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Christmas Wine

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I got round to trying the 2015 Pigeoulet last night and enjoyed it a lot. Definitely seemed to be a notch up from the generic Guigal CdR and very much worth the extra couple of euros. As always, though, one asks oneself questions that always end up with buying, opening and drinking more bottles.

Did I like it enough to buy some more? Yes, I’ll be going back to Franglais Vins.

How does it compare to the 2015 Mégaphone? Come on, quickly, CT says you have drunk two bottles of that already, we need an answer...! Er, can’t remember - can I open another Mégaphone tonight and try them side by side?

All right - but eternumviti says they are supposed to be drunk whilst young, so have you taken steps to buy the 2017 while you are in France in a couple of weeks’ time? Not yet, but I promise I will.

Do you mean Mégaphone or Pigeoulet? Um, er... both?
 
Don David Argentina Merlot from the co-op is fantastic great with red meat particularity with fillet of beef or on it's own. At under £10 Is amazing value.
 
Marchbanks, my dear friend, is it possible you have got Stuck in a Rhone ? You are starting to remind me of another (real world) friend who has more wine than you and I put together: 90% of it Bordeaux !
My most numerous reds are:
1. Barbera from Italy.
2. Shiraz from Australia.
3. Bordeaux blend from South Africa.
4. Zin from California.
5. And in 5th place Rhone !
They say it is good to know what you like and stick to it. I must be wacko.
Of course 2015/16 were so good to the Rhone I'll be getting some more too sometime.
 
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Well, here I am passing through Calais again and rescuing Christmas Wine from page 7 in order to share my purchases with you. Lest I should cause further concern regarding my rut-stuckedness I won’t mention the four bottles of Pigeoulet 2015 at 9€ each and instead concentrate on Auchan, the shop that keeps on giving.

If you look up Bouza Sin Barrica Tannat on their website you will see it is on special offer, reduced from €12.20 to €10.98. These prices are not valid in store, they say. Indeed not, this is what I found this morning...

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So naturally I filled my boots (or trolley) at £5/bottle.

A shelf or two further up the ‘rest of world’ section were some green-stickered (ie remaindered rather than company-discounted) bottles of Penfolds. I took some Koonunga Hill and Bin 8.


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Now, Auchan’s discounting works in mysterious ways. The company discount is applied automatically, but the green sticker reduction is applied manually at the checkout. Sometimes the system doesn’t work and the discount isn’t applied. Today things got very confused and I ended up with some extra reductions...

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...so the Koonunga Hill cost £6 a bottle, and the two Bin 8s eventually worked out at £8.30 and £11.80. Go figure, as Siobhan Sharp would say. I was very happy with my half-hour’s work.
 
Coming home on Wednesday - will be back in Auchan to see if there is any Bouza left. Once you have got over the shock of the first taste feeling like a punch in the mouth it is rather good - certainly held its own when paired with steak and gorgonzola the other night (separately.)

There were also a few green-stickered 30% off bottles of a more expensive Penfolds. I’m a long way off certain but I think it may have been Bin 389 at 50€, which would work out at about £30 with the discount. That seems a good price - would the panel agree I should buy (if I have indeed remembered correctly?) I’m not an Oz aficionado, as has been noted.
 
If you're not a fan, is there any point to getting it for the sake of having it? It's what I keep telling myself when I see something that looks like a particularly good price... Maybe two bottles? One to taste, a second to enjoy it again if you liked it/gift if you didn't.
 
BTC3 said:
If you're not a fan, is there any point to getting it for the sake of having it? It's what I keep telling myself when I see something that looks like a particularly good price... Maybe two bottles? One to taste, a second to enjoy it again if you liked it/gift if you didn't.
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Maybe ‘aficionado’ was the wrong word. I did think about changing it. Perhaps I should have said ‘I don’t have a lot of experience with Australian wine.’ What experience I do have leaves me 100% certain I would enjoy it - I guess what I was really asking is whether it represents decent value for money, or whether it is overpriced and overhyped because of the ‘baby Grange’ tag.
 
UK retail for 389 is £60-ish, so it's looking like 50% of the price here. Might be worth getting some at that price level.
 
