Wine of the week: Domaine d’Escausses, cuvée des Drilles

Although I’m supposed to be the wine expert in the family my husband has an uncanny knack of alighting on exactly the right bottle when we go out to eat, unfailingly plucking the bargain from any wine list.

This week’s triumph, at a late meal at Flinty Red after the BBC Food and Farming Awards in Bristol on Thursday night was a deliciously quaffable Gaillac, Domaine d’Escausses, cuvée des Drilles which was on the wine list at just £23 and went brilliantly with all the random small plates we ordered including a challenging dish of smoked pork belly with a spicy slaw and another of braised squid with polenta.

You can buy it for £9.99 from Corks of Cotham up the road who are joint owners of Flinty Red - a modest mark-up which shows how reasonable their wine prices are. The vintage in the restaurant (2012) appeared to be an earlier one than the 2013 had in the shop though. You can also buy it online from slurp.co.uk for £8.95 and other independents including Bentley’s of Ludlow, The Smiling Grape Company and Theatre of Wine

The cuvée is made from Duras and Fer (the local name for Cabernet Franc) - both indigenous varieties to south-west France and is imported - why am I not surprised? - by Les Caves de Pyrène who describe it as “the sort of red that we need to drink for medicinal quenching purposes.” Quite.

Apologies for the quality of the image and the bespattered label (low light, late night) but at least I remembered to snap it!

Wine of the week: Ataraxia Chardonnay 2013

Every so often (sadly not THAT often) you come across a wine on a wine list that’s so well priced you can’t quite believe it. Which is what happened to us last night at the St Vincent in Clifton.

It’s a world class South African chardonnay from the Hemel-en-aarde region -beautifully smooth and creamy with just a hint of that struck match character that makes Burgundy so beguiling.

At £12.50 for a 50cl carafe (nice to see it carafed by the way) goodness knows why it wasn’t selling. The South-African owners of the restaurant had apparently bought a large consignment which they were struggling to shift so were flogging if off by the glass. We had the last bottle so I’m afraid it’s all gone now. (Cue for unseemly gloating.)

We should by rights have drunk it with the grilled lobster they have on the menu but were were checking out their fixed price early evening menu (£12.75 for two courses: good for the money but there’s better food in Bristol to be honest.)

If you want to acquire some Ataraxia for yourself Butlers Wine Cellar of Brighton appears to have the best price at £18.99 a bottle, it's £19.50 at Stone, Vine & Sun and £23.50 at Bottle Apostle. You can see why I leapt on it.

Domaine Labet Fleur de Savagnin ‘en chalasse’ Cotes du Jura 2012

I’ve tasted this wine before but was reminded how absolutely delicious it is when we had a bottle at lunch at Bell’s Diner in Bristol this week. (No I don’t spend my *entire* life there despite this article in the Guardian.)

It’s a blend of different types of savagnin - the Jura’s indigenous white grape which wine writer Wink Lorch, who has written an excellent book on the region, describes as tasting like a “fresh Meyer lemon”.

Given it had a couple of years maturation it wasn’t that tart but had just the right verve and attack to sail through an eclectic selection of small plates (its salinity made it particularly good with some salt cod croquetas (below) and a salad of salt cod, avocado and blood oranges). I was surprised to find it was nearly 14% (13.8%).

The estate is run organically and adheres to most of the tenets of natural winemaking - no fining or filtering and very little, if any sulphur. But the wine is beautifully clean and pure.

Infuriatingly I can’t find a retail stockist but it is imported into the UK by the excellent Vine Trail which supplies many other good restaurants including The Quality Chophouse and Texture in London so with luck you’ll run across it at some point. It costs £17.08 a bottle ex VAT

You can read Wink’s typically insightful piece about the Labet family on her website.

Kaiken Terroir Series Torrontes 2014

This week I’ve managed to be in both Chile and Argentina so it was a toss-up which should provide the wine of the week . . .

As most of my time was spent in Chile and I need time to sort out my notes on the wines I’ve tasted there I’m going for this delicious Torrontes we tried from a winery called Kaiken over the border in Luyan de Cuyo.

In fact they source the grapes from old vines in Cafayate in Salta up in the north of the country which is considered the best area for this indigenous grape variety. (The vineyards go up to 1600 metres.) It has something of gewurztraminer about it but is softer and slightly less sweet - a great match for south-east Asian food or, locally in Chile, simply prepared shellfish like crab and prawns. (I’ll be posting a fuller list of Torrontes pairings soon).

The 2014 vintage doesn’t seem to have arrived in the UK yet but you can find the 2013 at £8.99 at Hawkshead wines and slurp.co.uk or £10.99 or £8.89 if you buy two bottles from Brook & Vine. It's also widely stocked in the US - see wine-searcher.com for details.