Caterer and Hotelkeeper – 10111
How does your house red measure up? And are you satisfied with all the reds at the budget end of your wine list? Two contrasting experiences recently brought home to me the rapid changes taking place in the dangerous world of cheap red wine and how important it is to keep up with them.
First, I joined the panel for a claret tasting at Which?. The report - on red Bordeaux costing less than £10 at retail prices - appears in the latest issue (September 1999) of the magazine. The results are shocking. Out of 39 clarets tasted by a panel of eight wine-trade professionals, only seven scored "above average" marks and only one received really warm praise. Far too many of the cheapest wines, in my opinion, were fruitless, charmless and dull. As restaurant wines they would be desperately disappointing.
The tasting proves that cheap claret has fallen behind the times. It needs to be much more juicy, fruity, smooth and drinkable - and much more reliable - to justify the fact that it is so often featured on restaurant wine lists. The time was when all customers would expect to see a claret on the most concise of wine lists, and many would automatically chose it to partner steak, lamb or cheese. Then, perhaps, the most cynical restaurateur could get away with flogging substandard stuff. But now inexpensive claret competes with all manner of food-friendly reds from the New World, Spain and other French regions, and it really must improve at the bargain end of the market if it is to remain a UK favourite.
Shortly after the Which? tasting I found myself on a press trip to Campo de Borja, one of Spain's rapidly improving wine regions. Like La Mancha, Jumilla, Toro and Tarragona, Campo de Borja is historically a workhorse region, churning out cheap plonk for the domestic market and bargain-basement bottlings for overseas. But the progress now being made in these parts of Spain is astonishing. Sure, you won't find complex, deeply refined red wine in these regions. But in Campo de Borja I found very appealing local wines being made in newly modernised wineries to be sold to the UK market at very appealing prices.
In fact, I didn't taste a truly poor wine in two days of winery visits. It would be ridiculous to compare the top wines of Bordeaux with anything coming out of the area - the Spanish regions mentioned here do not produce top-notch wines. But let's look again at that house red - or at all the inexpensive reds on a wine list. Would you rather be selling an awful, cheap claret like the ones Which? uncovered, or a lively, juicy, user-friendly Spanish red? The latter may not have the kudos, but on current form I know what I'd plump for.
For more information on Campo de Borja, contact Wines from Spain on 020 7486 0101. n
by Susy Atkins
