Would you like a glass of wine with your Domino’s, sir?
Thursday 22 September
Should you have an Italian Barbera or a Chilean Chardonnay with your pizza? It’s a big decision but don’t fret – help is at hand! Staff at online wine trader Virgin Wines have partnered up with multinational pizza chain, Domino’s, to help hungry customers select the best match with their takeaway.
Wine Advisors at Virgin have matched each pizza from the Domino’s new Gourmet Range with one white and one red wine ‘to offer customers a luxury dining experience in the comfort of their own homes.’ The Rustica pizza has been paired with a Barbera and a Sauvignon Blanc ‘to bring out the flavour of the smoky bacon and sweet sunblush baby plum tomatoes’ while a Shiraz Cabernet Sangiovese or a Gewürztraminer are recommended for its ‘spicy Firenze’.
Domino’s customers are also offered six bottles of Virgin wines for £25 when they purchase a pizza. That’s £4.16 a bottle, so I’m not sure about the quality of the booze although Domino’s pizzas aren’t exactly the best I’ve ever had either.
Simon Wallis, sales and marketing director at Domino’s Pizza, gushed about the new promotion in a press release: ‘Our new Gourmet range has been developed to appeal to a wider pizza eating audience. This promotion will enable us to reach out to more potential pizza eaters, while also offering added value for our existing Gourmet customers.’
In addition to its venture with Virgin Wines, Domino’s is also the official partner on low-brow reality TV show Big Brother’s eviction night. Customers get a free bottle of Coca-Cola with their pizza on those evenings. Excuse me if I don’t rush out and order…
There are currently 638 Domino’s outlets in the UK and more than 9000 worldwide.
In July 2009, the EU ruled that producers making Prosecco outside of the DOC and new DOCG area in the Veneto region would be forced to use the new grape name Glera on their labels instead of Prosecco.
So, on my return to New Zealand from Blighty, I was a little puzzled to be presented with a bottle of Toi Toi ‘New Zealand Prosecco’. What the….?
It’s not made from the grape formally known as Prosecco (‘Glera’) but a blend of Riesling, Muller-Thurgau and Pinot Gris. The sparkle is not created by the tank method, used in the Prosecco region but carbonated. So, I am curious as to why the front label clearly states Prosecco on the front. The accompanying press release claims it is “produced to broadly reflect the origins and style of the Italian wine”. Well, it’s 11.5% alcohol, which is about right, medium-dry with apple and pear characters but I’m not sure the Venetians will be overly impressed by the quality of the contents.
John Barker, general counsel for New Zealand Winegrowers shed some light on the matter. If this wine is only sold in New Zealand, there should be no problem, as there is no agreement with the EU on this law.
Barker says, “It’s a bit of a funny position the Italians have taken. There’s no geographical area called Prosecco if you look on a map – the GI is an artefact of EU law. There’s no grape variety called Prosecco either because the grape is Glera.
“It’s absolute nonsense,” he adds.
So, the only domestic stumbling block comes from if the label is considered to be misleading – and that’s a personal matter. Personally, I think it’s misleading but you can make your own mind up.
Barolo is not a wine for the elderly or terminally ill. It takes a good 20 to 30 years before the tannins become approachable and you’re going to have to stick it in the cellar (or under your bed) until it comes around.
And if you don’t like tannins or acidity, you’d better walk past the Barolo section.
At an Ascheri dinner with Squisito Fine Wines, we were treated to a vertical of Barolos as far back as 1996 and cor blimey, they are still babes in arms. Most wines are dead as dodos by the time they hit 5 or 10 years but not these bad boys.
The likes of Ascheri are from the ‘traditional’ school of Barolo, leaving the wine on its skins for up to 40 days after fermentation completes (that is a loooooong time) and then putting it in oak for 2 ½ years. The modernists take it off the skins much earlier and like plenty of new oak to give more fruit and vanilla flavours.
