All the Wine I drank this Christmas

Just a quick whip around of all the wines I had over Christmas.

Hello,

Is it too late to say Happy New Year?

Ok, so I had a couple of weeks off over Christmas this year. It ended up being super chill, and I’m not a huge one for blow out Christmas events anyway.

My collection of booze doesn’t feature unicorns, or expensive showpiece bottles, or big-dick-swingers, just a simple selection of nice bottles that capped off a pretty simple couple of weeks, mostly at home, either mine, or my families.

There’s a reason I don’t keep wine ‘in’, maybe 20-30 or so bottles in the house of wines in rotation for drinking, and a handful of other bits I’m keeping for whatever reason. I don’t really care too much for “having a cellar”. I’ve met too many people over the years selling off 100’s of bottles of old wine that haven’t managed to drink, while simultaneously regretting buying too much new wine to add to the collection. I very rarely buy a case of anything, pretty much only if I can’t easily grab a single bottle from a shop or online if I really wanted one.

In no particular order.

Exclusively Chardonnay for the whites. Not intentional. Just, that’s what was in the house, that’s what I fancied at the time. And, that is what I like. The age of weird is by the by, and I’m slipping effortlessly into the winter of toastier, richer whites, and say what you like, Chardonnay is the top of the pile.

Alain Chavy - Bourgogne Chardonnay, 2023.

Bought this from Majestic, it’s a staple for me. I visited Alain a couple of years ago, a lovely quiet cellar, a small father and son operation, and calmly making some brilliant wines. I’ve been a fan for a while. This £20 Bourgogne Chard is his entry level wine, and it always hits the spot. Textbook clean and tidy, slightly toasty Chardonnay. Lovely stuff.

Mark Haisma - Macon Chardonnay, 2022.

I LOVE this wine. As above with Alain, it’s another textbook Chardonnay at first, but now with a couple of years in bottle there’s a nutty, salty, brilliance to it that I love. This is a rare wine that I actually did buy a case of, and I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it on the internet somewhere every time I’ve had a bottle. I think me and my partner had this on a quiet night to ourselves in that post Christmas limbo bit where time makes no sense to anyone.

Shaw + Smith, M3 Adelaide Chardonnay, 2022.

Another regular pickup at Majestic, £25 ish I think. Look, I sell wines to Majestic now, and as part of my Brand Ambassador day-job, I’m required to hang about in Majestic stores quite often, hawking my wares, while also filling up my wine samples box with wines for my personal collection. This was out Christmas dinner wine, an average roast all round, I think the thermostat on my oven started playing up so nothing really got crispy, and everything took ages to cook, so we were a bit deflated about the whole thing. Maybe it’s just that small number of times in the year when you’re trying to cram everything in a small domestic oven, and it simply couldn’t keep up. The in-laws were delighted with everything, rightly so as guests, but we had another go a couple of days later to make up for it.

Other Wines - Fizz and Such.

Flint Vineyard - Charmat Rosé NV.

Work wine! A freebie, of course, the best perk of working for a winery. Frustratingly, even if I didn’t work for them me and my partner would gleefully pay for this anyway, this was our Christmas ‘cooking wine’ while we were waiting faaaking aaaages for the roasties to get some colour on them.

I could talk to you about this wine for hours, because that is literally what I get paid to do, so I won’t, not here. Only to say if you haven’t tried it, most people who try it bloody love it, it’s bright pink, fizzy and pretty delicious.

An indestructible bottle of Curatolo Arini - Marsala Superiore Riserva 10 Year Old

Bought from The Wine Society, hands down my favourite place to buy wine. Except for having to wade through all the bumph I get in the post, and maybe except for navigating the 1000’s of wines on their website. I basically buy 5 wines from the wine society because it’s a minefield if you go in blind. You kinda have to know what you want, order it and not get distracted, then get out quickly while your bank balance is still intact.

I bought a load of weird ‘study’ wines for the MW programme last spring, Port, Madeira, Marsala, White Port, Fino, PX, Passito, etc etc. Wine Society is one of the few places you can get all these in one go. Turns out this stuff is properly, dangerously delicious. Over the break, this was the wine I kept in the fridge, for those almost daily moments where the bottle of wine is empty, and you don’t want to open another one, so you reach for something interesting. I didn’t even open the bottle of Port I bought because this was much more entertaining.

Onto the Reds.

In my house I mostly, normally drink white, maybe 70:30 White:Red, but I do really like red wines, but while I’m a classicist for whites, other than Red Burg (everyone appreciates a good red bug), I don’t really care too much for the mainstream red selection, Malbec can fuck off, Barolo is more over-inflated than Burgundy for the most part, posh Bordeaux and can also fuck off, same goes Syrah from outside France, or maybe South Africa. In general I like complex, but light reds, and so…

Thymiopouos, Xinomavro, Naoussa, 2022.

Christmas Day red wine sorted. This is one of the 5 wines I regularly buy from The Wine Society, the Jeunes Vignes from Thymiopoulos, but this is the *I think* the same wine in a different label for Majestic, it basically tastes the same. Trying to explain this to my in-laws for Christmas lunch was fun.

“So, it’s from Greece…”

“Do they make wine in Greece?”

“Yes, quite a bit actually, and it’s great. The grape variety is…”

“What’s a Xinomavro?”

“Well.. yes, that is the grape, and the most Greek sounding word ever, underneath? That’s the chap who makes it”.

“Oooh, it tastes nice…”

Pietradolce, Etna Rosso, 2023.

I saved this for a night on my own when my partner had popped round to be sociable with some friends, and I stayed in to eat cheese and curl up under a heated blanket with the dog. I’ve seen this wine about, read about it, it’s a Nerello from Etna, pretty well respected producer by all accounts, probs about £25 I think. It was pretty tasty, if you sum up all the things I’ve said about red wine, and then have a look at 3 of the 4 red wines we had, you deffo get the broad sense of the kinda red wines that I like.

Domaine Petit Perou, Morgan ‘Tradition’.

Oh, lovely, lovely Beaujolais. I asked a few people for some Nouveau this year, it’s back in with the cool kids, I hear. Nouveau is good and all, like cherry juice, but a decent Morgon is streets ahead. This is a cheapie though, like £15, to one of the super cool, hipster, natty, earthy, grown up efforts. This is as the name suggests ‘Tradition’, in that it’s not had a lot of oak, it’s clean and bright, juicy and just a twist of pepper. Honestly, for £15 this is really nice. We had this on a lazy ‘picky tea’ early evening. That point of the Christmas break where you watch the clock, and watch each other until one of you breaks and ponders on whether it’s too early for a glass of wine, and the other person has grabbed the corkscrew before you’ve managed to turn a statement into a question.

Bodegas Riojanas, ‘Borisa’ Rioja Reserva, 2020.

This is a steal, a wine that I helped bring to the UK while I was covering as head of wine at Adnams about 2 years ago. I like Riojanas, old-school very trad Rioja, none of this “French oak, single plot precision”, this is plums, vanilla and coconut American Oak, 100% Tempranillo and silky smooth. Also, I got it for a steal, so ended up being about £14 on the shelf, one of those little wine buyers delights: “Oh, Dan we’ve got 1,200 bottles of this wine that we don’t have a home for” some moments that just make sense.

Riojanas make the Adnams own label Rioja Crianza for them, so we piggy backed a couple of pallets of this. I can’t remember when I had this specifically, but I kept a pile of all the bottles we opened over the break to write this piece, and this was one of them, so we definitely had it at some point, but no idea when, or why, or what with.

That’ll do.

Some kinda update on how I’m feeling about the MW coming soon ish.

Dan