Depending on where you are in the world, what constitutes an old vine could be anything from ten years to a hundred! Follow Aidy and Helena as they share with you what old vines bring to wine and which wines you should try...
Enjoyed this? Why not check out Why the Cariñena Region Needs to be on your Radar and 5 Reasons to Try Garnacha
Sober October may be past but with lockdown and the festive season coming up, many of us are vowing to take it a little easier on the booze this time. Here are some great, new products that feel like a treat and in some cases, can actually do you good.
Caleño Dark & Spicy
Fresh to the market is Caleño’s new baby: Dark & Spicy! We adored the original, with its infusions of inca berry and juniper - a perfect gin alternative perhaps, though very much of its own style. This new version does the same for lovers of dark rum. Think of riper, tropical notes of pineapple with a kick of ginger, vanilla pod and a twist of lime. They’ve nailed it!
Find it for £18 for 50cl at calendodrinks.com (with discounts for multiple bottle buys!)
Warner’s Juniper Double Dry Gin - 0% ABV
Hats off to Warner’s for being the first English gin brand to bring out its own 0% ABV versions. Using 100% natural botanicals and 90% of their ingredients being sourced from their farm in Northamptonshire, its herbaceous and powerful with a kick or warm spice on the finish. Also try their Pink Berry version, which is packed full of red fruit and spice.
Find it at 31Dover.com for £17.95 for 50cl
Fortnum’s Sparkling Tea - 0.0% ABV
We talked about how much we loved Fornum’s sparkling rosé tea here and in our podcast, so it was great to get to try the white! Certified organic and a blend of eight teas, this version is subtle, fragrant and elegant with both tropical notes and more darjeeling-like tea flavours. Totally refreshing! It’s worth noting that this sparkling tea contains 150mg of caffeine per litre.
Find it at Fortnumandmason.com for £16.95
Good One, Craft Hard Soda - 4 % ABV
Hot on the trails of the hard seltzer trend, Good One is an English hard soda company with three, genuinely good flavours that taste natural, where so many others feel synthetic. Its sleek, vibrant, matte packaging makes it feel like a step up from a regular soda too. We particularly loved the raspberry, lime and basil but the cloudy grapefruit and thyme and the lime and cucumber are darn good too. Gluten free, vegan, lo carb and low calorie, there’s a lot to love about these.
Find mixed packs of 12 for £33 at haveagoodone.co.uk
Small Beer - under 2.8% ABV
The Small Beer Brew Co. are going strength to strength with their low alcohol beers that are good for you (being under 3% and isotonic) and good for the planet. Given what could end up being a marathon of drinking over the next two months, wouldn't it be good to have a stash of these lower alcohol beers in the fridge? For a limited time from now until 20th Dec, they are also offering a 6-month gift subscription, compete with brilliant videos and a gift poach for under the tree!
Find the beers and the subscription pack at theoriginalsmallbeer.com
Don't ignore Sherry because you once tasted the sweet stuff your Nan drinks. Real Sherry is a whole world of moreish deliciousness! In this video, Helena answers the big questions: What is Sherry? What makes Sherry unique and what are the keys styles of Sherry? All with Russian dolls with beards and a nice Vinalogy about a choir. And a dog. Happy Sherry Week! #SherryWeek
Carignan, also known as Cariñena, Carinyena, Carignane, Carignano, Samsó, Mazuelo and more is a grape that hails from Aragón within the region of Cariñena in Northeastern Spain. This is a region with a culture so entwined in winemaking, it gave the grape its name. Join Aidy and Helena as they take you on a journey of discovery to find out more…
Enjoyed this? Then make sure you check out 5 Reasons to Try Garnacha and Your Two Minute Grape Guide to Carinena
Let’s talk about orange wine, a wine drinking trend that has skyrocketed this year. There is so much confusion around this wine style though: is it new? Is it ancient? The answer is, it’s kind of both. Here are a few things you need to know about orange wine with three to try.
Orange wine is a wine made with white grapes, but unlike most white wine, the juice, once pressed is left in contact with the skins and usually, the seeds too. The vessels used for this are quite often large earthenware pots rather than steel tanks or oak barrels that we see in more regular winemaking. This extra contact gives the wine more colour, weight and texture than white wines. Some describe them as having the complexity and tannic mouthfeel of red wines with the freshness of white wines. Typically, they tend to be quite savoury in style and pretty dry, with notes of dried fruit, spice and iced tea. The intensity of the colour, savoury characteristics and level of tooth-drying tannins will depend on the amount of time spent on the skins and pips, which could be from a few hours up to a week, months or occasionally, years.
