James Bercovici - The Big Red Wine Company

Every year we hold an informal tasting in my childhood home town of Norwich with, usually, between 20 and 30 guests. This year we held it on Saturday, immediately after seeing Matthew Bourne's superb Sleeping Beauty at the Theatre Royal. The wines were almost evenly divided between French and Italian with the Rhone dominating the French selection. I had been tempted to include some Joblot wines - after all, if I don't put them into tastings, how will people know just how good they are? However, I decided against this on purely practical grounds: most of the attendees prefer to keep their spending under £10 per bottle so there seemed little point in including wines the wrong side of £20! This was borne out by the comments - and sales - of Italian wines, the only one of which that sold well was Filippo Gallino 's juicy, fruity Barbera d'Alba. A few other Italian reds did sell but only a bottle here, a couple of bottles there. The whites did well though with the surpris...

At last! Now, what should I open tonight? Tempted by Fabrizio Battaglino's Roero 2010 Sergentin but also by Nada Giuseppe's 2009 Barbaresco. Or, perhaps, keep it simple with the Gallino 2010 Barbera d'Alba. Probably none of the above for two reasons: I have just made a curry for dinner and tomorrow night is our annual Autumn Tasting in Norwich so most of these will take part in that. On the other hand, I do like to challenge the spice with a fruity but tannic red so Fabrizio is looking promising. Too many choices... I will post later when I have succumbed.

Note: updated after the tasting! The Dulwich Wine Society has a new meeting venue since I last visited, more conducive to the enjoyment of fine wines. I was there last night to present, for the first time in the context of a wine club, a selection of wines from Piedmont. Here's the running order... White wines 1.     Fabrizio Battaglino , Roero 2010 Arneis 2.     Giovanni Manzone , Langhe Bianco 2010 Rosserto 3.     Nada Giuseppe , Langhe Bianco 2009 "Armonia" All the whites were very well received: the Arneis surprised most tasters who had little or no experience of the grape for its slightly austere nose but fuller palate. The Rossesse was showing well and was also well received as a new wine to everyone in the room. As always, Enrico's wine wowed tasters with its assortment of varieties each bringing something different to the well integrated whole. Red wines 4.      Nada Giuseppe , Dolcetto d'Alba 2010 C...

Old college friends up from London for Halloween but too cold and damp for a bonfire so, after a hearty meal of meatballs (from an excellent recipe adapted from one of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's), and after the children had taken off their Halloween make-up and gone to bed, we decided to go on a trip down memory lane and watch An American Werewolf In London. What a cheesy film! Of course, wines are required for all of this and two from Laurent Brusset were very much enjoyed: the 2007 Cairanne-CDRV "Les Chabriles" and the 2007 Gigondas "Le Grand Montmirail". Both are classic Brusset wines: rounded, fruity, well-structured with plenty of deep, rich Grenache fruit. The Chabriles is 50% Syrah but this does not get too black here. This Gigondas is their standard cuvee. There is little between this and the Cairanne, qualitatively or stylistically, frankly. Obviously from 2007 it was to be expected they would both be very good. My only concern is that it was my l...

If, like me, you have amassed a collection of wine far in excess of the number of bottles you can realistically expect to consume in the life of the wines concerned, you will have picked up a few bottles you have changed your mind about since your original enthusiastic purchase and which you consistently snub whenever you are pulling a bottle from the rack. I have developed a system for using these wines: take them to the in-laws. Not that I want to palm off the undesired on my in-laws, you understand; rather, that when I am there, some 250 miles from home, I am stuck with whatever wines I have brought with me. The local off-licence is unlikely to have anything smarter than Blossom Hill lookalikes so you will believe me that whatever I take with me is going to be preferable. Having come back from a couple of days there, I can report that the visit was successful, wine-wise at least, with a couple of Bordeaux I had been dreading, a Burgundy which has never impressed and a Chateauneu...

The allocation for the 2011 wines, tasted recently in London ( see here for my impressions), has just landed in my inbox and the offer is now available to view here . For the first time, we are pleased to offer Coudoulet Blanc as well as the rest of the range from Chateau de Beaucastel and Famille Perrin.

Despite Google Analytics statistics, I am never entirely convinced that anyone reads this (except for the small number of people who call me to correct punctuation or grammar - you know who you are!) so was there really any point in the hours I put in to change the appearance of some of the pages on the website? Given what I have written in the paragraph above, I can assume that few will have noticed the changes so I should begin with the information that the pages affected were those that list the estates we work with from the various regions. Out with the tedious alphabetical lists and in with pictures - logos, labels and photos - to make these dull pages more exciting and, if not exciting, more accessible. For example: French wines    -    Rhone wines    -    South-West France    -    Languedoc-Roussillon Italian wines    -    Spanish wines It should be fairly easy to post a response on the blog ...