It saddens me that the bulk of wine sold in the UK is around £5 a bottle or less.  In fact, the average price of a bottle of wine sold retail in the UK is just £5.03.  While there are a few genuine wine bargains out there, the good people at Corks Out have calculated that, on average, a £5 bottle of wine contains under 20 pence worth of wine at the winery.    I've heard other calculations take this as high as almost a pound, but the bottom line is, what you're getting for your money is quite possibly the dregs at the bottom of the barrel.  If you just want to get drunk, have you considered vodka?  Not that it's tax free. Duty on a 70cl, 40% alcohol bottle of spirits is £7.90!


If you want to find out where the rest of your money is going, read on...

Spend a little more, say £7, around the price that most of the wines we suggest for Wine of the Week, and you'll be getting 8 times more wine value... Now surely that extra £2 seems worthwhile?

Moving up to £10 a bottle, almost 30% of the cost of the bottle is wine, compared to a paltry 3% for the £5 bottle... Here, your wine is worth £2.93.

So what does all of this actually mean to you, the wine drinker at home?  Well first off, you can congratulate yourself for your valued contribution to the public purse through the duty and VAT on your regular bottle of wine.  If you drink one £7 bottle of wine per week, you're spending £165 more than you realised, helping get Britain out of it's financial doldrums.  Those of you like me who drink a little more often than we should, will be contributing far more to George Osborne's efforts balance the books.  Consider this though, that's £100 more a year to the Chancellor than the cost of what's in your wine glass...

I don't want to get political here, it's not that any other party is likely to slash the tax on our tipples.  So I'll remind you about a blog post we did back in June where a group of my dancing friends got together to compare £5 and £15 wines.  The results were compelling, with virtually all 15 of us electing for the more expensive wine in a blind tasting of 15 wines. The one exception was a Serbian wine, not currently for sale in the UK but likely to retail at under £8, which is made in a small independent winery by a very passionate winemaker.  Yes, bargains are out there, but on the whole, it really can be worth spending more.  
We had a real sceptic in our midst that night. He barely drunk wine at all.  On arrival, he mentioned how he couldn't believe that the same grape could possibly be worth 3x as much per bottle.  By the end of the evening, we'd almost created a oenophile out of him, but of course, only those in the £15 price bracket.  His girlfriend still hasn't quite forgiven me for forcing her to share her premium Alsace Gewurz and losing a guaranteed designated driver in one fell swoop.

So what does your £15 buy you?  In a weird synchronicity, it gets you over £5 of actual wine value...

Not convinced?  I know it's tough out there at the moment, and we're all struggling with higher bills and we have to prioritise our spend.  But consider this, at £15 a bottle, the wine in your glass finally costs more than your non-voluntary contribution to HM Revenue and Customs.  That certainly makes me think.

I'll freely admit that I don't drink £15 bottles of wine every time.  If only!  (Perhaps if you click on my advertising banners, recommend me to your friends, organise Purple Teeth wine tasting events, and use me for your bespoke gift services, I'll get closer to doing that!).  But when I can splash out, I most certainly enjoy the £15 wines more, and, if push came to shove, I'd probably rather have one £15 bottle than 2 at £7.50 because the goal is not simply to get drunk.  It's to experience something of the winemaker's intention, taste the sunshine that ripened his grapes, admire the expression of the variety of grapes out there, visit a land we may never see through our wine glass, and most of all, enjoy sharing that experience with our companions.  

I could evangelise on this subject for pages, but what really matters here, is whether or not you believe me, by tasting it for yourself.  While I'd be more than happy to host an online £5 versus £15 tasting for my readership, or even to come round and show you for myself, the best way is probably just for you to try it.  

