What’s the biggest wine myth ever? For me, the one that refuses to die is the idea that red wine should always be served at room temperature. Now that we live in centrally heated homes the concept is next to meaningless. Besides, all reds are not the same. Burgundy enjoys 16C, which is surprisingly cool, while red bordeaux is warmer-blooded and thrives at 18C. Either way, serve a red too warm, as many are in this holiday month, and you will be rewarded with a horrid, soupy, mawkish mouthful. The solution is either to give your bottle a half-hour blast in the fridge or, if you are out and about, to add a handful of ice to your glass and wait until it has reached the level that the French call frais, or fresh, about 12C, before scooping the ice out. It’s not just lighter reds such as beaujolais or the Loire’s chinon or saumur that enjoy this refreshing dip in sunny weather, but gamay from further south perks up mightily too. Try chilling the gloriously juicy, spicy, damson plum-packed 2013 Gamay, Vin de Pays de l’Ardeche (Marks & Spencer, £6), from the wondrous northern Rhône’s Cave Saint Désirat, and you’ll have a jolly time.
Whites, on the other hand, should often be served less chilled than you imagine. The finest white burgundies are best savoured at around 15C. Some like their champagne and other fizz served at that level but, for me, a cooler 10C is more like it.
Storage myths also abound, so let’s get this straight: pretty much all wines should be stored horizontally, somewhere dark and cool, preferably without vibration and with good humidity, so that corks remain springy, airtight and in contact with the wine. The only exception is screwcapped bottles that can be stored vertically or horizontally without harm. If you have to store bottles in a hot kitchen, and I do, stick to everyday drinking wines for this room and make certain those at the back of the rack don’t get forgotten. Remember that champagne, followed by fragile rosés and then cheap, young whites, are the most heat and light sensitive of all wines and need lots of TLC. The latter, such as Waitrose’s light but lively celery, herb and lemon zest-spiked, 11.5 per cent, Gascon, 2013 Cuvée Pêcheur, Vin de France, £4.99, needs to be knocked back before the next vintage is harvested in a month or so.
Surprisingly, good, ordinary champagne benefits from a year in the cellar. I tasted recently an 18-month-old bottle of the sparky, lemon brioche-scented 2007 Heidsieck Monopole Gold Top Champagne, and it had matured into a brilliant, golden, toasted-almond-styled bubbly (Majestic, £30, or wait until Tuesday and buy 2 for £19.99 each). Forget the myth of dangling a silver teaspoon in the neck of an open bottle of champagne to preserve the bubbles: it won’t. The only way to keep the fizz in fizzy wine is to invest in one of those sturdy champagne stoppers that clamps over the neck of the bottle and keeps the bubbles lively and the wine fresh for a day or so.
Much more wine is drunk too late than too early, so if you have splashed out on a fancy case, crack open a bottle from time to time to check on its progress. Ignore the decanting myth about opening a wine early to let it “breathe”. Wine does not have lungs. Once you pull the cork, wine starts to oxidise and deteriorate. Very old fine wines can fade in minutes.
Advertisement
Above all, ignore yesteryear’s myth when cheapskate hosts were encouraged to open Argentinian reds 24 hours in advance so as to pass them off as venerable French reds to unsuspecting guests. Catena’s delicious, fat, savoury, spiced fig and prune of a 2012 Malbec (Waitrose, £12.99) deserves better.
Star buys
2013 Venturer Vermentino, Terre Siciliane
Aldi £4.99
Aldi’s Venturer range of good, ordinary Sicilian and Iberian wines, including this tasty, stone fruit and pine nut-stashed vermentino, complete with a long, tangy, lemony finish, is worth plundering.
2013 Vignobles Roussellet Malbec, France
Aldi £4.69
Not in the same league as the other Vignobles Roussellet single varietals but even so a decent, herby, malbec-based French table wine, plumped up with ripe, plummy, jammy merlot.
2013 Finest Sancerre, Fournier, France
Tesco £11.99
Tesco’s gorgeous, steely, gunflint-smoky, gooseberry-charged top Loire sauvignon, from the consistently good Fournier Père et Fils stable and a tricky Loire vintage, is well worth its price.
Advertisement
2012 Montes Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon, Chile
Tesco £7.49
Of the many thick-with-fruit Aurelio Montes Chilean reds, this delicious 14 per cent cabernet, crammed with bold, creosote, black cherry and red fruit flavours, is brilliant value.
Keeper
2012 Yabby Lake Single Vineyard Chardonnay, Mornington Peninsula, Australia
Lay & Wheeler (01473 313300) £32.46; Swig (0800 272272) £35
Tom Carson and his classy, burgundy-aping chardonnay and pinot noir improve with every vintage and this one’s a cracker. It comes from the sandy, seabreeze-cooled Mornington Peninsula, situated southeast of Melbourne, one of Victoria’s most exciting wine regions, and is a good chardonnay vintage in which Carson has clearly pulled out all the stops. I loved this outstandingly elegant, polished, complex, yeasty chardonnay, with lots of lemon and cashew nut-stashed fruit, plus a fine brioche-scented finish. Tuck into this now with poached salmon and a rich butter sauce, or put it away for four years for some toasted nut and spice scents to emerge.