I'm beginning to realise that Chateau Purple Teeth has "house style".  I poured a glass of a previously untried bottle on a damp Tuesday night.  Mr Purple Teeth's immediate reaction: "That's instantly delicious".  
Could I have predicted this reaction?  Sure.  But I still keep bringing other wines to the table to keep stretching the palate and expanding our horizons.

It seems that the readership have recognised the house style too.  An American social media follower suggested trying this wine, and they were clearly bang on the money.

The Cline Old Vines Zinfandel may not be bang on trend in the general market with it's full thrust of 15% abv.  The trend to lower alcohol bottles seems set to continue as more of us tipple midweek at home.  I ought to have noticed that before opening the bottle on a Tuesday. The office coffee machine took a beating on Wednesday.  On the plus side, the wine is deep and satisfying so there's no real need to pack away a second glass.  

In many ways it's pretty simple. Big, bold and brash, just like our archetypal American.  There's more to this wine than Shallow Hal though.  It's got hidden depths.  

As a 2011, the jammy fruitiness that some Zins suffer from has reduced. The tannin comes to the fore, adding a drying note that, if missing, would lead the wine to feel sweeter in style. 

For me there are notes of dry bitter cocoa, perhaps mocha.

I may have picked it out as a new world Malbec if I'd been asked to taste it blind.  
And that's despite tasting about 15 Malbecs in the previous week or so.

"Very quaffable," was Mr Purple Teeth's verdict.

Our "go to" Zin is a few pounds cheaper, the Lodi Ravenswood Old vines (available from The Wine Society at £9.50 and Majestic at £11.99 but the last batch I bought was £8.99 on the promo). 
It's been a while since I've blogged about it - the currently available vintage is 2012. 
While we have had a bottle or two recenty, we hadn't made notes. The easiest way to describe it is the cheaper wine is a bit sweeter/fruitier on the nose.  Is the Cline wine worth an extra £5 or so? The Purple Teeth Jury is out - we may have to arrange a side by side tasting.

Cline describe their wine as intensely fruity with black cherry and strawberry. Perhaps it was at bottling. Now, what they describe as hints of dark chocolate are more prominent. But think the unsweetened, powdered cocoa, and perhaps there are some used coffee grounds. There's lots of tannin and a full body, but although it's pretty drying, it's very well integrated.

This is as easy to enjoy as a day in the California sunshine, but as dark as a Valley Girl gone bad. (Think Winona Ryder in Heathers).

If you like aged Malbec or good Zin, it's worth a punt at the discount price, but don't pay full whack. And don't keep it too much longer as the fruit won't last forever. 

And if you're still drinking White Zinfandel.  Try something new.  A bottle of red, or perhaps this pink Moscato.
Cheers!

This is my first ever review of a wine picked up from Majestic.  There is no denying the ambition of this chain. More and more Majestic retail stores are popping up on high streets and they've invested a lot in their online store.

Now that you can pick up just six bottles at a time, Majestic are picking up some of the supermarket share & some of the more traditional wine merchant share, with convenience becoming more their selling point.

I'd popped in to buy a couple of wines recommended by fellow wine fans, and I'll review those later, but my local branch didn't have them in stock.  No problem. They sourced them from another nearby store and delivered to my door at a specified time the next day.

So what of the offering...

I picked up a bottle of Fiano, continuing my Italian theme. The Surani Peitriariccia from Salento was £7.50 a bottle if bought with another wine on the same promotion.  There were some peachy aromatic notes, a nice mouthfeel body & pleasing acidity. Would it please a Sauvignon Blanc fan? I certainly hoped so, because I managed to convince a chap in store to pick up 2 bottles for his wife when he couldn't decide how to fill his box of 6.  This is, however, not Sauvignon Blanc drink alike. It's more subtle, though there are a range of flavours, these were not best expressed immediately on drinking from the fridge.
It's not especially complex, and the flavour, dissipates quite quickly. The flavours are much more discernible if you can have it once it's been out of the fridge for half an hour or so.  It's refreshing & Mr Purple Teeth said it was just what the doctor ordered after a long day.  It's got a silver medal from both Decanter magazine and the International Wine Challenge, so, if you've never tried a Fiano, this seems like an inexpensive  and low risk way to sample the grape variety.


My opinion: it doesn't make sense to buy any full price wines in a Majestic store.  This wine was priced at £9.99 and I got it for £7.50 by buying 2 wines within the same offer.  Just a week or so later it's now on offer via the Majestic online store for £8.99. The offer of a 25% saving for buying 2 still applies, so at £6.74 it's a more appealing price point to try something new. And, I think  a fairer reflection of the price of this wine from the south of Italy.  £10 could get me much more wine quality elsewhere.  
Like arch-nemesis Naked Wines, Majestic have hit on a way of making us feel like we've got a bargain.  Savvy shoppers will certainly never pay the inflated price that's on offer and indeed, in Scotland, wherever a multi-buy price is offered in England and Wales, this will be the single-bottle price.  Much as supermarkets such as Tesco have been accused of creating an expectation of half price wine offers by unnaturally inflating the shelf price for limited times and in certain stores (see here) , Majestic are training customers that their "real" prices, aren't really real. 
While it's always nice to feel like you're snapping up a bargain, I would much rather that retailers charged a fair price for all the wines all the time, so that any offers are strictly limited to "real" bulk purchase, over-stocks, bin-ends or seasonal promotions.  

Nevertheless, I'll review a couple more of my Majestic purchases in the near future and continue keeping an eye out for real wine value for you wherever I spot it.  This week I've stocked up on 25% off of some of my favourite wines through Ocado (making The Hedonist Shiraz  £10.50 rather than £13.99, the price they now charge as normal, almost the price I started buying it at several years ago). 

What are your views on wine pricing?  The average price of a bottle sold in the UK is very little over £5 a bottle, of which around £2.75 is tax and duty.  If you can afford to pay a little more, you usually get more for your money.  But what drives your purchase?

Cheers!