Today, it’s the Big English Wine Good Friday! Here are 5 reasons to get into the swing of things, warming up for tonight #TheBIGEnglishWineGoodFriday…
5 Reasons to Love English Wine
The Best Wine and Spirit Matches with Chocolate
In the lead up to Easter, we’ve been matching some of our favourite drinks with chocolate, where each benefits the other. This is no mean feat. The decision on the type of drink, and which expression of that type, has stimulated much discussion. We eventually came to an agreement and think you’ll find these chocolate and drink matches as delicious as we do.
White Chocolate – Milky bar eggs - Moscato d’Asti
White chocolate can be stickily sweet and there is only so much one can consume in one sitting. But we have found a way to eat more of it! White wine has great acidity which can cut through the fat and sweetness that’s delicious in white chocolate. Alongside the chocolate, the wine creates lots of fresh flavours like apricots, honey and citrus. With everything in balance, you can chomp your way through a few more bars.
ABV: 5.5%%
Size: 750ml
Buy the wine now for £8.95
Buy the chocolate for £6.99
Milky – Maltesers truffles - Old Pulteney 12 year old
Maltesers truffles are a guilty secret for all The Three Drinkers, and so is the whisky which goes with them extremely well. Old Pulteney 12 year old has a salinity that counterbalances all that lovely honeycomb. With lots of complexity, it keeps the palate clean, lively and ready to take on more chocolate!
ABV: 40%
Size: 700ml
Buy the whisky now for £27.50
Buy the chocolates now for £8.99
50% Cocoa – Cadbury’s dairy milk egg - Aberfeldy 12 year old
There are so many whiskies that match well with dairy milk chocolate, so we had to think long and hard about which one to suggest. We needed a whisky that wouldn’t take over from the milky chocolate, but would still be characterful enough to keep the Drinkers happy. The whisky that we all agreed did this job the best was Aberfeldy 12 year old; a super-fruity and easy going whisky, it can also be matched with fruit and nut milk chocolate.
ABV: 40%
Size: 700ml
Buy the whisky here for £32.90
Buy the chocolate here for £18.99
70% Cocoa – Port - Callebaut dark chocolate
With the bitterness of dark chocolate, we feel there needs to be a little sweetness in the drink to best match it, but the drink also needs lots of flavour to balance and acidity to keep the palate fresh. Port did the trick. Select Vintage or Late Bottled Vintage in preference to a tawny port. Our favourite was Warre’s Late Bottled Vintage 2007.
ABV: 20%
Size: 750ml
Buy the port now for £27.95
Buy the chocolate now for £27.75
All rounder – Quality Street - Amarone
When The Three Drinkers think of holiday chocolate, Quality Street always comes to mind: a smorgasbord of milk and dark chocolate, nuts, soft fillings and fudge. That’s quite a mix for any drink to contend with! A wine with some sweetness, lots of fruit and acidity would be needed, so look for a ‘ripasso’ style of red wine, with big red/dark fruit balance and plenty of acidity. We particularly like Riondo Amarone della Valpolicella 2015 for a great value Amarone. A treat wine, it punches well above its price tag and certainly deserves the biggest tin of chocolates.
ABV: 15%
Size: 750ml
Buy the wine now for £22.95
Buy the chocolate now for £17.98
Mint Chocolate – After Eights – Mezcal
Mint chocolates are more difficult to match with alcohol. However, most smoky spirits do work, like smoky whisky. One drink that works particularly well however, is Mezcal, with its smokiness and fruity agave flavour. Our favourite Mezcal at the moment is San Cosme which pairs well with After Eights.
ABV: 40%
Size: 700ml
Buy the Mezcal now for £39.13
Buy the chocolate now for £4.73
Chocolate Orange - Sauternes
An all-time great chocolate needs an all-time great drink to pair with it. We love sauternes, with its honey, apricot and marmalade flavours that mix well with the orange. It’s a match made in heaven as its acidity cuts through the chocolate. We obviously would love to eat chocolate orange all day whilst quaffing Chateau d’Yquem, but all sauternes goes well and at a more reasonable price, we like Sichel’s version.