Orange wine is now becoming very much part of a normal wine list, along with white, red and pink. Funny it has taken so long given how long orange wines have been around, but more on that later.
Orange wines are best served cool but not cold, so their fruit character and aromatics are not masked by the tannin. They are fantastically versatile and can take a good amount of flavoursome spices, salt and nuts. In its homeland of Georgia, people gather for epic long feasts called ‘supras’ where the wines have to be able to stand up to all sorts of local dishes at the same time. Find one you like and this could be your new wine colour of choice for Christmas lunch.
Natural wine is any wine (white, red, pink, sparkling) that has been made with zero or minimal intervention. This means grapes are left to ferment and do their thing, often in whole bunches, without any additions such as sulphites. They are usually unfiltered too, which is why they are often cloudy. Many orange wines are also ‘natural’ as the tannins and the antioxidants found in grape skins negate the need for additives, but not all of them are.
This non-interventionist way of making wine goes thousands of years in the Eastern European country of Georgia, which sits at the intersection of Europe and Asia. It has also been around for hundreds of years in neighbouring Slovenia and Northeastern Italy, so it’s anything but new, though many more countries are now having a go at making their own orange wines. In Georgia, the name for the wine colour has always been translated as ‘amber’ (from ‘karvisperi’) but it was only in 2004 that an English wine merchant coined the term ‘orange wine’ and that is what has stuck.
This ancient practice of making amber wines in Georgia often involves large earthenware pots known as qvevri, which in the olden days were buried in the ground to help regulate the temperature of the wine during fermentation (it creates a fair bit of heat). The practice has remained, despite numerous incursions from their northern neighbours and today, there’s a new wave of winemakers blending the traditional techniques with a more modern approach. The results are extremely exciting for the wine world.
Three orange wines to try
Teliani Valley, Kakhuri No. 8, 2019, Kakheti, Georgia.
This savoury, amber wine is a blend of four indigenous, Georgian grape varieties (Rkatsiteli, Kakhuri Mtsvane, Khikhvi and Kisi), harvest from Georgia’s best known wine appellation in the East: Kakheti. It’s a nutty, sappy little number with tonnes of texture and notes of dried apricot and herbs, thanks to the skins staying with the wine for six months after fermentation. A great food wine. Try it with cheese dipped in local Svanetian salts if you can find them! These wines love salt and spices.
Find it for £12.99 at Kwoff, Connolly’s Wine Merchants, Highbury Vintners
Teliani Valley, ‘Glekhuri’ Kisi Qvevri, Akhmeta, 2019, Georgia.
Another from producer Teliani Valley, this wine is made with 100% Kisi (that’s the grape) harvested from the Akhmeta district and fermented in underground qvevri. A touch more aromatic than the wine above with warm spice notes and riper fruit. Kisi is an easy Georgian grape to remember and makes very pretty wines like this.
Find it here for £21.25 at Connelly’s Wine or by the case at Kwoff
Naranjo, Totontel Orange Wine, Maturana Wines, Maule Valley, Chile.
Moving away from Georgia to orange wine’s ‘new world’, this is a much more modern style of orange wine, made with the Torontel grape, which helps give it orange blossom aromatics, notes of apricot and a creamy, texture reminiscent of white chocolate. This is a great one to start with if you’re not yet sure about orange wine. Grab the last few bottles while you can - the next shipment is due at the end of November.
Find it for £16.50 at Corney and Barrow.
If you enjoyed reading this, why not check out more of our wine content here?
Press release from the Drinks Trust
Over the last few months, The Drinks Trust has been able to award a significant number of financial grants to people within the industry who have been struggling with challenges at this time. In addition, an increased selection of wellness services have been made available to support people. The Trust will continue to provide these services. However, the emerging and likely long-term effects that the current situation will have on the community has led us to launching our first Drinks Industry Survey. It has been created to establish how members of the hospitality and drinks industries are feeling, what their concerns are and to better understand what their thoughts are on diversity and inclusion in our industry.
Link to the survey: https://waw.getfeedback.com/drinkstrustsurvey
The results will help to evolve the services and support supplied by The Drinks Trust as well as businesses in the drinks and hospitality sectors. The survey includes four sections covering you, your work life, diversity and your wellbeing and should take approximately 12 minutes to complete.
By understanding the diverse nature of our industry, and what more needs to be done to evolve it, we are able to better support the drinks industry community.
The survey has been created by We Are Wellbeing in association with Best Bar None, NDML, NTIA, SIBA and WSTA.
