My best buys at Waitrose this summer

Although I’m deeply sceptical about ‘half price’ offers, the periodical 25% off promotions if you buy six bottles that the supermarkets put on are a great opportunity to buy your favourite wine at a bargain price. Waitrose is the latest to do it and here’s my pick of the wines I’ve tasted recently.

By the way the offer only runs until next Tuesday June 17th and doesn’t apply in Scotland. Note some wines are only available in a limited number of stores and that some might not have come into stock at the time of writing though they were all supposed to be in by early June. The offer excludes Fine & Rare, Wine Gifts and the En Primeur Service.

RED

Calmel & Joseph Villa Blanche Pinot Noir 2013 Pays d’Oc £8.99 down to £6.74 230 branches

A delicate pretty pinot from the Limoux region - not too alcoholic or too sweet. Would be good with duck or, chilled, with seared tuna or salmon.

Bijou Cuvée Sophie Valrose Rouge 2012 Cabrières £7.99 down to £5.99 69 branches

A Syrah Grenache blend from the Languedoc in an unusual flute-shaped bottle. A bit funky at first but rather delicious. The rosé under the same label (£8.49 down to £6.37) is also really good. Both would make good barbecue drinking.

Mirabeau Rouge 2013 Côtes de Provence £8.99 down to £6.74, 69 branches

A bright fragrant stalky blend of 80% Syrah and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon blended by former M & S wine buyer Jo Ahearne. The rosé isn't quite as good.

Esprit des Trois Pierres 2013 Costières de Nîmes £7.79 down to £5.84, 240 branches

The classic southern French Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre blend. Juicy, easy to drink - perfect for the great outdoors.

Telmo Rodriguez Al-muvedre Old Bush Vine Monastrell 2013 Alicante £8.99 down to £6.74 13.5% 187 branches

Vibrant, bright, juicy, spicy characterful red. Made for grilled meat.

Pablo The Cubist Old Vine Garnacha 2012 Calatayud £9.99 down to £7.49

Exotic rich, full-bodied and spicy. Think steak.

Haughton The Bandit Cabernet Shiraz 2011 £8.99 down to £6.74 159 branches

Deep rich cassis-like red from Western Australia but with a good balancing freshness. Another good BBQ wine

ROSE

Waitrose Provence Rosé 2013 Cotes du Provence 13% £9.29 down to £6.97, 240 branches.

If you’re a fan of pale dry Provencal rosés you’ll love this crisp, fresh example, a really good buy at the price. Salade niçoise, this has your name all over it.

WHITES

Domaine de Felines Jourdan Picpoul de Pinet 2013 £8.99 down to £6.74

One of my favourite Picpouls - really well made, crisp, clean and fruity. The perfect seafood white.

Louis Latour Chardonnay 2013 Ardèche £8.99 down to £6.74

I’m not usually a big fan of Louis Latour but this is a really pukka Burgundian-style chardonnay in a posh bottle that looks - and tastes - as if you’ve paid a great deal more for it. Pair with rich seafood like scallops and crab.

Laurent Miquel Nocturnes Viognier 2013 £8.99 down to £6.74, 260 branches

A rich lush style of viognier made from vineyards that are cultivated by the lutte raisonée - sustainable viticulture - philosophy. Lovely with mildly spiced chicken dishes.

Triade Fiano/Falanghina/Greco 2013 £8.99 down to £6.74, 258 branches

A crisp fresh fruity white from Campania. Great for Southern-Italian style seafood dishes like swordfish or grilled squid

Seifried Estate Grüner Veltliner 2013 Nelson £11.99 down to £8.99. 60 branches

A real curiosity - an Austrian grape variety, grown in New Zealand producing a really intense fruity style of Grüner with bags of personality. Fantastic for Asian salads, noodles and seafood dishes. Well worth snapping up at this price.

For other good buys see this post I wrote last November though bear in mind that they might not be showing quite as well now and that the initial prices may have changed.

Is whisky the best drink to give on Father's Day?

Unusually Father’s Day, which comes up this weekend, is celebrated on the same day in Britain, the US and France. I must say I think the hype for these ‘special days’ has got a bit out of hand but if mothers are pampered, hey, why not fathers too?

The stereotype gift, judging by the ads and editorial coverage, is a bottle of whisky but how many fathers want that, particularly at this time of year? Not all dads are pipe-smoking, golf-playing, slipper-wearing whisky lovers (certainly not the French fathers, I would have thought) though I suppose by the time their children get to the stage of being able to organise them a Father’s Day gift of this type it’s fair to assume that they’re over 45.

Even then that doesn’t mean they have identical tastes and interests. My husband, for example, would be almost totally uninterested in a bottle of whisky but if the children gave him a bottle of Bandol (his current favourite pour) or a particularly beautiful wine glass or a bottle of French Caribbean rum he’d be happy as Larry. (In that respect he’s probably more like a French père.)

For other fathers it could be a bottle of great white Burgundy, a quirky gin, an old madeira or sherry or an intriguing mixed case of Belgian beers.

Two general principles about gift-giving when it comes to drinks: first, don’t buy something of which the recipient has great specialist knowledge and you have none. A disappointing Bordeaux or Burgundy is much worse than a bottle of wine they don’t normally drink. A similar type of wine from another region, say, a Bordeaux blend from California, Western Australia, South Africa or Chile would be a much better option.