ABV: 14%
Size: 750ml
Buy the Sauternes now for £15.39
Buy the chocolate now for £29
100% Cocoa - Cognac
At the top end of fine and healthy chocolate is 100% cocoa. With its refined, bittersweet yet unctuous flavours, you don’t need much of it. The same can be said of cognac. Younger cognac will pair well, but for the full experience, a good, aged cognac like Frapin XO will knock your socks off!
ABV: 64%
Size: 730ml
Buy the cognac now for £155
Buy the chocolate now for £13.50
English Wine in Focus: Charles Palmer, Pinot Noir 2018
Grape: 100% Pinot Noir
ABV: 12.5%
Price: £22
This elegant Pinot Noir is full of fruit but soft as anything and so light on its feet at only 12.5%. If it were a person, it would be Audrey Hepburn with a tan. Ripe, morello cherry fruit and plum with gentle spice. The 2018 was universally the best vintage that English wine has ever had!
Who is Charles Palmer?
I got to know Charles Palmer’s beautiful English wines by tasting them at the Michelin-star restaurant, The Black Swan at Oldstead. Charles Palmer is a family run wine estate in Winchelsea, East Sussex with vineyards located just one mile from the sea. Charles chose this spot for its ideal combination of climate and soils. With its proximity to the sea and land at just five metres above sea level, the vines are exposed to warmer night temperatures than other locations, key for assisting ripening grapes in cool climate areas such as England. The soil is a bed of Kimmeridgian clay which is known to suit Pinot Noir and Chardonnay particularly as it is the same as that in the French region of Burgundy, famous for those same grape varieties.
Charles Palmer's first vines were planted in 2006 and produced with the help of well-known winemaker Will Davenport, but now the reins have been handed over to Charles’ son Robert Palmer, so everything is done in house. The family own all their own vineyards too, putting them in full control of their production.
As well as this gorgeous Pinot Noir, Charles Palmer makes award-winning sparkling wines (a classic blend, a rosé, a special reserve and a demi-sec). You can buy any of the wines here:
The most expensive low alcohol wine in the world
Words by Colin Hamdpen-White
It must be said that Royal Tokaji ‘Essencia’ is not low alcohol by design; it is low alcohol because of the way it has to be made. Although this tokaji is only 4%, it is certainly not a wine to drink to lose weight as it has a residual sugar level of around 500 grams per litre, so around half of it is liquid sugar. I remember trying this wine a few years ago and a tiny amount was presented on a crystal spoon as so little is needed to satisfy your taste buds. Much more than that would have had me bouncing off the ceiling. Tokaji is, after all, known as the Viagra of wine.
It takes 20Kg of grapes to make 37.5cl of Essencia and the wine is not made from crushed grapes at all, but only from the free-flowing juice which is collected as the grapes weep under their own weight. This particular version, the Tokaji Essencia is only produced in years when the weather conditions are just right and where a ‘noble rot’ called botrytis naturally occurs and shrivels the grapes (Furmint, Yellow Muscat and Herslevelű) into little brown raisins. Royal Tokaji Essencia 2008 is only the sixth vintage to be released by the winery, which was founded in 1990 by Hugh Johnson.
Recently, magnums of this divine wine were created and can be found at Hedonism Wines in London.
ABV: 4%
Size: 1500ml
Buy now for £30,000
Cheap Wines That Taste Expensive!
What is a good value wine? Well, let me start with this:
With duty rises, a bottle of wine at £5 is not half as good as a £10 bottle of wine. In fact, it is probably less than half as good. This is simple maths. Wine duty in the UK is £2.23 on any bottle of 75cl wine, whether it be £5 or £500 and then there is VAT on the duty, so if you are paying £5 for a bottle, that makes up £3.06. This does not include packaging costs, shipping costs, or marketing, let alone the liquid in the bottle! So in this article, I will be looking at wines that are great value for £10 or under.
