend of the extended family.  He said that the wine harvests are getting earlier owing to warmer temperatures and that the extra warmth is, at the moment, improving the quality of the grapes along with their sugar content. He is expecting a good harvest of high quality grapes this year. The harvest will probably be in late August.

Higher average temperatures are good for the wine industry at the moment especially in more northern climes.

But what are the prospects for the future? Our wine producer friend was not too happy for the future and within the next 15 to 20 years champagne producers will be considering the change to different grape varieties which are better able to withstand  the increasing average temperatures. Growers will increasingly face difficult decisions as average temperatures continue to rise.

It is time for everyone to consider what could happen as a result of man made climate change. It is not just the future of the wine industry at stake: if we are not careful there will be fewer wine drinkers chasing fewer and fewer wines. 

Bag in a box wine etc.

 Recently, we had a small party at our house and bought some bag in the box wine. I don't know why we bothered we had plenty of wine in bottles, perhaps we were thinking of convenience over costs. Needless to say, that this mistake left us with plenty of wine to drink with our food. As we don't drink too much the bags in the box seem to hold endless supplies of wine. The wine goes down OK with dinner but usually I have a glass to spare for drinking later on its own but this usually gets poured down the sink. Where is the value for money in this: have I been fooling myself? Yes, I have.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wine+in+a+tetra+pack&t=chromentp&atb=v314-1&iax=images&ia=images

I don't find wine in the box satisfying; the quality just isn't there: good quality wine is only found in bottles as far as I am concerned. The same can be said for wine in a can and wine in a  tetra-pack square box for convenient storage and serving. No thanks, I'd rather pay more but drink less, as long as it is wine of genuine good quality and real value for money.