So, my challenge to you for our 20th Wine of the Week blog, is to pick a grape or wine that you regularly buy in the £5-7 range.  Drink it critically.  Examine the wine as if it were the first time you'd tasted it.  Then, buy another wine from the same country and same grape if possible, this time, spending more than you normally would - whether that's a £10, £15 or £20 wine, I will leave to you.  Again, drink it critically.  See what you notice.  Does the flavour linger longer between sips? Do you feel like enjoying it more slowly?  Does it make you want to turn the conversation to the wine, rather than the wine simply lubricating your banter about the season finale of Dexter or Breaking Bad? 
Write to me via twitter, my facebook page, or the comments feed here.  Tell me what you think.  Does the experiment make you think differently about your wine experiences?  
I will, as usual, conduct some experiments of my own and report back in a couple of weeks.   
Meanwhile, always remember to drink responsibly, and enjoy wine with friends.

Cheers!


 Click here to access the full rates of tax applicable to wine and alcohol at the present time.

Think of Spanish wine and the first thing that comes to mind is probably red Rioja or fizzy Cava.  If you've explored a little, you may have tried some Ribera del Duero wines.  If whites are your thing, or you've been reading Purple Teeth for a while, you may have tried Galician Albariño.  Or if you've recently flown with British Airways, you may have tried a Verdejo or a Garnacha.  Perhaps you've even tried the Juan Gil Monstrell's we've featured in previous blog posts in June and February 2013, which we've sampled it as part of Purple Teeth tasting parties.  I still dream that some of my readers may even consider Sherry.
If I ask you to think about Valencia, you'll probably think of one of 3 things: Paella (the rice dish which originated here), FC Valencia (who were trounced 3-0 by Swansea City in football's Europa League last week) or, if you're a culture vulture, Las Fallas, the local fire festival where giant effigies are burned every March, accompanied by spectacular firework displays and general Spanish merriment.  Wine probably doesn't feature very highly on your list of all things Valencian, but, it's time for you to change that...

The Comunidad Valencia (shown inside the dotted line on the map above) hugs the eastern, Mediterranean coastline of Spain, and reaches westwards to the start of the hot plains of La Mancha. It has the city of Valencia at it's centre, stretching further south beyond holiday hotspot Alicante, and in the north, almost reaches the Ebra river delta.   It contains 3 DO (Denominacion de Origen) wine regions: DO Alicante, DO Valencia and DO Utiel-Requena.  Last week I visited the City of Valencia, so I can't provide an insight into the beauty or accessibility of the vineyards, but hopefully I will whet your appetite to try some of the local wines, or perhaps even visit the city itself.  There's plenty to keep you busy for a week, particularly if you love wine and food.  And as we found out, there's a lot more to Valencian cuisine than just paella.  
Wine making in the area stretches back for centuries, with Alicante's specialty, Fondillón, being the star of the world's sweet wine show back in the 19th Century, commanding prices of triple  those of vintage Port.  Phylloxera (a vine pest) hit and now this unfortified, semi-sweet, and high in alcohol Monastrell-based wine is much harder to come by.  It's rarely mentioned among Spain's other world famous or iconic wines.  Sadly, we didn't get to try any. We never once saw it on a wine list, but perhaps if you visit Alicante you'll find it easier to access. Fear not though, the wines of this region are much more than just historical relics.