And don’t always give the same bottle. Poor old dads tend to get saddled with the vinous equivalent of socks and handkerchiefs. He may - probably does - have a favourite wine or whisky but its unflattering to suggest he hasn’t got the imagination or isn’t sufficiently open-minded to drink beyond that! Behind every dad there’s a young man . . .

Image ©karandaev - Fotolia.com

Pairing wine and cheese with Max McCalman

An archive post from a fascinating tasting with maître fromager, educator and author Max McCalman, one of the US's foremost cheese experts, back in 2009.

"It might seem odd to go to New York City to taste cheese but it’s home some of the most exciting stores and tasting programmes in the cheese world. One of the key figures is Max McCalman of Artisanal Cheese, author of several excellent cheese books including Mastering Cheese: lessons for connoisseurship from a Maitre Fromager.

I was lucky enough to have a private tasting with him yesterday which produced some excellent combinations. We tried six cheeses, a number of which were new on me and two wines, a crisp, citrussy 2007 Fillaboa Albariño from Rias Baixas and a soft, damsony Portuguese red - a Vidigal Reserva 2005 from Estremadura. Here are my tasting notes and Max’s observations."

*** an outstanding match **a good match *Fine, no clashes. No stars: best avoided.

Laurier
A pasteurized goats' milk cheese from the Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery. A surprisingly full-flavour for a pasteurized cheese - almost more cow-like than goat but with a lovely citrussy freshness. Predictably great with the Albariño which acquired some lovely crisp green apple notes ***. Rubbed along fine with the Vidigal Reserva*

Ibores
A tangy semi hard goats cheese from Extremadura in Spain, rubbed with pimenton which gave it a spicy edge (and a stand-out colour on a cheeseboard). Although Max and I agreed that geographical proximity doesn’t always make for great matches (Epoisses and red burgundy being a classic example) we both thought the Estremadura from over the border in Portugal was a good match ** The Albariño worked fine too**

Evora
This Portuguese unpasteurized sheep's cheese which is set the traditional way with cardoon rather than animal-based rennet was a new one on me and one of the stand-out cheeses of the tasting. It had a lovely clean fresh citrussy taste and crumbly texture that was terrific with the Albariño *** and worked well with the Estemadura too **

Robiola Rochetta
A luxuriant fresh Italian cheese made from mixed milks (cow, sheep and goat. Max is of the opinion that mixed milk cheeses often give you the best of all worlds - the creaminess of cow with the balancing acidity of goats cheese and tanginess of sheep cheese) It was a touch creamy for the Albariño* and the Estremadura red was fine ** but there’s probably a better pairing out there

Sbrinz
A crystalline parmesan-style cheese from Switzerland made from whole rather than semi-skimmed milk which gives it a fuller taste than parmesan. Very good with the Estremadura red***, fair with the Albariño* (Interestingly the tasting note on the Artisanal website recommends champagne as a pairing which I can imagine would be delicious)

Bleu d’Auvergne
A particularly fine example of this lesser known French blue - creamy, salty with a slightly crystalline finish. Really did no favours to the Albariño (no stars) though eating it with a slice of sourdough just about kicked it into touch with the Estremadura (*)

All in all there was a lot to be learned from this beautifully balanced and unusual cheeseboard which - note - avoided pungent washed rind cheeses and concentrated more on hard and semi-hard cheeses with a clean finish. (Soft cheeses like bloomy-rinded and semi-soft washed-rind cheeses have a mouthcoating quality that often set the palate up for a wine-clash though the bright primary fruit of New World reds can sometimes power through).

 

Moncada Brewery Notting Hill Red

This week I took part in a fun new way of discovering beer: Beer Bods live Twitter tastings and this was the beer we tried this week.

The ingenious idea is to encourage beer drinkers to experiment more by sending them a case of 12 bottles (not free, obviously - the quarterly subscription is £36). You then drink one of the beers each week at a suggested time (9pm on a Thursday evening) and compare notes on Twitter.

There’s also background on the beer you’re tasting on the site which revealed that Moncara was founded by a young Argentinian, Julio, who fell in love with British beer when he came to the UK as a student.

I must say they couldn’t have started with a better beer than the Notting Hill Red for me. It was deliciously full-flavoured (6%), fruity and refreshing with a good hit of American hops and an appealing herbiness. I could imagine drinking it with ‘asado’, Argentina’s much revered barbecue, especially their spicy garlicky sausages. And, of course, a steak.

Interestingly the beer is also ‘natural’ - i.e. they do not use any cask finings, a process that removes yeast particles but also strips out flavour, giving the beer more of a cloudy appearance than most commercially produced beers. They also recycle the by-products of the brewing process: the spent cereal goes to one of the farmers at the local farmers’ market, the hops are composed at a local wildlife garden and some of the yeast goes to a local baker.

The only downside I can see is that you wouldn’t necessarily be around every Thursday but you can still read the story behind the beer and check out what people have been saying about it on the site. (You hashtag your tweets #beerbods.) Interestingly not everyone liked the beer as much as I did - some found it too strong.

You can buy the beers through BeerBods during the week following their featured slot: Notting Hill Red is on sale until next Thursday - or maybe Wednesday - at 12 bottles for £30.

Incidentally BeerBods is a successful crowd-funded project (through crowdcube.com) which hit its initial £100,000 target in 24 hours. I think it’s a really clever idea and an ideal way of helping people like me discover new brewers. It would make a great gift for any beerlover.

Disclosure: I received a free three month subscription from Beer Bods to try out the scheme