There is so much wine out there, it is very difficult to know what is good and what is bad, especially at the less expensive end of the market. I particularly like Bordeaux and it is difficult to find inexpensive Bordeaux which is really good. However, there are some great Bordeaux wines which do not cost the earth. The trick is to buy wines which have been made in a good vintage. In a good vintage (when the weather is just right), the wines from lesser vineyards are much better quality than they would be otherwise, and I have a couple listed below. The same could be said for the Rhone, although there are some Rhone wines which are pretty good in most years. Burgundy is a different story all together and I’ll cover Burgundy in a separate article. Here we have my guide to ten cheap wines which over-deliver in flavour and quality. I have been enjoying all these wines recently.
The Wine Society’s Sicilian Reserve Red 2015
At £8.50, this red wine punches well above its weight. I found this wine looking for a mid week wine which wasn’t too strong and at 13.5%, it fitted the bill. It has lots of juicy red fruit flavours and a touch of blackcurrant. The oak maturation is delicately handled and over all the wine is well balanced with great acidity. You won’t get bored of this wine for quite a while.
ABV: 13.%
Size: 750ml
Buy now for £8.50
Waitrose Argentinian Malbec 2018
I wanted to find a Malbec which was classic in style, with big fresh red berry fruit flavours and touches of spice, this wine has lots of depth for only £7.99. With a touch of oak to round off the palate and toasty flavours, this will go very well with Italian food, especially pasta dishes.
ABV: 13.%
Size: 750ml
Buy now for £7.99
Tour Chapoux Bordeaux Superior 2017
If you find either 2016 or 2017 in the shop, both were good vintages, 2016 being slightly better. This is classic claret without having to age it for an age before the tannins round out and it becomes drinkable. Open it now and it will be delicious, or open it in another five years and it will be different, but still delicious. Classic Bordeaux.
ABV: 14.%
Size: 75cl
Buy now for £9.39
Cote du Rhone Reserve Maison Perrin et Fils 2017
This wine is made by Rhone royalty. The Perrin family make one of the best Chateaux Neuf du Pape wines at Chateaux Beaucastel, and you will pay a pretty penny for it. But their Cote du Rhone is like a baby Chateaux Neuf du Pape. It is less than a sixth of the price and is drinking very well now. Decant for an hour before serving and those around the dinner table will be impressed.
ABV: 13.5%
Size: 750ml
Buy now for £9.69
Famille Perrin Ventoux Rouge 2018
From the same famille, but from a lesser known area called Ventoux. This wine is great value, as with the Cote du Rhone it will be even better with an hour in a decanter (or just opened for an hour before serving), but it will also just pop and pour. With lots of rich plumby flavours it’s a belter.
ABV: 13.5%
Size: 750ml
Buy now for £7.85
Carrizal Tempranillo 2012 Rioja
Another cracker from Winebuyers, they are knocking it out of the ballpark at the moment with great value wines. This is a Rioja in a modern style. No need to look for the Reserva or Gran Reserva name son this label. It has plenty of aging since the grapes were harvested back in 2012 and it is big and smooth with plenty of powerful fruit flavours, without losing its finesse.
ABV: 12.5%
Size: 750ml
Buy now for £8.99
Porta 6
Ever since James Martin expressed his liking for this wine several years ago on Saturday Kitchen, it has been a popular choice at Majestic, and with good reason. There is a lot of bang for buck here. It’s a great summer BBQ wine with rich and bold flavours and will go with most food. But there is a complexity to the wine which outstrips its price tag, and that is why I love it.
ABV: 13.5%
Size: 750ml
Buy now for £7.99
Pemo Montepulciano 2017
The name PEMO comes from the fusion of the two regional grape varieties, PEcorino and MOtepulciano, which have been growing in Abruzzo since 200 A.D. Pecorino and Montepulciano embody the rugged Abruzzo region, where the mountains dramatically meet the sea. This connection is expressed in the form of fox for Montepulciano (Hills, forest) and a whale for Pecorino (the sea).