My first tasting of wines from Valencia came several years ago at a London Waterloo based tapas bar called Meson Don Felipe.  It's renowned for it's authenticity, down to the surliness of some of the waiting staff.  What they lack in service, they make up for with a wine list full of great Spanish wines. So it was here I first fell in love with the Bobal grape, as part of Sanfir, a Crianza styled red wine, made by Casa del Pinar. (For more information on what Crianza, Reserva and other Spanish wine terms mean, see my blog post from 9th April, Wine of the Week #7).  
I recently tried the 2005 Sanfir again at Meson Don Felipe and was stunned by just how good it is for the money. And it's available by the glass, making is just right for a pre-theatre tipple if you're ever at The Old Vic.  
Sadly, I couldn't find any Sanfir to bring back on my recent visit, though I believe that the 2003 vintage can be purchased online or in store from Flagship Wines in St Albans for £12.25 a bottle.  
You may never have heard of Bobal, let alone sampled it, but the good news is, that this grape, which makes its home in DO Utiel-Requena is becoming more available in the UK, from stockists like Marks and Spencer (the Las Falleras is around £5 a bottle), Virgin Wines and even Morrison's.
Around 80% of plantings in Utiel-Requena are Bobal, though other grapes such as Tempranillo, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Garnacha are also found here.  These other varieties may be blended together or blended with Bobal, perhaps to give it a name that more customers will recognise, or to provide a flavour or structural dimension which the wine maker is seeking.  This DO has one of the harshest climates in Spanish winemaking, with baking hot, drought-ridden summers, and hail storms, frost and temperatures as low as -10 celcius in the winter. It's situated about 70km from the Mediterranean and at an altitude of at least 700m.  Luckily, the Bobal grape is well adapted to this kind of climate and the bud burst comes later than with other varieties, protecting it from spring frosts. 
On the Purple Teeth index, this grape will certainly let your dentist or your date know you've been drinking it, so keep your whitening toothpaste handy. It provides a full bodied wine, with good flavour complexity, intense colour and a good tannin structure making it suitable for extended aging.  The Consejo Regulador of the region also indicates that the Bobal grape skin contains unusually high levels of reservatrol, one of the reputedly "healthy" parts of red wine, with much-touted heart benefits as well as anti-carcinogenic properties.  So, if you need an excuse to try a new grape variety, now you can choose health!

Waiving our normal penchant for fine dining, we visited many tapas and bistro type eateries around the old city of Valencia, doing our best to sample as many local wines as possible.  This wasn't always as easy as it sounds, as white wines by the glass tended to be DO Rueda based on Verdejo, while the reds were often standard Riojas and, with luck, Ribera del Duero.
As a sacrifice to you, our readers, we made the effort to drink wine by the bottle just to give you a greater insight.  No need to thank us, it was our pleasure!

First among the pure Bobals was Membrillera.  To be fair to this wine, it followed an afternoon aperitif of Fino sherry, which became several glasses of sherry, and was followed up by a local sweet wine.  So, to say it's not memorable may be no reflection on the wine.  We also drank it with some of the foods least likely to match a Bobal out there, including Foie Gras mi-cuit served with violet and rose jellies, a mango, avocado and smoked cod salad, and a goat cheese, walnut and spinach salad.  I told you there was more to the food here than just paella!  
All that aside, we did drink and enjoy the wine, though after realising we weren't giving it a fair tasting, we ordered a plate of Manchego cheese to do it justice.  It's aged for 5 months in oak, and comes from 35 year old vines, so it's pretty robust and has a level of fruitiness as well as hints of oak. In Spain, the retail price is around €6.50 so it was nice to see that restaurants aren't going crazy with their wine mark ups with decent wines like this for around €13 a bottle. In fact, the wine prices in bars and restaurants were pretty favourable, and have held their value, whereas the food prices for "tapas" have escalated.  In reality, the dishes aren't really tapas sized portions though, they're definitely sharing plates, so be careful of over-ordering...  we did this several time!

The Pasíon de Bobal had a better chance of success.  We ordered appropriate foods (including an amazing black pudding in filo with chocolate!) and we hadn't killed our palates quite so much with other drinks.  This wine inspired Mr Purple Teeth to agree that perhaps we should look at importing and selling it for the Christmas market.  However, Virgin Wines got their before us, and I'm not surprised as this little gem is organically farmed and also benefits from malo-lactic fermentation to soften the acids, as well as 6 months in French oak. Black fruits, vanilla, nutmeg and very pleasant drinking again reinforced that Spain's 3rd most planted grape* should not be so little known in the UK.
We finally found an interesting little wine bar TintoFino Ultramarino which stocked many wines by the glass, including the Bobal de San Jaun (which theoretically should be available in the UK as it's stocked by trade suppliers Bibendum).  This was an unusual place in that it also stocked and sold by the glass several Italian and even Chilean wines.  The food was pretty great too!  I enjoyed the red fruits, violet and spice in this one, while Mr Purple Teeth enjoyed a 50% blend with Cabernet Sauvignon even more.  Once a Cabernet fan, always a Cabernet fan...

