December is a feeding frenzy of shopping, but there's barely a pause for breath before many rush back out to the sales, often as soon as St Stephen's day. We love a deal and not just on clothes or electrical goods. One supermarket buyer told me last year that 82% of his sales were wines that were on some sort of special offer. You might even say shoppers are deal junkies.
The problem at supermarkets though is that so many of the offers are fake. Almost all half price offers are made on wines with an artificially inflated nominal price. Prices yo-yo to such an extent that it's confusing and hard to know what the real price of wine is.
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Traditional wine merchants and on line retailers don't tend to indulge in so much of this yo-yo pricing nonsense and have more genuine sales in January. Post Christmas is a time when they take stock and look to cut their losses on wines that didn't sell. For example rednosewines.ie has 25% off everything this weekend. That's not to say that they're bad wines but in my experience it's often the more interesting left field wines that maybe consumers don't know about, like those we tasted today.
So please do go into your local independent in search of something interesting at a bargain price or look on line at retailers like o'brienswine.ie, mitchellandson.com, curiouswines.ie, lecaveau.ie. Greenacres.ie, thecorkscrew.ie and winesdirect.ie
Finally if January sees you flat broke then Tesco is still selling wine for €4. I tried a Spanish red called Revero this week and well it's wet and red and not much more but then €3.94 of that price goes in tax to the government.
Wines Tasted on the Show Today
Radford Dale Renaissance Chenin Blanc 2011, Stellenbosch, thecorkscrew.ie, €20 reduced from €25.95.
Decanter magazine awarded this five stars and it was a wine of the week of mine in the Sunday Times a few months ago. It's about as good as chenin blanc gets from South Africa. It's barrel fermented, but in old oak with wild yeast so it's gets great creamy texture but very subtle nutty wood flavours to augment the light citrus and honey fruit character.
Decanter magazine awarded this five stars and it was a wine of the week of mine in the Sunday Times a few months ago. It's about as good as chenin blanc gets from South Africa. It's barrel fermented, but in old oak with wild yeast so it's gets great creamy texture but very subtle nutty wood flavours to augment the light citrus and honey fruit character.
Santa Tresa Nivuro Nero d'Avola / Cabernet NV. Sicily. O'Briens. €11.99, reduced from €18.99
A prestigious Sicilian red at a knock down price. It's intense rich, tannic and full of black cherry fruit and liquorice spice and cries out for hearty winter food. I'd give it a bit of air too before drinking and that doesn't mean just pulling the cork but pouring it into a jug or decanter or through an aerator. We used the Vin-aire device on the show, available at about €30 from thecorkscrew.ie or cases.ie
A prestigious Sicilian red at a knock down price. It's intense rich, tannic and full of black cherry fruit and liquorice spice and cries out for hearty winter food. I'd give it a bit of air too before drinking and that doesn't mean just pulling the cork but pouring it into a jug or decanter or through an aerator. We used the Vin-aire device on the show, available at about €30 from thecorkscrew.ie or cases.ie
You can follow Martin on twitter at @winerepublic
