It’s posh wine speak, if it were beer it would be a pub crawl 
1 Like
Sounds great but £25-£50 a bottle over here…
I shall try Nigel’s cheap plonk supplier I think!
Yes, I forgot about Bourgogne Aligoté - a euro or two less, good idea!
Here in the SW, picpoul de pinet’s a popular, reasonably priced accompaniment to sea food.
However in Occitanie an increasing number of interesting whites are being made in places like ours (AOP Marcillac - 100% fer servadou) where there was previously little incentive to make white wines. Now our local new whites (many bio and/or natural including some ‘pet nat’) are classed as Aveyron IGP and are either pure chenin, or blends such as chardonnay / chenin / muscadelle.
Returning to Chris’s original request, one of the advantages of UK wine buying is the huge range of countries whose wines are readily available compared to here in France. Therefore my advice would be to define what are the characteristics of the wines that you prefer and then search for such wines from places such as SE Europe and S Africa where the cost of production is much lower than in the better known wine making countries .
1 Like
Good idea. I recall there are some Romanian and Bulgarian wines on UK supermarket shelves now, and plenty of south african - though I don’t know many - apart from Stellenbosch - and that drunk only in red.
And I have drunk some Argentine and chilean whites - closer to French chardonnay kinds too I seem to remember. And NZ white! (Marlborough?). Though I don’t recall that being less expensive than France, possibly even more…
Yes, the UK has an immense range of wine and spirits along with real beer.
Try everything, and try to compare wines double blind.
Buy what you normally drink and one or two to compare with it.
One person either decants wine into a second container for each, or covers the bottle’s origin totally in the kitchen. Maybe mark each bottle A, B, C.
A second person then enters kitchen and pours tasters into glasses marked 1, 2,3..
Taste from the glasses. Neither knows the true origin of the wine during tasting.
Nice to know a wine that you like as reliable choice, but nice to keep trying other ones too.
1 Like
Hi @RicePudding Rully really is a decent wine in both red and white along with its neighbouring appellation Givry in Côte Chalonnaise. Very affordable good drinking wines. Mercury red and white are quite similar in terms of affordability and quality ratio. Another Côte Chalonnaise gem for daily consumption.
1 Like
wtf!
If you have a Noz near you, you have a world of non-French wine at your fingertips, at very reasonable prices. On Saturday, I stocked up on mainly Italian wines at our local Noz, but they had stuff in from Bulgaria, Romania, New Zealand, Spain as well (and the usual French assortment of Bordeaux, Angevins, Loire valley, Provençal, Rhône valley, Burgundy, and a selection of those between the Med and the Atlantic.
A few months ago, the incoming batches were mostly from the new world, both North and South America. The prices for anything not French are seriously low, we’re talking on average a couple of Euros per bottle (usually something between 1,20 to 3,50€).
2 Likes
Our friends keep a bottle opener in the car and have a wine app on their phone and come home with some cracking wines!
This is the way to do it. I always look them up to see if there any reviews, their average retail value, and whether or not they’ve reached maturity or can be kept for a while.
1 Like
Thanks, I didn’t know about them, but I’ve just checked and unfortunately the nearest is Cahors, an hour and a half away.
OTOH,though it would be nice to find the occasional good S African traditional chenin or merlot (very different style and quality to WO Western Cape varietals) those I used to buy when living there are in €20-50 range in W Europe, so I’m quite happy to continue exploring the wines of the SW France.
A few years ago, we discovered this French winery, at the time run by a couple of South Africans, producing a very nice Chenin Blanc under the brand “Figure Libre”, maybe you’ve come across them, and a red reminiscent of a Saint Nicolas de Bourgueil (called Chemin de Moscou"). We were even more surprised to find the same supplier and Chenin Blanc at a local Italian restaurant.
Thanks for the recommendation, unfortunately Gayla don’t have a stockist near us and usually if we’re heading towards Spain we go A75 and A9 rather than via Carcassonne.
However, I see they’re near Limoux and I imagine similar in style to Limoux whites which are easy to find - so your suggestion was nevertheless very helpful. Our other local appellation, Entraygues et le Fel, produce small amounts of chenin, but one’s over priced and the other much better one is virtually impossible to obtain unless you know someone!
2 Likes
You mean avec modération surely?
Not at all. Why would I? We are all going to die lets get it over with.
Guilty as charged, Nigel1. I completely overlooked the wanting cheaper.
Noz I had not heard of and very glad to see there is one in Cahors. Same as Tory’s other suggestion of Action for general well-priced stuff I will now make a note to check out both when I get the chance.
I had interpreted that perhaps Madame did not like New World sauvignon blanc which isn’t like trad sauvignon blanc here.
I didn’t mention Saint Véran which can come up as a cheaper Chardonnay-based white of the type that might be wanted. And I’m sorry to say I have never had a decent Aligoté.
I’d repeat again the idea of perusing Lidl’s wine catalog in both UK and France.
Nice idea, but on a quick search looks to be around £25 a pop in the UK.
1 Like
@Ouch. Unlikely to be worth it comparatively to some options suggested