Moving away from the Bobals, Hoya de Cadenas Reserva was an attempt to relive my first ever holiday with Mr Purple Teeth.  It's a Tempranillo/Cabernet Sauvignon blend with good acidity and fruity flavours, which, even though it's a Reserva, shine through above the oak aging.  Some 10 years ago, I dragged my then new boyfriend to Rioja and he dragged me to Right Bank Bordeaux as we tried to convince each other about the merits of these regions' most famous grapes. If only we'd tried this blend then, we might have saved a fortune...  Amazingly, this wine is on sale for just £4.99 at www.wineonlineforyou.com along with several Bobals, a Bobal rosé and a Hoya de Cadenas Verdejo for under £4!  with free shipping on a 12 bottle order, this seems a wee bit too good to be true - especially if you're a fan of Spanish wine.  I've not tried them myself, but if you have, do let me know.  Finally, the Juan Gil Silver label (12 meses) we reviewed earlier this year, accompanied an impromptu tasting menu with such delightful dishes as Oxtail, Beef Cheeks and Scallop with Coffee Beans.  What a find! The menu was less than 20€ and the Monastrell based wine was delightful as expected.  If you happen to go to Valencia, then La Pitanza is worth a try if you're open to something different.

I've really developed a taste for refreshing and good value Verdejo and those from DO Rueda are probably most prominent both on our supermarket shelves, and in the bars of Valencia. If you've not yet tried this refreshing, citrus flavoured white wine, then grab a bottle before autumn sets in for good and sends us all running for hearty reds by the fire. 
We drank Verdejo by the glass frequently, and when we went for fish based meals, we ordered my favourite fish accompaniment, Albariño, from Rias Baixas in far west of Celtic Spain.  By far and away the best one, filled with peach and apricot flavours alongside great minerality, was the Pazo de Villarei.  I've not managed to track down a local supplier.  
On our last day, and at a beach-side fish restaurant, I finally found a wine list with decent local white wines and got to sample a DO Valencia wine, Brote.  This is a 50/50 blend of Viognier and a local grape variety I'd never tried before, called Verdil.  They did have a 100% Verdil, but I wasn't brave enough to risk a poor match for my grilled monkfish.  Perhaps I should have. Verdil seems to be a grape that's all but dying out and if this Brote is anything to go by, that's sad.  It shares with Viognier a pleasing viscosity, providing a lovely mouthfeel.  Here the flavours were of white peach, elderflower, along with good minerality.  It was a delight to try something new.  There are only 50 hectares of this grape variety left, so if maintaining small varieties means anything to you, I urge you to seek this out and give it a try.  This should be possible if you live near an Oddbins store or buy from them online.  They have one for £8.25 a bottle and liken it to a Sauvignon Blanc but with more pineapple, herbiness and sexy individuality.  Sound tempting?  I'll be giving it a go.