Wine of the night has to be the 1996 Ascheri Barolo. It’s still as tight as a pair of speedos with lovely mid palate weight, incredible concentration and drawn out, finally-woven tannins. A really elegant wine that’s got lots of life left in it.
I took a moment out from tasting Barolos with MD of Squisito, Alberto Cenci, who tells me about his Italian-Kiwi romance and his love of Aerosmith….!
I’ve been researching lower alcohol wines lately and it just so happens, Wine Intelligence has too.
The UK wine trade is really trying to look responsible at the moment and a raft of new ‘lower alcohol’ wines were launched at the recent London International Wine Fair.
But it’s not clear whether the consumer actually wants lower alcohol wines. So, we might have some more white elephant wines gathering dust on the shelves. Alternatively, if the products are available, it may create demand. Let’s face it, before iphones were launched, we didn’t have a burning need for them either.
Happily for those wineries launching a lower alcohol wine this month, it seems that consumer acceptance of wines under 11% is on the rise, according to Wine Intelligence research in partnership with the WSTA.
The percentage of consumers who say they ‘may buy’ wine below 9% (on a scale of 1 to 5,‘may buy’ was 3) has increased from 47% to 54% since the survey was last conducted in April 2007. No massive change there then,
Younger drinkers also increased their acceptance of lower alcohol wines with 66% claiming they may buy wine below 9%, compared with just 51% in 2007.
‘May buy’ and ‘Would definitely buy’ are quite different, however.
Surprise, surprise, wines between 11 and 14% abv remain the preferred wines with regular UK wine drinkers. Well, strike me down. I’m worried that we are blowing this low alcohol thing out of proportion.
I’ll very happily drink a 9% Mosel wine or 5.5% Moscato d’Asti (particularly Vigna Vecchia’s Ca’ da Gal Moscato at Terroir in London) any day of the week but I’m struggling to find a decent wine that has had its alcohol level reduced by human intervention ( i.e. reverse osmosis/spinning cone). Thus far, the early harvest attempts aren’t much better either. There’s a reason why people don’t pick early and we should remember that.
The Elqui valley: home to llamas and Chilean Amarone
Friday 27 November
If you get to the Elqui valley and keep driving for another couple of hours, you’ll hit the fringes of the Atacama desert. It’s hot and arid, cacti pepper the stark mountainsides that tower above the road and without irrigation nothing would grow here. The sun shines 340 days a year so my chances of catching some rays, after our Baltic picnic with Ventisquero the day before, were pretty good.
The Elqui valley is a true valley unlike others like the Maipo valley, which is actually a region. The UV light is incredible and companies are legally obliged to provide sun tan cream and protective clothing for their workers. So, as you can imagine the grapes need a bit of protection too. Winds whistling down the valley from the sea also mean many vines (mainly table grapes) on the valley floor are protected with netting.
It’s mostly table grapes and Pisco production, and wine is fairly new to the scene. Falernia is the major player in the region but other major companies Concha y Toro, San Pedro, Santa Rita are seeing the potential of the region and buying grapes from growers based here.
While most of the vines are on the valley floor near the small town of Vicuna; there is certainly ambition here and they’re planting a new vineyard up at 2000 metres in the Huanta valley. It’s a 45-minute drive from Vicuna up a precarious goldmining road and into the Andes. While it was hot on the valley floor, a cardi was called for up at Huanta. The poor old llamas in one of the fields are going to be homeless when the vines are planted.
Reds will be mainly planted up here – particularly Carmenere and Syrah. That’s not because Cabernet wouldn’t do well here. The company’s Italian winemaker Giorgio Flessati said, “Carmenere and Syrah are our focus because there are too many Cabernet Sauvignons and Merlots in the market.”
The winery makes a dry white PX for Marks & Sparks, which is a quirky idea but a forgettable wine. However, its top Syrah and its Carmenere made in an Amarone style are the stars of the show. Amarone fans should get hold of a bottle and a bar of dark chocolate and enjoy: £10.95, Great Western Wines.