ABV: 13.5%
Size: 750ml
Buy now for £9
Croze Hermitage Cave de Tain 2017
Normally one would expect to pay at least £15 for any Croze Hermitage, and from an estate producer you would. However, Cave de Tain are what the French call négociants. They buy wine or grapes from farmers and wine estates and make or blend the wine themselves. Cave de Tain have a great reputation for creating very good wines from other people’s grapes and this is no exception. It is drinking very well know and will age for at least another five years if cellared well.
ABV: 12%
Size: 750ml
Buy now for £10
Dows Late Bottled Vintage 2011
I know I was going to stick to £10 or under, but this is just too good to miss. From the legendary 2011 vintage (probably the best vintage for port from the last 100 years), this is on a special offer at The Whisky Exchange and it tastes way above its price tag. Late bottled vintage means the port has had longer aging in barrel to allow it to oxidize to make it seem much more mature. Many people would mistake this for full vintage port many times more expensive, as the vintage was so rich and refined.
ABV: 20%
Size: 750ml
Buy now for £10.95
Why English wine is your new go-to, luxury drop
If the English wine industry were a car, it would be a Jaguar. Fact. Gone are the days when it would be likened to something more akin to Del Boy’s Reliant Robin. If it were an actress, it would be Emma Watson: youthful, but already accomplished and still with a tonne of potential. It’s an incredibly exciting time for English wine, but what makes it suddenly so good? Why is it so expensive and which are the regions and the producers to look out for? Here’s everything you need to know about English wine with some fabulous bottles to seek out…
Written for Luxury Lifestyle Magazine
Veuve Clicquot: The Original Grande Dame of Champagne
As International Women’s Day gives us a chance to shine a light on women in the workplace and the challenges we all still continue to face, be it equal pay, childcare logistics or even just being taken seriously, it’s a good time to reflect on one woman in the wine industry who smashed it even before anyone knew what a glass ceiling was.
Written originally for Luxurious Magazine, March 11th 2020
Mindful Drinking: Premium no and low alcohol drinks you'll want to sip all evening
With Lent now in full swing after Dry-January and as we slowly head up to Sober October, times of abstention from alcohol are so much easier to bear now thanks to a new wave of truly delicious, premium, non-alcoholic drinks. Some of these no and low beverages are simply lower alcohol versions of what we would like to drink anyway; some plant themselves clearly as alternatives to alcohol and others, cleverly, describe the enemy simply as ‘bad soft drinks’. Whether you can’t drink or are just trying to be more mindful of your alcohol intake, here are some delicious drinks that feel like a treat to taste.
BEER
Lucky Saint
Alcohol: 0.5%
This is a bubbly beer that actually tastes like a fully fledged, flavoursome full-alcohol beer. In a slow and meticulous process, Lucky Saint delicately extracts the fermentable sugars from the mash as temperatures increase and leave it unfiltered to keep all the flavour and complexity. The beer is then distilled in a vacuum, which avoids the burnt and oxidised flavours many other non alcoholic beers have. I tested it with a bunch of beer drinkers and we all thought it was the best ‘non alcoholic’ beer we’ve’ tried (0.5% is considered to be alcohol-free). Now available on draught too.
Find it on Amazon or luckysaint.co for £25 for 12 x 330ml
Small Beer Co.
Alcohol content: 1%-2.8%
The Small Beer company have ingeniously revived the lost tradition of creating ‘small beer’ that was popular in the 1700’s, when drinking water was dangerous. These are very low alcohol beers brewed between 0.5 and 2.8%. All under 3%, these beers are isotonic, so they are actually good for you! Tonnes of flavour without the hangover. There are four to choose from: Lager, Dark lager, Steam, and Session Pale. See our longer article on them here.
Find them on Ocado or theoriginalsmallbeer.com for £2.15 per bottle (350ml). £11.99 for 6.
