(TEL) The Best Wine Cases to Order for a Great British Staycation

[AKR]

The Best Wine Cases to Order for a Great British Staycation
2021-07-09 04:07:41.630 GMT


By Victoria Moore, Wine correspondent

(Telegraph) -- A sodden field in Hampshire with clouds glowering over the
hedgerows wasn’t quite what Shirley Valentine had in mind when she famously
said she wanted to drink a glass of wine in the country in which the grape is
grown. But for those who can’t or don’t want to risk flick-flacking quarantine
rules or the exorbitant cost of PCRs to go abroad this summer, at least it is
an option.

If you are planning a staycation, one way to refine the experience is to get
organised with wine supplies, rather than being stuck with the local (and
possibly not very well ranged) supermarket once you arrive.

Climate change, allied to a refocus on champagne grapes and sparkling wine,
has changed the English and Welsh wine industry beyond recognition since 1989
when Shirley Valentine was released.

So a good first move if organising a UK holiday would be to look for local
vineyards either to visit on arrival or who might be able to deliver a few
bottles of sparkling wine or bacchus to kick off the stay. The WineGB website
makes this easy with its “shop local” button, which takes you to a list of
wine producers selling online that is searchable by county and postcode.

A few favourites to give you inspiration: Black Chalk (Hampshire), Coates &
Seely (Hampshire), Langham Wine Estate (Dorset), Lyme Bay Winery (Devon),
Gusbourne (Kent), Simpsons (Kent), Harrow & Hope (Buckinghamshire) and a
couple you won’t find on that website but might want to look up if you’re
nearby: Winbirri (Norfolk) and Flint Vineyard (Norfolk).

Second step: check out the local wine merchant situation and see if you can
identify a good one close to the place you are staying or perhaps on the way
there. Yapp in Mere is well-placed for those heading out west on the A303 and
specialises in rosé, the Loire, Corsica and the south of France. Slaughden
Wines on the high street in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, is a repository of
carefully-picked classics.

At the risk of sounding like the school parents’ rep, remember to check the
opening times to save howls of pain if you are relying on the shop for an
arrival drink. Slaughden Wines, for instance, is closed on Saturday
afternoons.

Third move: order in advance. You don’t always need to order large quantities
to make a bespoke wine order. Four years ago, Berry Bros & Rudd delivered
three bottles of wine (a Provence pink, a red bandol and a St Joseph from the
Rhône) to my holiday house near Southwold and I paid a delivery charge of £15
for the pleasure.

That’s still the BB&R charge for a specified date delivery on an order under
£200 and it’s less than the mark-up you’d pay on a bottle of pinot grigio in a
café. It’s so much more exciting to have a few good bottles, which you can
always supplement with something cheap and easy: we bought La Vieille Ferme
Rosé from the Co-op, and that’s still a really good wine.

Look around carefully and you won’t have to pay delivery for the special
bottles: shops offering holiday-friendly delivery dates and charges include
The Wine Society (free delivery on orders of £75 or more), The Sourcing Table
(free delivery to mainland UK on orders over £50) and Swig (offering free
delivery on orders over £75).

Unexpectedly, perhaps, Fortnum & Mason is also reasonable at £7.95 for a
named-day delivery, Monday through to Sunday; don’t forget to click on a
holiday jar of the world’s best piccalilli alongside your bottle of white
burgundy, say, Fortnum’s very good Saint-Romain 2017 (£33.50).

What to order? Greatest hits, of course, as in your greatest hits. As you’ll
have guessed from that Berry Bros & Rudd order, my staycation drinking often
leans heavily on a dose of escapism and one of the places I like to escape to
is Provence. I have been eyeing the (evolving) menu and wine list at Royale, a
new Provençal-style restaurant in East London from the team behind Leroy.

Born during lockdown, Royale takes inspiration from the great Bandol estate
Domaine Tempier, and the cooking of its chatelaine, Lucie (Lulu) Peyraud, who
died last year at the age of 102. “I think many of us have given up any hope
of going away now so we may as well travel vicariously,” says Royale’s Ed Thaw
as he talks me through Rotisol chicken, assiettes of toast with olives and
anchoïade and the joy of leafing through Richard Olney’s tribute to Peyraud’s
cookery, Lulu’s Provençal Table. And wine? At Royale they have Tempier, of
course, and everything else is French.

“The idea was to imagine we were writing the wine list there rather than in
London, so we’d really celebrate the grapes from that region: there’s a lot of
syrah, cinsault, grenache, mourvèdre, carignan and the richer styles of
whites, viognier, clairette, bourboulenc,” says Thaw.

Yapp and Lea & Sandeman are two wine merchants that are good to shop at if you
are looking for wine from the Rhône, Provence and the Languedoc. Or buy a case
of the Ch. Pesquié Terrasses Rouge 2018, Ventoux, France from Stannary Wine
(Stannary Wine, £164.28 or £13.69 a bottle).

Don’t want to make so many decisions? Go to The Wine Society and buy a few
bottles of the beautiful Ch. Pesquié Terrasses Blanc 2020, Ventoux (£10.95), a
lovely, heady blend of viognier, roussanne, clairette and grenache blanc that
tastes of white blossom, white and yellow peaches and honeysuckle with a nip
of bitter almond on the finish. Add a few bottles of The Wine Society’s
Corsican Rosé 2020 (£9.95) and then top up with a few freestyle red treats of
your own choosing.

Don’t want to make any decisions? Try Swig, which offers a Personal Shopper
case of six bottles for £100 – you tell them what you like, they pick wines
from their portfolio and you find out what they are when they arrive.

Wines of the week

Atkins Farm McLaren Vale Shiraz 2020

Australia (14.5%, Waitrose, 298 stores, £7.49 down from £9.99 until July 27)

A beautiful and atmospheric shiraz, which I think would appeal to both New and
Old World palates, and which is startlingly good value on offer. Matured in a
mixture of old French and American oak, it has subtle wood notes and a soft
texture, with a hint of drinking chocolate powder.

Monte Santoccio Valpolicella Ripasso Classico Superiore 2018

Italy (14%, Swig, £26.95)

The Monte Santoccio wines are truly brilliant reds from the Veneto: serious
Valpol that is textured and redolent of sour cherries. I love drinking this
with Diana Henry’s recipe for spatchcocked chicken with chilli, garlic,
parsley and almond pangrattato (found in her book How to Eat a Peach).

Adnams White Burgundy Cuvée Paul Talmard 2020

France (13%, Adnams, £11.99)

One of my favourite wines ever, this white gets a five-star rating on the
Adnams website and has already been “discovered” by the
Norfolk-and-Suffolk-holiday-houses set, who order it by the case load to drink
when they get back from the beach. Unoaked white burgundy that is creamy and
subtle.