The best of the new Blind Spot wines from The Wine Society

The Wine Society has had a range of exclusive Australian wines called Blind Spot which are made for them by winemaker Mac Forbes for a while.

The idea originally was to offer a range that sat somewhere between the cheap and cheerful wines you found in a supermarket and the country’s more expensive top end wines. They were perfectly decent but not wildly exciting.

The current Australia buyer Freddy Bulmer has introduced four new wines however that are really interesting, although one, the Garganega which is made from the same variety that goes into Soave, seems a bit pricey at £11.95. I’d be happy to pay that for the cheerful brambly Dolcetto, the only 2020 of the line-up, which comes from the Adelaide HIlls and which I think would make the perfect wine for a Friday night pizza but it’s the other two wines that really rock my boat.

The Blind Spot syrah which is very much a syrah rather than a shiraz comes from vineyards in the Grampians that are owned by the Chapoutier family and is just deliciously spicy and peppery. Bulmer believes it’s got ageing potential but I doubt you could hold onto it long enough to verify that.

And my top choice is the simply sensational Pinot Meunier, a grape that is generally used to make champagne but here makes a deeply aromatic wine which it’s hard to decide whether it’s a light red or a rosé. It would be good as an aperitif, as Freddy suggests, but I love the thought of drinking it with mezze or right through a middle eastern meal. A rosé for winter drinking basically and all the more welcome for that.

Both the syrah and the pinot meunier are £12.95 and I suspect will sell fast.

Ojai vineyard Roll Ranch Syrah 1998

It’s always a treat to drink great old wines, especially when they’re on top form like this fabulous syrah from Californian producer Ojai in the Santa Maria valley.

It was brought along by a chef friend Martin Lam who used to own Ransome’s Dock - a restaurant which had a wonderful Californian wine list.

Despite its age it was drinking wonderfully - mellow, figgy with just a touch of leather - a perfect match with the venison and white polenta we had as a main course

I can’t find the Roll Ranch bottling anywhere in the UK so I wonder if they’ve sold it or no longer have the use of that fruit but it would be well worth buying one of their other syrahs to lay down. If you just want to try a bottle, Harvey Nichols has the 2012 Sebastiano vineyard syrah for £50.

Here's further encouragement to buy Californian syrah from wine expert Jon Bonné who recommends Ojai’s Solomon Hills Syrah among others though, again, that particular bottling no longer seems to be available

Definitely a wine to snap up if and when you see it.

From the cellar: Domaine d’Aupilhac Montpeyroux 1992, Coteaux du Languedoc

One of the pleasures of being at our house in the Languedoc is diving into the cellar and fishing out old, overlooked bottles.

We normally open at least three on the basis that only one is likely to have survived. Last night it was this amazing 23 year old bottle from Sylvain Fadat of Domaine d’Aupilhac which was better than it had any right to be for its modest price tag and the fact that it was only his third vintage. I can’t remember what we paid for it but it would certainly have been well under £10.

There’s no back label so I can’t tell you exactly what the grapes were either but the current 2013 vintage is a blend of mourvèdre, syrah, carignan and grenache - in that order. The ageability is almost certainly due to the mourvèdre according to Doug Wregg of Aupilhac’s current importers Les Caves de Pyrène, a view that gave my husband particular satisfaction as he said it tasted to him like old Bandol.

The colour as you can see was still extraordinarily vivid - it was hardly faded - nor was the gentle, sweet, mellow, plummy fruit. And, more surprisingly still, it was only 12.5% in those days. (The current ABV is more like 14%-14.5%). Considering the conditions in which we keep our wine - not even a proper cellar but a dark, former kitchen with a dirt floor on the ground floor of an old village house its survival in such good condition was nothing short of miraculous*.

The current 2012 vintage is available from les Caves at Pyrene at £12.35 plus VAT (£14.82) or, if you want to sample an older vintage, Terroir Languedoc has the 2000 vintage for £11.95 and the 2006 for £10. You can also buy it direct from the domaine for €14.70 (£10.84 at the current rate of exchange). They have old vintages too.

(What did we eat with it? I’m embarrassed to say nothing grander than a vegetarian pizza we had so little hope of any of the wines being drinkable but it wasn’t a bad match. In an ideal world some roast or grilled lamb would have been a better foil.)

*although the website does say it will age from 4-20 years.

Wine of the week: Virgile Joly Bourret Pays d’Oc 2014

Those of you who have followed me for a while will know I’m not a great fan of Naked Wines but occasionally they come up with a corker that almost tempts me to sign up as an ‘Angel'.

This characterful (and by that I mean full of flavour and texture, not weird) crisp, dry white from Languedoc producer Virgile Joly is a case in point. It’s a blend of Piquepoul and an indigenous local grape, Terret Bourret and has much more flavour and finesse than your average Picpoul de Pinet. It’s the kind of wine I’d happily carry on drinking through the rest of the summer, especially with seafood. £7.99 seems a more than fair price though the notional ‘normal’ price of £10.99, were you able to buy it, would be pushing it a bit.

If you’re ordering from Naked Wines two other wines I’d go for are the 2012 Bravado red from Chilean producer Garcia + Schwaderer, a big ripe supple blend of Carignan, Syrah and Grenache that would be great with a steak (£11.99 to Angels) and the juicy bright spicy Cordero Calabria Rosso 2013 which at £9.99 may be fractionally on the pricey side but it's a perfect wine for a pizza. The 'normal' price (which doesn't make sense if you can't buy it) is £13.99 which is definitely more than it’s worth.

This, by the way, is my issue with Naked. They make it sound as if Angels are getting an exceptional deal but their ‘normal’ price is meaningless. However I know that they have many fans and that they have made it possible for a number of winemakers to start up on their own or expand their business. And should you be accepted as an Angel (there is, believe it or not, a waiting list*) you can apparently stop your membership at any time. Up to you.

* Out of curiosity I’ve signed up to see how long it will take them to accept me. At the moment there are 8026 applications ahead of me and they say mine should be processed by August 31st. I'd be amazed if it wasn't before that. Let's see!