Japanese gin - but oddly not from Japan

Ask the man in the street where Japanese gin comes from and he’d look at you pityingly. "Japan, of course!" But actually this 42% ultra-premium gin comes from Cambridge, England.

It’s been made by the Cambridge Distillery from what they describe as ‘Japanese botanicals’ which include shiso leaf, sansho pepper, sesame seeds, cucumber and citrussy yuzu peel along with the mandatory juniper. All the botanicals are distilled individually in small batches under vacuum which distiller Will Lowe claims is what preserves their freshness and individuality.

I was set to scoff but it is in fact a gorgeous gin with the clean pure Japanese flavours that characterise Japanese food. I can imagine it going beautifully with sashimi or any kind of fresh seafood. (Crab would be perfect.)

The bottle which is hand-screen printed is rathe gorgeous too - as well it might be for £64.99 (at Selfridges) though you can buy a rather dinky 100ml miniature that looks like a perfume bottle for £16.99, roughly the price of a couple of cocktails. The temptation to dab it behind your ears is almost irresistible.

Is it worth twice as much as a premium gin and three times as much as an everyday brand? Not for most of us but given the given the amount of money sloshing around in London at the moment and the general buzz surrounding gin there will be plenty of takers and even at this price its considerably cheaper than many whiskies.

Segredo do Lisboa Castelao-Syrah, Lisboa 2011

For obvious reasons* I was all set to recommend a handsomely bottled Irish whiskey I’d discovered this weekend but then I tasted it and actually didn’t rate it so here’s a fantastically good value wine deal I found in my local Co-op instead.

It’s a typically dark, intense Portuguese red with lovely brambly, but not too jammy, fruit that would pair swimmingly with dishes like beef stews, rich meaty pasta sauces and beef or venison sausages. But obviously people are not impressed by something that sounds so obscure so the Co-op is flogging it off for £4. No, that’s not a misprint. £4!

At least I hope they are in a Co-op near you. The Co-op moves in mysterious ways which is probably why it’s in such trouble these days so although they had it in my local Bristol branch, it may not be in yours. Or it may be and cost £7.99 which wouldn’t be such a steal.

There's also an equally obscure white, Segredo do Lisboa Fernao Pires-Arinto Chardonnay 2012 which isn’t quite as impressive tasted on its own but perfectly fine with anything fishy. And ‘perfectly fine’ is good enough for £3.80 (the 'bin-end' price)

At the other end of the price scale I tasted an amazing Vouvray up in Settle where I was inspecting one of our BBC Food and Farming Awards shortlistees The Courtyard Dairy (a brilliant cheese shop, btw). It was the 2009 Clos de la Meslerie which was fragrant and delicately honeyed with a lovely balancing acidity - and a very good match with a Gorgonzola Dolce.

Oddly it’s made by someone called Peter Hahn who doesn’t sound particularly French and indeed turns out to be an American who’s rather improbably making natural wine in the Loire. But don’t assume it’s all weird and funky, it’s the best Vouvray I’ve tasted for an age. You can buy it online from BuonVino (the wine merchant next door to the Courtyard) for £28 and for marginally less from an outfit called WineBear but the Buonvino people have a lovely shop so do buy it from them.

The whisky, if you're curious, is called Writer’s Tears and comes from Marks & Spencer. I was seduced by the tall elegant bottle but in truth the whisky itself is lacking in depth and unbalanced by a crude woody finish. I don’t know how old it is, certainly not old enough to justify charging £28. Try one of these recommendations I made in the Guardian a couple of years ago instead though infuriatingly Sainsbury's seems to have dropped their excellent Taste the Difference Dun Leire Irish Single Malt, according to Irish drinks writer Tom Doorley, since Cooley was taken over by Jim Beam (and now Suntory).

A final thought since I was chided for giving the impression that whiskey was the only Irish drink, there's a cracking Irish cream liqueur in Lidl (for £5.99 when I last checked the price). Though I think he was probably talking about beer.

*St Patrick's Day in case you'd forgotten . . .

Manor House Fairtrade Shiraz Mourvedre 2011

Before you get too excited about this week's wine of the week you’re unlikely to be able to buy it unless you live in South Africa or Sweden but I want to flag it up because it’s the best Fairtrade wine I've tasted.

It’s a blend of Shiraz and Mourvèdre (mainly shiraz) which is made from dry-farmed grapes grown on the Papkuilsfontein wine farm in Darling, which is run by a partnership of Distell, the Black Economic Empowerment Company and a community trust and made by the Nederburg winemaking team.

It’s a beautifully structured full-bodied red with lovely ripe fruit and smoothly integrated tannins, impressively presented in an expensive (but not ludicrously heavy) bottle - a serious, proper, grown-up wine. Decanter awarded the 2010 vintage 5 stars in its 2012 wine awards - you wouldn’t hesitate to pour it for your pickiest of friends.

It sells for 115SAR in South Africa which is not cheap for the local market though at £6.39 at the current rate of exchange ludicrously good value by our standards and for 120 krone or £11.18 in Sweden which, given how expensive their market is, isn't overpriced either.

The message Nederburg is apparently getting from the UK market is that we’re not interested in paying this much for Fairtrade wine. I think that’s a crying shame. Won’t some retailer try and disprove that theory?

In the meantime if you’re in South Africa and visiting the winery I strongly suggest you buy a bottle or two to bring home.

There’s a more detailed analysis of the wine here.

Luigi Bosca Malbec 2011 Vistalba

After the wild winds and lashing rain we’ve endured in the UK this week my drink of the week really had to be a full-bodied red and what better choice than a Malbec?

It comes from Argentina (of course) from a long-established winery called Luigi Bosca and has all the rich, ripe fruit you look for from Malbec but with a level of elegance you don’t always find. (The fact that it’s a couple of years old now and has had time to settle down has a lot to do with it together with the fact that the vineyards are quite high up at 990m above sea level. The ABV is a relatively modest 13.5%)

All this means it’s not cheap - £15.99 is the ‘normal’ price at Majestic but there’s the usual discount if you buy two (which you’d be mad not to) which brings it down to £12.99. (Other retailers seem to stock a Luigi Bosca Malbec at around the same price but with a slightly different label which are probably not identical though similar in style. Check wine-searcher.com for stockists.)

In terms of food to go with it think beef. A steak, a Sunday roast, a beefy casserole or a steak pie would all be excellent pairings.

PS If you’re looking for a slightly cheaper red to make up the six you have to buy from Majestic, the 2011 Mas des Montagnes Côtes du Roussillon Villages is a good gutsy southern French blend of Grenache, Syrah and Carignan that should keep out the cold and is a great buy at £5.99 if you buy two (part of Majestic’s ‘Pick’n’Mix’ offer). One for bangers and mash . . .