I always hated the stuff (but love red, Spanish reds especially) until my mum left half a bottle of Jacobs Creek Semillon & Chardonay in my fridge that, 1 week later I felt duty bound to sink, it being hot weather and in need of a refreshing chilled alcoholic beverage. It was lovely….

I always thought white wine tasted like cat pee too@!

Anyway, I bought another Semillon & Chardonay but it wasn’t as nice, not as citrussy so got some more Jacobs Creek (10 quid for 3 bottles in Asda)

Tonight Ive has a few glasses of (probably cheap) Pinot Grigio and likes it and am now on some Semillon but it might be a bit citrussy (if that’s a word) but OK too

Can a white wine buff guide me towards a suitable “grape” to investigate?

viognier

expand please?

white zinfendell is awesome………
but is a rose.

My preferred white tipple is a Louis Michel Montée de Tonnerre Premiere Cru Chablis. Chardonnay grapes, but not that naff footballer’s wives version of Chardonnay. Deliciously light and crisp, simply stunning.

Although, the good people at Caviste have recently got me very much interested in Saint Romain, a little way up the valley from Chablis, less fashionable, but deliciously clean stuff.

as a non-drinker who used to work in an off-license I would recommend whichever one I liked the picture most – not so helpful – used to recommend the one with a bike on a lot and the one with a technicolour frog – no one came back to say my choices were sh!t…

Good call by ton.

Frascati’s cheap, light and easy drinking – if you like Pinot Grigio, it’d be worth trying

like you im not a big fan of white wine but love the red stuff especially rioja

viognier (not sure about spelling) is a grape variety sometimes combined with others that imho makes a tasty white

Listen to the Captain my dear chap, he knows his wine clearly. I second his choice of Chablis (but mine had Premiere Cru on the label). I also like Muscadet and Sancere (when I worked behind a bar in a posh reataurant I drunk silly quantities), and white port (but don’t tell wife, please).

try and avoid buying “by the grape”, it’s a terrible British habit.

Some grape varities do well in certain terroirs where others are awful and vice versa.

Pinot Grigio is also known as Pinot Gris in Alsace.

The connundrum with wine is that below a certain pricepoint there is drinkableish wine and there is absolute rot – alcoholic grape juice people drink with determination, not adoration.

Jacobs creek and most other massive volume producers gernally fall into the former. That is the power of chemically controlled wines: consistency.

My best advice is pay no less than £6 or £7 for a bottle of wine. And preferrably £10+.

Since youre not a big wine drinker, it shouldnt cost you a lot, but it will be far more enjoyable.

As reference, I buy my wine from the producers from anything between €7 and €18 a bottle. The same wines, if available in the UK would be priced between £15 and £50.
I also buy drinkable splosh for around €3-5 a bottle, but remember, in France the duty on the bottle is 4p. In the UK it is £1.44p.

i have a lot of terrible habits didn’t realize this was one – but grape variety is probably the biggest factor in my choice of wine

Normally I go shopping and check what’s on a good offer. During my college days I knew all the £2.99 wines at my local supermarket. Some were really good, some needed more than a bottle to become tasty (you’ll notice the more you’ve had, the tastier the wine becomes; if doubts aris, drink more).

Sorry. Didnt mean to sound quite so snobbish.

What I meant was that people go into bars or offies and buy a bottle of “chardonnay” or “shiraz” with no thought as to what on earth they are buying.

So much goes into the formation of the wine, and grape variety, IMO, only makes up 30-40% of that. The remainder being the terroir (or soil/geology type), AOC restrictions (if relevant), presence or absence of oaking, the summer’s weather, juice yield, blending (if relevant) etc etc.

used to recommend the one with a bike on a lot

Cono Sur brand? I don’t know much about wines, but they do a Chilean Pinot Noir, which I’ve enjoyed a good few times.

I can drink a reasonable red wine, around the £5-8 mark (that’s probbly no good for some on here; they’d spend as much as a new stem would cost, per bottle! 😉 ), but I find the only whites I like tend to be more spensive, hence, I stick to red. Well, beer, if the truth be told. You can always rely on beer.

Mmmm….beer…..

Capt – he’s hardly going to go from three for a tenner Aussie vat up to £30 a bottle Burgundy.

Try and spend about a fiver a bottle to see big increases in quality. Very roughly, if you think on a £3.30 bottle stuff there’s: 45p VAT, £1.61 duty and 80p retailer margin. That leaves 45p for the importer, the cost of the bottle, labelling, shipping – oh, and the juice… Duty kills the value on cheap wine so an extra £1.50 a bottle will get you juice worth ten times the cost…

I’m not a fan of generalisations, but for now if you don’t like cats pee, then stay clear of sauvignon blanc. There’s not much value out there right now with currency, but South African and South American wines are holding up well on exchange rates at the fiver mark…

Don’t get too hung up on grape variety either. Saying you like chardonnay is like saying you like steel frames – one persons version can be significantly better than another, even within a small wine growing sub-region.