Finally, no post about Valencian wines would be complete without mentioning their sweet Mistela wines made from Moscatel (Muscat).  It was quite difficult to buy this buy the glass, but that's because it's often offered as a free after dinner drink to sweeten the bill.  Okay, it's not Sauternes, but as (free!) sweet wines go, this is going to put a smile on your face if you like muscats and tea.  Yes, strangely, there was often a detectable hint of weak black tea, or was it Lipton's Iced Tea from the Mistelas we were offered.  Of course, all the usual muscat flavours were there too, with some herbal notes.  We were also offered a dark red Mistela on our last night.  As fans of Elysium Black Muscat (a Californian dessert wine), this went down a treat!
I'd never heard of Mistela before, but reading up on it, it appears that I've drunk a French one before: Pineau des Charentes.  Essentially, Mistela is a blend of unfermented grape juice (in this case from Moscatel) and distilled alcohol, which prevents the fermentation of the grape juice into a traditional wine. This differs from more traditional sweet muscats or Vins Doux Naturels where the grape must is allowed to partially ferment before adding the fortifying spirit.  If you fancy trying one, Naked Wines have a 50cl bottle on offer at £7.49 for Angels.  That's quite expensive compared to prices in Spain, but then, what price the  airfare?!  And everything seems expensive when you've been drinking it free.  In this photo, the restaurant actually brought the bottle with the glasses to the table and allowed us to serve ourselves till they came to collect our cash.  It's clearly not a premium drink, but it's fun, and a little taste of the Valencian sunshine.
We had an amazing week drinking our way round the wines of Valencia, and soaking up sweet September sunshine.   Despite the night when we had to endure Swansea fans serenading us with their rendition of Tom Jones' Delilah, I'd recommend Valencia as a city break or week long destination.  The food market is one of the biggest in Europe and there are plenty more local delicacies to try than just the wine, including Horchata, a strange milky looking drink made from water, sugar and the Chufa (or Tiger) nut, Agua de Valencia a kind of Buck's Fizz/Mimosa concoction of Cava, Orange Juice, vodka and gin.  The tapas were a cut above what I've tasted in many other Spanish cities with far more on offer than the usual tortilla, chorizo and gambas.  I think we'll be back, and next time, hopefully we'll try to visit the wineries!

Salud!

*  Just in case you're wondering, Spain's second most planted grape is Tempranillo - the star of Rioja and Ribera del Duero.  You'll probably be surprised to hear that the most planted grape is Airén - a white variety you possibly have never heard of, despite the fact that in 2004 it was thought to be the world's most grown grape.  Plantings are reducing now but this grape is still present in bulk white wines, Spanish Brandy and wines from La Mancha, where the vines cover an area almost the size of Luxembourg!

It's not that I'm indecisive.  It just seemed right to pick these 2 whites for the last wine of the week of our British Summer.  How do I know it's the end of the summer? The forecast on my iphone tells me so...  
I love my red wine, but on a summer evening, I'd rather choose a crisp white.  A few weeks ago I thought about choosing an Orvieto for nostalgia purposes.  Several millenia ago, I'd buy a bottle of Orvieto at the local Safeway (!) on my way home from my job as a buyer at Compaq, after a tough day negotiating with West of Scotland metalworkers...
I probably haven't drunk it in at least 20 years, but I saw it on the supermarket shelf and wondered if I should try it again.  In the end, I decided my fridge was already overflowing with whites and I had little need to buy another bottle, especially with the end of summer nigh.   But somehow, when we focus our thoughts on something, it appears in our life, and just 2 days later a friend turned up at my front door with a bottle of Orvieto!  It was not chilled so we decided not to drink it then, but I promised I'd make it a wine of the week and here we are.
What I hadn't realised was that she'd brought me an "Amabile" or medium wine - so definitely not dry, and much sweeter than what I'd normally choose to drink.  I can't recall if the Orvietos of old where sweet but I don't remember them as anything much more than crisp and refreshing.  From what I can gather, Orvieto is generally a dry wine and a blend of Grechetto and Trebbiano with this one also containing some Verdelho (or Verdello as it's known in Italy) and some other varieties.  
This £4.99 winemaker's selection from Sainsbury's has a good level of refreshing acidity despite it being far from the dry white I'd anticipated...  My initiial tasting found it to be fuller in body than I'd expected (probably due to the effect of the sugar) and the main flavour is one of cloudy apple cider or even sparkling perry but without the fizz.  There wasn't much else.  I wondered if I'd got it wrong, but Mr Purple Teeth agreed.  This basically tastes like flat cider. It ended up with half a bottle being poured away.  Sadly the nostalgia I was hoping wasn't a look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles, but maybe that's just as well. This reminded me how much better life is now that I drink wines that are a little pricier, how much there is to enjoy out there, and how glad I am that I don't just drink the same wine every time.
Next summer, perhaps I'll try the Waitrose La Pluma dry Orvieto at £7.49 but perhaps memories are best left as memory...

