From time to time some extraordinary value appears in supermarket chain Lidl, in the form of Spanish and Italian reds from warmer, less famous wine regions. They don’t pretend to taste like expensive wines, and that’s an advantage – they are pure and honest, and as they are well crafted too, I often find more pleasure in such bottles than in many reds that cost considerably more. Like in this case. Continue reading
After such a fantastic Pinot Gris, it should not come as a surprise that Luxemburg can also excel in Riesling. Yet I was blown away by this wine. Continue reading
I bet that Luxembourg makes some of the finest Pinot Gris in the World. Here is just another bottle to prove that – it’s not your usual, dilute white wine for sure. Continue reading
Drinking in Avignon, supermarket wine #6. Grenache is one of my absolute favorite grape varieties, I love it, and I drink more of it than anything else – but Mourvedre fascinates me even more. The issue with it is availability: while well priced and excellent Spanish versions (the gold standard is Castano’s Hecula for me) are in abundance, it’s not that easy to find French versions. Bandol is probably the most well-known example, but it’s mostly expensive, and only a few big names are available outside France. So to find a Bandol for merely 6 Euros in a local supermarket… I had to try it. And it did not disappoint, in fact, turned out to be better than the majority of supermarket Rhone reds I tasted. Continue reading
Drinking in Avignon, supermarket wine #4. This is something I really miss at home, in my beloved Budapest: access to lesser known Rhone crus, like Beaumes-de-Venise. It might be just an ordinary, entry level wine for locals, but I’m excited to taste it.
Drinking in Avignon, supermarket wine #3. I can’t exactly remember the price but it falls into the cheap Chateauneuf du Pape territory, which is danger zone – almost always a disappointment. When it’s not, like in this case, it’s a bad value: you better buy wines from less famous appellations, they offer more enjoyment for less money.
An abandoned vineyard or the new way of grape cultivation? It’s the latter – this is intentional. Some brave producers in the Mátra experiments with “no treat” grape growing, and this literally means nothing sprayed, and hardly any soil work, if anything at all. I was told it works somehow – no disease affected the grapes. No need to thin the crop anymore, yields go down drastically, bunches and berries become small. I have not tasted the wines made from this plot, all I can tell is that it’s a pleasure to walk into these rows. While other vineyards nearby have a typical chemical smell, here the air is filled with the smell of summer flowers.