Oddbins continue to have decent staff. Get into one and tell em you’re starting off, tell them your budget and listen to what they have to recommend…

Don’t get too hung up on grape variety either. Saying you like chardonnay is like saying you like steel frames – one persons version can be significantly better than another, even within a small wine growing sub-region.

very nicely put, IATR

I can’t respond to that Stoner. I vowed never to speak to you on here after seeing your thread about your month in France.

Not. Envious. At. All.

PS – IMO Burgundy is an extraordinary AOC.

Too much rubbish wine on too rich a soil, and only the upper chalky, rocky parts producing anything drinkable, and then at an extortionate price. Most AOCs can produce drinkable wine around the €6-8 mark. In Burgundy, anything less than €13+ is awful.

🙂
IATR, you’re welcome to come round for a wine tasting…

I’m a big fan of muscadet (sur lie). Nice (very) slight sparkle to it, light, goes well with fish and sitting in the garden.

atlaz – you might also like the some of the Vallais wines as well as Vino Verde from portugal then. They are both “fondant”.

FURTHER INFO Thanks all so far.

As far as reds go I love Spanish reds, Rioja’s Tempranillo’s Garnache , Crianza’s, Valdepeñas etc but have found I prefer 8-10 quid bottles after a very brief 20-30 quid exploration.

Will white wine work the same? if find the country / broad grape variety and price point?

Yeah, I can just imagine: Oh look, a photo album – I thought I’d put that one away…

😉

Honestly Luke, go to Oddbins with £50 and ask for a mixed, varied case so you can explore a bit.

I always say Oddbins cause the staff are really friendly and normally know a bargain when they see one. They’re practically working students…

Will white wine work the same? if find the country / broad grape variety and price point?

[
not quite.

One of the best bits about Spanish wine is the Rioja AOC whcih proscribes the amount of time that a wine must spend in oak and then in bottle in the cellar to earn a designation: Crianza, reserva, grande reserva.

But the tempranillo/grenache respond well to sun and Oak barrels and produce a fairly predictably drinkable wine IMO (in fact in many restaurants I will choose a Rioja AOC over anythng else, simply because it is predictable)

Why dont you start with just a region, say, Loire: Tourraine, Vouvray and Sancerre (moving eastwards and pricewards 🙂 ). Read about it and test it.

if i had a bottle of anything in the house i’d be having a glass by now

but i’m being “good” this week 🙁

Never run out of wine… 🙂

get in to your nearest oddbins or majestic and find out when their next tasting is. Attend that as it will give you the chance to try a good spread of grape varieties, usually different countries of origin and a spread of costs. Then decide what you like, not what everyone suggests. It’s such a personal thing that you could spend a long time and a lot of money following up on everyone’s suggestions.

And don’t be put off by wine snobs, doesn’t matter where it’s from or what it costs. If you like it that’s all that matters.

I’d also suggest joining a wine club. Great bargains to be had as well as the chance to try some different stuff.

G

The Ned, Sauvingion Blanc from Marlborough New Zealand is all you need to know, get to your local Waitrose and puchase some tomorrow.

P.S. Lidl also do a passable Sauv Blanc as well for £3.99, dont knock it till you’ve tried it 😯 . I always go for a New Zealand Sauv Blanc from the Marlborough region and never seem to go wrong 😀

I’m already in Laithwaites for my wine, great lot.

Might try exploring whites like I did the reds a 8 years ago.

selective perception stoner but the first thing i noticed in that photo was the gas meter

impressive cellar!

Yes, lots of good advice here. Cheap red is generally more drinkable than cheap white, and it’s hard to see the sense in spending much less than a fiver a bottle for reasons others have gone into.

I love my local Oddbins (well, local to work) – great staff, not had a bad bottle from them yet and plenty of good advice along the lines of “if you like this, try that”. Majestic are good as well, but only sell wine by the case so it’s more of a commitment and less of a “pop in at lunchtime and see what’s what”.

Another idea is to get hold of Oz Clarke’s annual “250 best wines” book – had some scorchers from there over the past 6 months.

CHL – Ive used Laithwaites a fair bit (love their Pigassou, have some down stairs now) but Ive yet to find a drinkable white of theirs. That is one of the problems of white wine IMO. To find one as palatable as a given red, it takes quite a bit more money.

beans – that’s just sick 🙂

Literally just had a resort tonight as we came back with some wine at the weekend. So good having somewhere sensible to sort and store it.

impressive cellar!

You should see the other end 🙂
and in between

To find one as palatable as a given red, it takes quite a bit more money.

That’s what I said!

You’re just copying me, and pretending to know what your talking about. I bet that’s not even your cellar. Or your vayn. Or your wife and child, holiday, etc.

I bet you really live in a council flat in Brent, and work at Macros, sorting out boxes to go onto lorries….

rudeboy – you drink in the Kidd, a Smiths pub, no-one is going to take your advice on beverages now are they! 🙄

That’s it Fred, give it to him! 😉

I’d second the advice of going to a tasting or two. My understanding of whisky has expanded massively since joining a club, and as a result I’ve gone to a few wine tastings as well. You learn a surprising amount just from comparison. They’re not as snobby as you might fear either.

not sick honest i’m a gas installer

more of a buy a bottle and drink it man meself

might have stored one for a day or two once