I bought a bottle Cecchi wine a few years ago and I enjoyed it. When I was in ASDA the other day I noticed this interesting bottle of Chianti and thought I would try it.

First impression of this wine is it punches well above its weight. I do enjoy a good Italian wine and this is no exception. It is smooth, easy to drink, but had that full bodied richness associated with Italian reds.

On a side note, the basket it is presented in catches the drips very well… bonus!

This is a refreshing wine and is smooth and easy drinking. I bought this wine in South Africa for R44.95 and could be considered well priced.

This is a local favourite and the pale coloured wine can be enjoyed on its own, although it was specifically produced to accompany food.

I had this wine with some really spicy food and it brought out such amazing flavours on the palat. It has enticing ripe mango and pineapple aromas on the nose.

It is really a great wine to have through the year and is suitable for any occasion.

Unfortunatley I could not find a website in the UK that sold it. It is unfortunate as it is a great wine.

This is a great and easy drinking South African wine. It is sold locally for R29.95 and it is a very affordable price.

The Blend Information is 51% Sauvignon Blanc, 26% Chenin Blanc, 23% Chardonnay, 22% Semillon, 1% Verdelho and it is beautifully balanced.

The nose has a very strong smell of fresh cut grass and the smell of apricot and peach is evident. The palate is crisp, fresh and generous with fresh acidity.

It pares very well with seafood dishes and it is really great with a light chicken and salad dish.

This is a great wine for the summer months and very suitable for those outside functions.

Guest review by Sam and Simon

Picked this up for 3.99 (I think) at Morrisons this morning. It’s billed as being a combination of the “melon and peach” of chardonnay and the “soft fruit” of semillon, and, well, it’s inoffensive.

I think the lack of things that are springing to mind to say about this bottle sums it up: it’s got some flavour, it’s not going to offend anyone (well, assuming you give it to them in a glass), but equally it’s not going to inspire you to walk to the supermarket having split a bottle to get another one.

To sum up, it conures up not much more than “it’s ok, can think of worse ways to spend four quid”.

I think the following cartoon is how a lot of people feel about wine. It wasn’t until I started this blog that I realised how difficut it is to describe various wines.

I have always been into the cheaper end of the wine scale, which in my opinion is harder to describe as a lot of them do taste very similar.

Listening to the wine crtics on TV does make me cringe. They come up with so many words to describe the wine that I am sure 90% of it is utter nonsense. I generally try to identify which fruits I can taste, and how much of an oaky taste it has. Other than that I will leave the “taste like mouldy carpet” and “essence of horse *&%$” to the TV buff’s!

If anyone has a take on this I would be keen to know, it has baffled me for years.

I bought this wine as it was 2 for £8 at Sainsbury’s. Anyone looking at the bottle would be forgiven in thinking it is a more exclusive variant of the Hardy’s Stamp. Seeing as I love the Stamp I had high hopes for this wine.

A little background:

The Hardys VR Shiraz is rich purple in colour, displaying typical shiraz aromas of raspberry, plums and cherries. These characteristic are reflected on the palate where the wine exhibits soft spiciness with raspberries, cherries, plums finishing with persistent supple tannins. This wine has been crafted to drink as a young wine.

It is indeed a rich purple colour and it does smell very nice. I’m not sure why but it just didn’t seem quite as smooth as the Stamp, and in actual face it tasted a little inferior. Don’t get ba wrong, it is not bad for £4, but if I had the choice I would go for the Stamp or the McGuigan Estate Shiraz.

This is a difficult one to rate. It is a fairly average wine, certainly not worth paying full price for, but it is quite often on offer in the major stores and so is a safe bet if you’re looking for a cheap wine and are unsure what to go for.

Just got this from Threshers. They are having a buy one get one free promotion for most of summer. Seems excellent value.

Montana Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc burst on to the world stage in 1990 when it won the Marquee de Goulaine Trophy for best Sauvignon Blanc in the world. This wine is considered the benchmark of New Zealand varietal Sauvignon Blanc.

This wine was on offer for just above my usual £5 ceiling (I think it was £5.99 at Sainsbury’s). It comes in a screw top bottle with a fairly understated label.

The taste is very fruity, not unlike the white’s I tried in Waterford Estate in South Africa. There is a definite fruity taste of gooseberry’s, nectarines and passion fruit. To call this wine crisp would be an understatement, it is almost jaw-droppingly good. It’s one of those few wines that make me wonder if I should up my price limit, just a touch.