Luckily my final summer white just nipped in before the torrential downpours hit Berkshire.  And even more fortunately, it was a reliable favourite from The Wine Society.  I've always enjoyed this Faldeos Nevados Torrontés from Argentina's Mendoza region.  I first discovered the grape in Mendoza city, in the only independent tasting room on the main square.  Immediately I was blown away by it's floral aromas, there are sweet notes of peach and apricot, and yet it's a very dry wine.  It's full bodied, rich and with medium acidity can easily be enjoyed on its own, but would work equally well with smoked salmon or strong cheeses.  
I drank this one with a friend, also called Heather.  It was her first tasting of the grape and she tends to go for big oaky whites like Chardonnays because she's all about the mouthfeel rather than the aromatic flavours which this wine presents.  Torrontés, however, satisfies both of us  - plenty of aromatic oomph, and a great mouthfeel.  If you like Viognier, you'll probably love this.  
There's some speculation that the variety is related to Muscat, and it's true that there is a grapey flavour that evokes Muscat, but I feel this varietal has a bit more oomph when it's produced in the dry style.  
The true home of the finest Torrontés is not Mendoza but rather, Salta, home of some of the world's highest vineyards with the city being over 1150m above sea level.  I am rarely effusive about Tesco compared to the Wine Society, but in this case, their Finest range contains a Salta Torrontés for £8.99.  Yes, our Wine Society version is cheaper, but I imagine more of you have access to a Tesco than a Wine Society membership, and there are always those "special offers" to look for.  Occasionally, you can pick up 2 wines in the Finest range for as little as £12.  Stock up on this and you'll be in for a bargain.

Although our British summer is no longer visible in the rear view mirror, I'm pleased to say that I'll be giving the shorts a final outing in Valencia next week, so I won't be featuring a regular "wine of the week" and instead, will report back on my finds on my return.  Meanwhile, do experiment with something new, and if you're drinking Spanish wines, let me know what you think.  I found the Finca Moncloa in my Spanish September last year, and I'm hoping to uncover some new magic this time.
Cheers!

Many of us go to great lengths to find just the right wine to match the food, the occasion or the guest.  But how many of us screw things up by making a serving faux pas? Does your stemware or the temperature of the wine really make that big of a difference?
Thanks to Bryan, one of our Scottish readers for sending me this article.  Georg Riedel, the Austrian at the helm of Riedel, the wine glass company which specialises in decanters and glasses tailored to bringing out the best in individual grape varietals, here tells his Australian audience that they're drinking their Champagne from the wrong glasses and their red wines at the wrong temperatures.

Back in the 70s, it was all the rage to drink your fizz from the saucer shaped glasses - remember those cheesy pyramids of glasses? Turns out they were exactly the wrong way to serve Champagne since the bubbles are exposed to quickly and there is nowhere for the mousse to rise to, leading to your fizz going flat in double quick time.  So the trend towards serving champagne in flutes begun.  Despite selling a few types of Champagne glass himself, Mr Riedel now tells us that we ought to be drinking it out of our Burgundy glasses so that there is a bit more surface area allowing the flavours of the Champagne to fully develop.  While I'm sure this is sage advice to those of you drinking vintage Dom Perignon, I'm not sure it makes a great deal of difference if you're gulping down a glass or two of whatever is the cheapest fizz in your local supermarket.