WINE-LIKE
Woodstar
Alcohol content: 1%
This unique tipple looks like a wine and definitely does the job of wine, but it’s made with açai berries, blackcurrant and blueberries infused with cocoa extract instead of grapes. The result is a moreish, grippy, wine-like red juice. The small amount of alcohol comes from the açai berries being steeped in macerated in alcohol for twelve weeks to help release colour and flavour.
Find it Fortnum & Mason and Sainsburys for £8.50 (75cl).
Aecorn Aromatic
Alcohol content: 0%
The three Aecorn drinks could be described as aperitifs and are made with wine grapes (Pinot Noir and Chardonnay). They are more silky and full-bodied than wine and you can drink them neat, chilled or with a splash of sparkling water as a spritzer. The most wine-like (and my favourite) is the ‘aromatic’, which is warm, woody and smoky. They also have a ‘bitter’, which reminds me of Campari and a ‘dry’, which is more for Sauvignon Blanc or Gin lovers.
£19.99 from aecorndrinks.com
Everleaf
Everleaf is the result of two passions for founder, Paul Mathew: bartending and botany. A conservationist biologist by trade, Paul wanted to create an aperitif that was plant-based and uplifting with warmth and aromatics. In Everleaf, you’ll find notes of vanilla, gentian, vetiver and orange blossom. There’s even the essence of voodoo lily in there. I’ve no idea what voodoo lily is, but I like the sound of it. Serve with Mediterranean tonic or use in cocktails like non-alcoholic negronis.
Find it on everleafdrinks.com and Sainsburys for £18
SPIRIT
Hayman’s Small Gin
A great concept, this is a gin with a regular amount of alcohol in it BUT the botanical flavours are so concentrated, you only need - literally - one thimble full for your G&T to taste pucker. They even provide the thimble hanging around the bottle neck. It’s not the strongest, most powerfully flavoured gin, but it definitely does the job. What this means is that you can mix a normal gin and tonic but only consume 0.2 units of alcohol and 15 calories. A great, lower alcohol -and calorie- option.
Find it at Waitrose for £25 (20cl)
SPIRIT-LIKE
Caleño
A happy, tropical, non-alcoholic spirit, which is actually rather tasty by itself over ice, Caleño makes a stonking, more fruity version of something like a Gin and Tonic. Created by Ellie Webb and inspired by her Colombian heritage, this is an infusion of juniper and inca berry with spice and citrus. There are some fantastic mocktail recipes on the site too.
Find it at calenodrinks.com for £18.88 (50cl) £24.99 (70cl)
Seedlip Garden
The original, premium, non-alcoholic spirit, Seedlip Garden is the go-to herbaceous choice when you don’t want a Gin and Tonic and soft drinks are too dull. Have over ice with a spritz of any tonic, garnish with mint or basil and you’re away. It’s super refreshing and has that all important bitterness to kill any cravings for alcohol.
Find it at Waitrose for £26.50 (70cl)
TOTALLY UNIQUE
Three Spirit
There is no category to put these in, but I love them. Three styles of plant-based alternatives to alcohol with a different attitude, that, as they say ‘celebrates what you put into a drink, rather than what you take out.’ Using plants traditionally used in potions and ceremonies around the world, these are non-alcoholic drinks 'with benefits’ such as the addition of ashwagandha to relax in Nightcap or guayusa, guava leaf and green tea in Livener. It’s alchemy, it’s different and delicious. You’ll want to keep the bottles too.
Memento
Somewhere between a non-alcoholic spirit and a flavoured water, Memento is super dry in taste, like pure water that’s been infused gently with rosemary, verbena and other botanical elements. Inspired by a publication from 1498 that tells of the benefits of blending botanical essences, Memento is very refreshing and pretty bitter. It fares better in cocktails than alone in my opinion, or even just with a spritz of lemonade.
FInd it at mementodrink.com for 30€
By Helena Nicklin
Watch The Three Drinkers do Scotch Whisky now streaming on Amazon Prime.