Château Carteau Côtes Daugay 2005 St Emilion Bordeaux

Château Carteau Côtes Daugay 2005 St Emilion is a Claret made by the Bertrand family in St Emilion. It is deep ruby with a narrow garnet rim - this indicates its age. This is a wine with rounded spice along with red and black ripe fruits on the nose, oak and cedar cigar box play heavily in its aroma palate as do pencil shavings. On the palate - dry with bold ripe fruits  enrobed with smokey cedar box and spice, tannins are tasty, ripe and have a silky texture imparted by them. The refined and freshening acidity, balancing alcohol which is well tucked in, the wine has a great length, finishing with warm spices.
Overall a rounded, well knitted smokey spicey juicy wine which is accessible and reflects its birthplace well - at £19.99 from The Wine Society offers good value for money.
Score : 90

Corsican Clos Culombu Rosé 2010

Corsican Clos Culombu Rosé 2010 is from Calvi in North West Corsica, it is from a winery founded by Paul Suzzoni in the mid 1980's and run by his brother Ettienne as is 95ha in size. Low intervention viticulture with few chemicals and weedkillers added, and low yields (by debudding and green harvesting) ensure good quality wine potential. The dominant grape here is Sangiovese ( a grape which one thinks of as an Italian variety.... well, Corsica is thought of as French/Italian)

This wine is a bright but very pale salmon and on the nose one immediately is struck by the red berry fruits interminglad with pink grapefruit and flowers, these are echoed on the palate and the length is good with a citric pith finish, the acidity is not high and the alcohol is merely 12.5% and well integrated. A fresh, clean wine of the easy drinking variety, though it would stand up to a risotto or simple chicken dishes. Sold by The Wine Society at £12.50.
Score : 85

Cavas de Weinert Gran Vino 2004 Argentina

Founded in 1975, Bodega y Cavas de Weinert is located in Lujan de Cuyo in Argentina. Bernardo C. Weinert, founder and owner was born in a small German colony in southern Brazil and made his money in the international transport business based in South America. 

Cavas de Weinert Gran Vino 2004 is a wine that is a blend of Malbec, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon ( a twist on a Bordeaux blend, where Malbec if present is always the minority component) and is only released by Weinert when it is ready for drinking, and this 2004 is the current release.
This wine has aromas and flavours of dark cherry, blackberry/cassis, dried fruits, spice, tobacco and some vegetal tertiary notes, mint also plays its part. This wine is obvious as of New World origin, the tannins are ripe and savoury, silky and sleek in texture with sweet fruits hanging on every grain.
This wine is supplied by The Wine Society at a cost of £11.90, a lovely wine at the money!
Score : 89

Mendel Semillon 2010 from the Uco Valley, Argentina

Mendel Semillon 2010 from the Altamira in the Uco Valley, Argentina is a wine made from the Semillon grape and supplied by the Wine Society at £9.75. The Semillon grape is normally associated primarily with Bordeaux Whites in France, it is often paired with Sauvignon Blanc which provides extra acidity to keep it fresh, it now has also found a quality home in Australia ( Hunter Valley and Margaret River). This particular grape comes from the Uco Valley at a height of 3600 feet  which is just south of Mendoza, and the vines are on average 60 years old.
The wine had a slightly green tinge indicating a young wine in some cases, aromas of white flowers, apricots and peapods were obvious on the nose, once in the mouth the silky texture and fresh fruit were a delight, lemons, limes with a pithy edge, a touch of green apple and a great fresh citric, a light wine with zippy attack and lovely mouth feel - a great wine to enjoy on its own or with a meal. There was a little oak apparent on the palate in the way of a nuttiness, and on investigation it is found that 15% was aged for 8 months in new American oak barrels, this aids its food pairing possibilities. Review by Jancis Robinson.
Score : 82

Tabali Syrah 2007 Reserva Limari Valley Chile

Tabali Syrah 2007 Reserva Limari Valley is of course the Shiraz or Syrah grape grown in the cool area of the Limari Valley, Chile. The Limari Valley is in the north of Chile and although nearer to the equator is classified as a cool area as it  is greatly affected by the morning fog caused by the the cool Humbolt current in the Pacific Ocean which cools in the morning, but clears as the afternoon’s hot sun rises. The region is very dry – less than 4 inches of rain annually – but irrigation is allowed here and has made vine growing. The lack of water, however, encourages the vines to dig deep into the soils and, in turn, there is a pronounced effect of minerality found in the wines. There is much innovation used in these 'new' areas which have been actually making wine for many centuries.
This wine is a very deep ruby colour with a blackness too it that points to heavy extraction during the vinification and also to the high phenolic content of the skins. Blackcurrant and cherry aromas abound, all wound up with smokey spices and undertones of savouriness. Definite licquorice and earthiness aromas seemed to develop as it was allowed to breathe.
On tasting it - black fruits, cherry once more, spice and a pithy edge are pronounced and heavy, the oak is the predominant finish for me after a meaty savouriness, and although I like oak - I felt that the usage had been clumsy here. Good acidity kept the fruit fresh and jumpy and the alcohol although high at 14.5% was really well integrated. Tannins - drying but ripe and tasty, underpinning its longevity together with the refined acidity.  Overall the balance of the wine was good, the extraction was high - maybe too high, and the oak usage took control of the wine rather than gently adding structure and support, better with food than without - and choose a meaty lamb dish.
The Wine Society supply this wine at a cost of £10.95 - a good buy and one that will keep for a few years yet.