When it comes to wine temperature though, Georg has got a fair point, especially as he's  talking to an Australian audience, though I'd hardly call 18C the temperature at which we put our coats on!  In Scotland I'm sure we'd still be wearing shorts.  Have you ever noticed that your red wine just doesn't taste the same on a warm summer's evening?  It's probably too warm.  We have in mind that "room temperature" is the correct way to serve red wine.  It's worth remembering though, that when the Gods of Bordeaux and Burgundy decreed this, room temperature was not something regulated by glorious central heating systems, and was probably often in the region of 16C depending on the proximity to the log fire...  
Mr Riedel doesn't sell a wine thermometer, but those nice chaps at WineWare have a fine range from £3.95 for the amateur to a £24.95 infrared model which reads the temperature through the bottle for the serious wine snob who has everything.    So, you know what temperature your wine is, but how do you know what's the right temperature to serve it at?

The advice from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust is as follows, while the diagram here has been prepared by those nice people at Bibendum to help us get it even more right...

• Sparkling wine such as Champagne, Cava, Asti or Prosecco should be served well chilled (eg 6-10C).  Above this you're liable to find yourself wearing half of the bottle as chilling greatly reduces the pressure inside.
• Light or medium bodied whites, such as Fino Sherry, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio and all those crisp, dry quaffable whites should be served chilled - that's between 7-10C
• More full-bodied whites and those with a lot of oak such as white Burgundy, or anything with a creamy mouthfeel should be only be lightly chilled.  Serving them anywhere from 10-13C will ensure that you can taste the subtleties of flavour which can be squashed by over chilling. Really good white Burgundy (such as Puligny Montrachet) can stand to be served even warmer, so think about taking it out of the fridge for a short time before you serve it, as it's likely your fridge is set to cool to 5C...
• Light-bodied reds such as Beaujolais, Bardolino or Valpolicella (the basic kind) should actually be served lightly chilled around 13C to be enjoyed at their best.
• Medium to full-bodied reds such as Claret, Burgundy, Rioja, Shiraz, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Amarone, or other big wines should be served at "room temperature".  It's worth noting here that the guide for this is 15-18C and as most of you won't have your own wine cellar, and probably do have your central heating thermostat set to around 21C, think about how to keep your reds slightly cooler before serving them, even in winter, by ensuring they are stored well away from any sources of heat such as cookers, radiators, the backs of fridges or freezers, central heating boilers and even windows with direct sunlight.
• Sweet wines generally are best enjoyed well chilled at around 6-8C to prevent them from feeling too sticky and sickly.

As to whether serving the wine in the right glass makes any difference, I will leave it to those of you who have kitchens large enough and budgets wide enough to stock a range of different Riedel glasses suitable for all your fine wines.  For me, though, a lead crystal glass does make a difference.  I was lucky enough to "liberate" a set of 4 Riedel basic tasting glasses over the years of attending tastings where a glass was part of the price.  You'll be used to seeing them in my photos of "wine of the week".  
I do think a decent crystal glass is worth investing in if you're going to be drinking anything more than your basic plonk and there are cheaper varieties widely available if like me, you'd rather spend your money on the contents rather than the vessel. If you feel like splashing out, Wineware often have special offers on Riedel glasses, which awidely regarded as the best and used in most of the world's top rated Michelin starred restaurants). Here at Chateau Purple Teeth, the glass has become an all important part of the experience of enjoying the wine.  It did surprise me to see a health warning about lead crystal glasses in a Californian tasting room some years ago.  Luckily enough we haven't descended into such levels of litigiousness in the UK so I've not heard any more about this.  Ultimately, if you're drinking wine, I'd like to think the risk to health from the glassware is probably the least of your worries, but feel free to make up your own mind and leave me any comments you might have on this.  Meanwhile, as summer fades, make the most of those light bodied whites and drink them up before you have to put your central heating back on!

For those of you who like to "taste along", our next Wine of the Week will actually be 2 whites - Orvieto from Italy and Torrontes from Argentina.  You should be able to find at least one of each in your local supermarket, so enjoy these last rays of summer sunshine with a fresh white. Tell me what you think as you drink them over the next couple of days for inclusion on our next blog post...