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Vineyards in Bolivia: try good-quality wines from lesser-known countries to get more bang for your buck.
Vineyards in Bolivia: try good-quality wines from lesser-known countries to get more bang for your buck. Photograph: Peter Langer/Getty Images/Perspectives
Vineyards in Bolivia: try good-quality wines from lesser-known countries to get more bang for your buck. Photograph: Peter Langer/Getty Images/Perspectives

Quality versus value wines: can you have both?

This article is more than 6 years old

Supermarket wine isn’t a bad place to start if you want to discover unfamiliar wines at reasonable prices

Not everyone has taken to the current series of The Wine Show, including this paper’s TV critic, but I’m impressed by the way it makes wine accessible to new drinkers without descending into excessive silliness or ponderous mansplaining. True, not everything works. The use of the immensely knowledgeable Jancis Robinson simply to pronounce on which of two wines goes best with a particular dish, for example, is a waste of a talented TV presenter, but on the whole the show is commendably ambitious in its scope. Biodynamic wine, Georgian wine, wine from Canada’s Okanagan Valley … no one can accuse The Wine Show of being interested only in supermarket wines.

But are they right to be so wide-ranging? Well, that’s an issue I struggle with every week. Would you rather hear about Aldi or Asda’s latest bargain, or discover a wine or region about which you previously knew nothing? Obviously, it’s partly a question of cash, although it seems it’s younger drinkers, who are not necessarily the best off, are the most curious and willing to try new things. According to I Taste Red, Jamie Goode’s book on the science of wine tasting, that may be because they’re more likely to make “affective hedonistic judgments”– that is, they decide whether they like something on the basis of its taste, rather than comparing it with wines they’ve tried before.

Anyway, in an attempt to square the circle, let me draw your attention to some wines that tick both boxes, being good value and interesting. For lovers of lush reds, there’s The Odd Lot, a full-bodied blend of petite sirah and petit verdot from Monterey in California, which at £9.99 isn’t bargain basement by Aldi standards, but is certainly cheap for California.

Lidl has a clutch of Italian whites in its latest release, of which the best is Podere Macinatico Vernaccia di San Gimignano 2016, from just outside Florence, at £7.49. It’s one of those apparently neutral Italian whites that burst into life with food.

Marks & Spencer has a good record of listing wines from lesser-known countries: its latest addition comes from Bolivia. If you’re a malbec fan, the gutsy Campos de Solano Malbec Tannat, from vineyards 1,850m above sea level, will be up your street; it’s priced at £11. The Wine Society, too, can always be relied on for an off‑piste bottle, and its Viña Undurraga range from Chile is particularly good value: try the Cauquenes Estate Viognier-Roussanne-Marsanne white for just £7.50.

Odd Lot
£9.99 Aldi, 14.5%

Odd as in unusual, not as in weird. Knock back with a burger.

Podere Macinatico Vernaccia di San Gimignano 2016

£7.49 Lidl, 13%

Versatile Tuscan white. Think spaghetti vongole.

Campos de Solano Malbec Tannat 2016

£11 Marks & Spencer (with 25% off online if you buy two six-bottle cases), 14%

Ballsy red from Bolivia.

Undurraga Viognier-Roussanne-Marsanne 2016

£7.50 Wine Society 14%

Exotic, Rhône-style white. Drink with roast chicken.

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