Domaine Bruno Clair Marsannay Grasses Tetes 2006

Domaine Bruno Clair Marsannay Grasses Tetes 2006 from Marsannay which is near Gevry Chambertin in Burgundy, France, a red wine made from Pinot Noir grapes and sold by The Wine Society at £20 is a lovely deep coloured wine ( deep for normally pale Pinot Noir), ruby with garnet rim. It has aromas and flavours of red and black berry fruits and ripe cherries enshrouded in spiced, toasty oak, it shows notes of vegetal / game and flavours of dried fruits and underlying chocolate. The texture is silky and indulgent, the tannins are ripe, dry and tasty. The length of this wine shows its class, it is long with complex layers of fruits, spice with a warm silky edge. Throughout this wine is well structured, balanced and truely elegant, it is well interlaced - a joined up wine!

Chablis Domaine William Fevre 2010

 Domaine William Fevre produced a Chablis in 2010 that is perfumed with a stoney edge to the green apple aromas which also carry a tinge of lime in the back ground. On tasting it the acidity is freshening, the wine has a silky texture and real prescence! It has minerality layered with green crunchy fruits and some white stone fruits rounding out the flavours and adding flesh to what some think is an austere style of wine. The length is good and shows the quality of the wine with the layered minerality and ending in peach. Overall the style is linear, crisp and clean and shows elegance through to the end.
2010  wines were concentrated due to poor fruit set earlier in the season, so leading to a smaller harvest, minerality and keen acidity are key for this vintage. This wine may have seen a small amount of new oak in its making and this would have been much higher before 1998 when William Fevre sold to Champagne Henriot. The fruit was hand harvest with rigorous selection under the watchful eye of the winemaker Didier Séguier .
The  wine was £14.95 and came from The Wine Society.

Domaine Gilles Berlioz Chignon Vin de Savoie 2010

Chignon Vin de Savoie 2010 is a Biodynamically made blended wine from the Jacquere grape along with Chardonnay and Mondeuse ( a very important Savoie Red variety) in the Savoie region of Eastern France made by Domaine Gilles Berlioz. This is not a particularly aromatic wine but there were slight aromas of apple, pear and stone fruits, on the palate flavours of apple, lemon and baked fruits, good acidity and simple, single dimension flavour array and the alcohol does not interrupt this wines character ( 11.5%), the length was short and had a crisp lemon finish. Overall my feelings on this wine are that it is a simple, clean, crisp aperitif wine that has alot of the Savoie in it - cool region wines that have not been tampered with. This wine is supplied by the Wine Society - £10.95

Riesling Kappelweg Vendange Tardive 2000 by Rolly Gassmann

Riesling Kappelweg Vendange Tardive 2000 by Rolly Gassmann is supplied by The Wine Society priced at £35, it is a late harvest wine ( denoted by the Vendange Tardive) and can only be one of Alsace's 'nobel grape varieties' by their wine laws, these are Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris and Muscat. The grapes are only harvested when they have fully ripened and more - and have started to dehydrate and shrivel on the vines so concentrating the flavours within the grape and so in the resultant wine. The grape has a high percentage of sugar and so the wine is often sweet as it cannot convert all the contained sugar to alcohol because the yeast cannot operate effectively at high sugar concentrations. This whole process is called 'passerillage' and was first introduced in France by the Alsace region and was first described as Vendange Tardive by Hugel in 1976. There is another higher sugar concentrated wine called Selecion de Grains Nobles and this has to have been infected by Botrytis ( the same nobel rot that affects grapes used to make Sauternes in Bordeaux and Trockenbeerenauslese in Germany ). The basic rule declares what minimium sugar level is needed in the grapes at harvest to reach these 2 levels of sweetness, it is higher for Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris than for Riesling and Muscat.
This wine has more colour than most rieslings due to its increased age and also the concentration of flavours and sugars it contains, the legs are slow to form and then fat - this tells me that the wine has increased viscosity, due to either alchol or sugar. On the nose we are treated to aromas of baked apples and pears, yeasty tertiary notes and a little mushroom, it also has a streak of minerality running around it.
On the mouth - Wow, silky texture, great acidity balancing the succulent sweetness backed up by baked stone fruits, sugary apple, all concentrated and honeyed. The length is good and clean, with a baked apple finish, and yes there is minerality, great structure and lots of clever fruit sugars, but the acidity, the freshness of this wine comes through - and it is at this point 12 years old - beautiful!

Leon Beyer Sylvaner 2010 from Alsace, France

Leon Beyer Sylvaner 2010 from Eguisheim in Alsace  is a wine that is once more varietally labelled coming from Alsace, the grape Sylvaner is not one of the Alsace 'noble' grapes - which are Riesling, Muscat, Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris - but if treated properly can be perfumed, and fresh. The Beyer family have been making wine in Eguisheim since 1580. They pick the grapes  fully ripe,  ferment at high temperatures often in large oak foudres to dryness .
This has less on the nose than the Chasselas which was tasted previous to this, but aromas of apricots, yeast and a streak of minerality hint at a crisp clean wine. On tasting it the noticeable acidity freshens the fruit which is green apple, apricot and a yeasty finish with lashings of minerality - wet stone flavours!
The finish is dry - again what is expected of an Alsation wine, and it is clean, crisp and fresh throughout - maybe a little linear in its appeal.
Supplied by the Wine Society at a good price of £7.95, a great fresh and zippy wine at the price!