Drinks Trust CEO, Ross Carter said, “we are very keen to understand the needs of the people within our industry so we can ensure we provide the best possible support to them. We ask all businesses to share the survey so we can build a comprehensive picture”.
Operations Manager, of NTIA, Silvana Kill said, “The NTIA are extremely proud to work in partnership with the Drinks Trust, Best Bar None, We Are Wellbeing and all partners to create this survey. We hope to gain some critical insight and understand how best we can support our industry. Never has there been a more important time than now to join forces and support diversity, inclusion and the wellbeing of the night-time industry workforce. We are fully committed to helping our community on this journey throughout the pandemic and beyond.”
Andy Romero-Birkbeck, Founder &Director of We Are Wellbeing said, “We Are Wellbeing are proud to be supporting the hospitality industry, particularly at a time like this. We firmly believe that the success of the drinks and hospitality industry is crucial to the social wellbeing of our society. We will do whatever we can to ensure both businesses and employees are supported throughout”.
Take part in the survey: https://waw.getfeedback.com/drinkstrustsurvey
Carignan, also known as Cariñena, Carinyena, Carignane, Carignano, Samsó, Mazuelo and more is a grape that hails from Aragón within the region of Cariñena in Northeastern Spain. Follow Aidy and Helena as they take a closer look at the Cariñena grape…
Enjoyed this? Don’t forget to watch 5 Reasons to Try Garnacha.
Words by Helena Nicklin
Carmenère is a red grape that has really upped its game in the last few years. Fans of Cabernet Sauvignon will appreciate its similar, brooding, blackcurrant leaf flavour profile but Carmenère tends to be juicier and less tannic than Cabernet Sauvignon with a characteristic cocoa and bell pepper notes on the finish. Dark purple, velvety and smoky, throwing herbs into the cauldron, Carmenère has always been the smoky sorceress of wine grapes to me.
Much like Malbec in Argentina, Carmenère came over to South America from Bordeaux when French immigrants settled there in the 1800s. For years it was believed to be Merlot but it eventually was discovered for what it was and has only been an officially recognised varietal in Chile, its new spiritual home, since 1998. It never thrived in its original home of Bordeaux where it struggled to get ripe and after the phylloxera vine infestation of 1870s, most of the vines there were ripped out. Chile had the right combination of weather and soils however to let the grape show its potential. For years it made relatively inexpensive, juicy, dark red wines in Chile that were easy to drink but not all that complex. Nowadays, Chilean Carmenère is getting the full terroir treatment, with higher quality wines from specific microclimates really showing what this grape can do. According to winemaker Marcelo Garcia at TerraNoble winery in Chile, a Carmenère plant takes around 12-15 years to truly shine, when it starts to make wines that have more structure and fewer vegetal notes.
Fact: The name Carmenère comes from the French word for crimson, which is ‘carmin’, thanks to its bright red leaves at Autumn time.
Fact: Carmenère is also often spelled with two accents: Carménère. Chile tends to only use one.
Carmenère Food Match
The smoky, leafiness of this grape makes it a great match for earthy meats like roast lamb and grilled vegetables. It loves anything that’s been on a barbecue!
Co-op Irresistible Carmenère
From the warm, inland appellation of the Maipo Valley, this cheap and cheerful wine is a classic example, packed with notes of ripe blackcurrant, vanilla spice and green pepper. Smooth velvety. It packs quite a punch.
Find it here at Co-Op for £7
Arboleda Carmenère 2016
A rich, bramble-fruit and chocolatey number hailing from the inland Aconcagua region that is a step up in structure and complexity. Silky smooth, but big enough to handle lots of meat. You might always want to try this with some dark chocolate! There are not many wines you can say that about!
Find it at Corneyandbarrow.com for £16.95
Costa Vs Andes
TerraNoble is a winery becoming known for championing Carmenère and creating high-end wines with it. They have an exciting project where they are comparing Carmenère from Los lingues the bottom of the Andes with some from Lolol, by the coast. What they have found is that the Andes (CA1 Andes) wine is riper, fuller-bodied and richer with more classic typicity than the cooler, coastal wine (CA2 Costa), which shows crunchy red fruit notes, fewer green flavours and generally, a finer structure and more precision. Try them side by side to see what this grape can truly do.
Find CA1 Carmenère Andes 2014 at vintageroots.co.uk for £27.30 (2017 on its way)
Find CA2 Carmenère Costa 2017 at vintageroots.co.uk for £27.30
Love wine? Then make sure to check out our 5 Reasons to try Garnacha and From Budget to Blowout: 7 Outstanding Champagnes.