This is a stunning wine, heartily recommended.

History: The legend of Casillero del Diablo began more than 100 years ago, when Don Melchor de Concha y Toro, founder of the winery, reserved for himself an exclusive batch of the best wines produced. To keep strangers and light fingered workers away from this special private reserve; he spread the rumour that the Devil lived in his cellars, hence the name Casillero del Diablo or Cellar of the Devil.

I have enjoyed the Casillero del Diablo wines before but never the Shiraz. I bought a bottle of the Shiraz to review as Shiraz is one of my favorite wines and I wanted to see if the Shiraz lived up to the high standards of the rest of the range. It does! Due to the unique history of this wine I find it is a nice wine to take when going for dinner with friends, it’s an interesting (well I find it interesting!) talking point.

There is a fantastic video review on the Tesco wine club link (Click here and then click Watch Video) which describes this bottle perfectly. A rich, ripe wine, full of flavours of plums, chocolate and blackberries and topped off with subtle vanilla. The guy in the video recommends drinking it with steak or herb(y) sausages, but I went for piri piri chicken instead… fantastic!

This wine is available from Tesco Wine Club (case of 6 = £25.59, that’s £4.27 a bottle… that’s a bargain!)

On a recent tour of South Africa we went to Stellebosch for a days wine tasting. We had no idea where we were going but I saw a sign by the side of the road “Waterford Estate”. By this time we were already in late afternoon so we decided to go for it.

After driving for what seems like hours the road turned from a tarmac road into a dirt track. We were really not sure if we had taken a wrong turn of if the place was even there! Eventually we came out the other end and into what seems like a paradise! The place is amazing to look at and the view as you enter the property is exquisite.

We parked up, walked up into the courtyard and were greeted by one of the servers. We were seated in the corner of the maple tree filled courtyard. Such a pleasant place to spend an afternoon.

We were offered the standard wine tasting or the “chocolate and wine” experience. The latter consisted of the standard wine tasting plus 3 wines that were paired with chocolate. This sounded like a gimmick to me, but in most cases I’ll try anything once, so we opted for the chocolate and wine.

The service was very good, the wine glasses were large, and we were presented with generous amounts to try. The server was very knowledgeable too, explaining each wine in turn and the background of how it is made and why it tastes as it does.

The wines from Waterford were really quite special. The whites were very fruity and very different from anything I have tasted before. I cant remember the name of the one I liked most, but I believe it was one of the Pecan river bottles.

The flagship wine seems to be the Kevin Arnold Shiraz. To be honest I don’t think there was a single wine I didn’t like, but that one was certainly very nice.

The chocolate experience was very interesting. Once we had tasted the standard selection our server presented us with a wooden block, like a very thick table mat, laid out in 3 sections. On each section was a wine glass and a slab of chocolate. In between was an explanation of why the chocolate was paired with the wine.

The selection was as follows:

Cabernet Sauvignon - Dark Chocolate
Kevin Arnold Shiraz - Masala Chai Dark Chocolate
Heatherleigh Natural Sweet desert wine - Rose Geranium Milk Chocolate

We were advised to take a sip of wine, then take a bite of chocolate, then take another sip of wine. I was amazed as to how different they tasted and how well they complimented each other. I had ever heard of having chocolate paired with wine before, but this certainly worked really well.

The first was the Masala Chai Dark Chocolate with the Cabernet Sauvignon. This was a lovely combination and made me wonder why I had not discovered chocolate and wine before!

The second was the Kevin Arnold Shiraz with the Rock Salt Dark Chocolate. You can actually see the salt in the chocolate and it is there to make the strong flavour of the Cabernet just that little bit easier to drink. I must say it really worked and this was the one that completely sold me on the concept of chocolate and wine.

The most interesting was probably the desert wine, paired with the Rose Geranium Milk Chocolate. I am not usually a desert wine drinker, but this was so smooth and combines so nicely with the milk chocolate that I think I am now a convert! I just wish I’d picked up a bottle at the time.

To be honest the surroundings help a lot when tasting wine. It is so easy to get totally lost in the experience. By the time we had finished I was seriously temped to see if they had accommodation available!

This was definitely my most memorable and enjoyable wine tasting experience (only slightly pipping the Yodeling experience of of the Peju winery in California!). The setting is simply amazing and the atmosphere is great. I would recommend this to anyone visiting the Stellenbosch region of South Africa and if you go wine tasting there you MUST visit Waterford!

Link: http://www.waterfordwines.com