The 389 is a Cabernet/Shiraz. It is probably the 2015 which is not the best year for 389 but is competing against the glorious Rhone 2015/16s so maybe buy a couple and wait a year or 3 before opening. But if it is the 2014 or earlier then it is worth buying 6 at that price.
 
wacko said:
The 389 is a Cabernet/Shiraz. It is probably the 2015 which is not the best year for 389 but is competing against the glorious Rhone 2015/16s so maybe buy a couple and wait a year or 3 before opening. But if it is the 2014 or earlier then it is worth buying 6 at that price.
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Thanks for the advice. I bought two, and bizarre discounting applied again. This time I watched carefully. 40% was deducted automatically (no idea why) then the green label 30% was taken off the remainder manually. I make that 58% off the shelf price of 50€, which comes to £18.25!

I couldn't resist trying a second time with two more bottles. Identical result!

I've left about six bottles should anyone else be in Calais in the next few days. It is the 2015 as wacko suggested it might be. Unfortunately all the Bouza has now been cleared off the shelf for the time being. I can tell you where it is, though!


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The magnificently-reduced seven (one Koonunga Hill has already laid down its life.)

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^^ great price on the 389 ! Strangely enough I also have 4 of them but I paid twice as much. Hide them at the back of the cellar for a few years. Polish off the others though.
 
^^ haha pity the second bottle was 'unavailable'. Bottle probably cost the restaurant under £3,000. Only fair after they ordered a bottle at £260 that would have cost the restaurant about £100.
IMO the proper way for a restaurant to do wine is buy it early, store it and offer it years later at a relatively reasonable price. Hardly any restaurants in the UK can be bothered to do that. In the internet age everyone knows the retail price in minutes. Or have interesting, good value wines that are not easily available retail.
 
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Finally got around to getting the cracking vintage 2016 Coudoulet. It is running out (and price bumped as high as £25 already by some) so get it now if you want some. I'm trying not to open any yet but I'm sure I'll fail and be back with a report. Probably should have checked if EV had any first.
 
I’m sure you didn’t expect to get away with mentioning Coudoulet without Mr Southern Rhône Bore’s antennae twitching. By coincidence mine, which arrived last autumn (en primeur purchase) finally made it out of their box and onto a rack as part of a rejig in the ancestral cellars yesterday.

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Of course any sane human being would realize than 12 bottles is ample, but my local Fayne Wayne merchant claims to have more available at £18.95, and I haven’t seen it cheaper than that in France...

I won’t be starting them just yet - I still have 3 x 2012 to dispose of.
 
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^^ indeed I knew you would have it ! Drat and double drat you bought en primeur though: one day I'm going to get a wine cheaper than you. :)
Should be noticeably better than the 2012s.
Nice cellar btw.
 
Like the look of your cellar setup! Is it one of those spiral ones?

On the wine front, the Wine Society showroom had some bottles of their Weinert tonel 111, which I've wanted to try for a while - I have some stored with them that I haven't called up - so I indulged. Lovely stuff.
 
Auchan are in fairly desperate straits these days, as are Casino. There are some great deals available as a result.

To give you an idea: Casino have been texting me every Friday for 3 weeks now, with an offer of a free tankful of petrol (up to 50€) if I will only go and shop there and buy 80€ worth of stuff twice (so 160€). That's right, a 30% discount just because I filled up at a Casino 3 months ago and they see I don't shop there. Desperate. A shame the tank in my wife's car is just too full.
 
BTC3 said:
Like the look of your cellar setup! Is it one of those spiral ones?

On the wine front, the Wine Society showroom had some bottles of their Weinert tonel 111, which I've wanted to try for a while - I have some stored with them that I haven't called up - so I indulged. Lovely stuff.
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Another coincidence. I had some Weinert Carrascal last night (also Wine Soc) - pretty good as one of their lower end offerings, but not a patch on another of their wines (midrange I think, but sadly I’ve forgotten the name) I had 15 or so years back.

The cellar is a pre-fabricated plastic construction that was dropped onto a layer of concrete at the bottom of a big hole in the ground!

PsB said:
Auchan are in fairly desperate straits these days, as are Casino. There are some great deals available as a result.
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I’ve been kicking myself for not buying more/all of the Bin 389, but I suspect the silly price was partially a mistake. The Bouza, OTOH, was a genuine offer which supposedly goes on until the end of June. I’m back two days before that...
 
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I have been happily reading through this thread until I realised that living outside Edinburgh, I am seriously missing out on the ability to forage in France. My wine buying is largely through Majestic or occasionally the Wine Society as I have become fundamentally bored with the offerings from our local Tesco. I have tried Aldi with no real success in fact, I have a half dozen of the Marsanne recommended on the Saturday Kitchen, to take back because I find the sulphites overpowering.
This leads me to ask where else are people buying wine and identifying the bargains? Is there a now a replacement for Malcolm Gluck?
 
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