Noz can be great! I read of a group of friend who would head to Noz, buy one bottle of each of what they had that day. Head out to carpark to try them, and if they liked them head back in and clear the shelves!
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I approve wholeheartedly of this approach, unfortunately necking 14 individual bottles between wife and myself on Noz carpark just to decide which ones are worth buying in bulk comes with its own set of logistical problems 
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Good for you patroniser. Goes both ways. Back to the woodwork now.
Yes I have bought from Noz previously although one lot of bottles really made my stomach churn because they had the statue of liberty on the main label. God knows what it had to do with the bordeaux which is what the inside product was supposed to be, but I have never forgot that garish label and feeling ill.
There’s a cheap, unpleasant Aussie chardonnay called Yellowtail that’s found in UK supermarkets. The label features a kangaroo with a yellow tail, presumably because the graphic designer didn’t know that a yellowtail’s actually a vey tasty fish. Though neither have anything to do with wine.
Some of the cheaper end South African wines lose their traditionally jaw-challenging Afrikaans names when exported to the UK and instead get names of animals not found in the Cape winelands
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The label was a distinct red, white and blue stars and stripes behind the statue of liberty, nasty and cheap looking like your kangaroo.
Look on the bottom shelf in the supermarket for square plastic bottles of wine, even lycéens don’t take it to parties because it’s vin de clodo. It does have a convenient screw-on lid in case you haven’t got a corkscrew or can’t finish it all in one go. I doubt it’s any better than what you describe 
Are we talking Lion and Giraffe ?
They were pretty good wines at extremely good prices.
They’re the ones
I have met many good small winemakers who are passionate about the wines they produce but whose production is so small it is not exported. There are many in the Loire valley and in the Roussillon that I know personally. So if you are lucky, you may find these wines when you are in France but you will be unlikely to find them in a supermarket or your local off-licence.
Specialist UK wine shops will, however, have access to some small producers and these are worth finding and trying. Some specialise in particular wine-making regions.
Wine you find in a supermarket in the lower price ranges will most likely come from ‘caves cooperatives’ or other large producers, many of whom make decent wines in large volumes, i.e. the economies of scale that are needed to supply supermarket chains around Europe.
But to say a bottle of French wine purchased in the UK is ‘crap’ and of inferior quality when compared to an identical bottle of the same wine purchased in France, I’m sorry but that’s not true. It would be illegal under French winemaking law to mislabel a wine in this way, and the penalties are huge. The same bottle will, however, be more expensive in the UK due to higher taxation on wine.
It is, of course, entirely possible that one might find drinking a French wine on holidays whilst relaxing in the warm French sunshine to be a more pleasurable experience that drinking the same wine on one’s patio in the UK.
To say that ‘crap’ can somehow be passed off as good wine to, for example, supermarkets in the UK is to show a lack of understanding. ALL the major supermarkets employ professional wine buying teams that include Masters of Wine amongst them. There are only about 410 MW’s in the world, and half of them are in the UK, which reflects the historical British interest in wine. I can guarantee you that these buyers serve the British wine-drinking public VERY well in sourcing decent quality wine at a fair price, albeit heavily taxed by our government.
I base my opinion on 10 years’ experience in the wine trade, but it’s just my opinion as, despite being qualified as a wine professional, I don’t call myself an expert as I am now retired and the field of wine production is constantly changing. But I certainly won’t call you a ‘wally’ if you don’t agree with me . . .
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Please try to avoid writing sensible posts.
I have friends that do that too. He also has an app on his phone where he takes a picture of the label and it finds the prices of that wine. They have paid sub 5e for wines selling elsewhere for 20e or more.
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you could just have a sip or 2 the Noz carpark near work was rather stunning last month to have a tipple!
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Damn sight prettier than our local Noz.
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We have been down to the Beaujolais this morning. It was absolutely beautiful going over the tops of the hills, flowers in the hedgerows and the wild cherry brilliant white in the sunshine.
We bought Julienas 2001 and Moulin a Vent 2002. We buy from Monsieur Gonard, a petit producteur and it is always a voyage of discovery during a tasting.
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Well done!
Beaujolais was the first appellation whose wines I learned to distinguish - in the 1980s Fenwicks’ department store in Newcastle carried the full range of Georges Duboeuf as well as many wonderful wines from Oregon and Washington state.
I was pleasantly surprised at the prices you paid for such old wines and also that Juilenas could age for more than twenty years. Despite what our vignerons say, our local wines are best drunk youngish (apart from Cahors and I’ve been told, Gaillac, though unfortunately have yet to taste evidence of the latter)
I wouldn’t want to try a Julienas more than twenty years old. We tried a four old Julienas vielles vignes, which is normally our favourite, but it wasn’t as good as the younger one.
We were chatting with our neighbours, who mainly live in Nuits St George, and they were saying that even there the amount of planting for wines that need to be kept in caves for a long time has been reduced.
People don’t have caves in their houses now and want to drink their wines sooner.
Had an interesting new red wine last night at our commune’s inaugural marche nocturne. It was a well chilled 11% Marcillac (100% fer servadou aka. mansois and normally 12.5%). The wine is by Jean-Luc Matha, one of Marcillac’s top vignerons and was very refreshing on a hot summer evening.
‘2014’ isn’t the vintage!
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Hi DrMarkH, that looks like an interesting wine. I clicked the link and the label doesn’t show a vintage at all, neither does the fiche technique. Can you throw any further light on the significance of 2014 and also the actual vintage please 
The question has to be asked - is any wine really worth 2200€ a bottle
Is the experience 100x as intense as a 22€ bottle for example, does it have the same effect as the Merovingian’s chocolate cake?
I’ve always been perplexed as to why some wines seem to fetch such high prices - OK I get the fact that there might only be a small number of that year’s vintage available and scarcity will drive up the price but isn’t it just a vanity project at the end of the day?
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