For the last few years I've been lucky enough to be living in and around the city of Brighton and Hove. It's a great place to live for a number of reasons, and its reputation as a paradise for foodies is definitely one of them. There are incredible shops like La Cave a Fromage and O'Fishly Healthy, and a plethora of great restaurants. My favourite of those is Solera D Tapa on Sydney Street.
Solera is a small, unpretentious tapas restaurant in the North Laine that proudly represents the Cadiz area. As such, alongside the fantastic food there's an excellent array of sherries on offer. The wine list is pretty fine too, but they no longer sell my old favourite there - an inexpensive fruity Rioja called Mitarte Joven ('Mitarte' is the name of the wine, 'Joven' means 'young').
I've been half-heartedly trying to find a good substitute for a while, which is harder than you might think. Most of the Riojas I've found in the shops or through the usual stockists online have tended to be Riservas or Gran Riservas, meaning they've spent a long time ageing in oak barrels. There's nothing wrong with that - a fine old Rioja can be a wonderful thing - but that oak ageing makes the wine heavier and imparts a noticeable vanilla flavour to the wine. I prefer lighter and fresher Spanish wines, particularly to go with tapas.
Prior to yesterday, the closest thing I'd found to my beloved Mitarte was Tesco Finest Old Vines Tempranillo - RRP £6.99. It's a pretty good drop, and available at a discounted price pretty regularly. Certainly, it's much better than Sainsbury's Marques de Montino Rioja Joven - RRP £6.50, mentioned in a previous blog post, which didn't offer anything like the bright fruitiness of Tesco's offering.
But The Wine Society gets its first entry in this wine blog's Hall of Fame with 3C Carinena - £5.25.
I cooked tapas last night: patatas bravas, chorizo in sherry, prawns in garlic, and simmered summer vegetables, and opened a bottle of 3C to go with it. I ordered it off the back of TWS's 2015 Wine Champions list and mailing, along with a few of its peers. This was actually the cheapest wine on their list, and it is truly wonderful. The colour is really bright and almost hot pink on the rim, with a deeper plum at the core, and it's just bursting with raspberry and cherry flavours on the palate. There's good length to the finish, and it is lip-smackingly refreshing. It's frighteningly quaffable which makes it all the more surprising that it's a hefty 13.5%. Careful now. Anyway, at the frankly silly price of £5.25, I'm giving serious thought to filling the garage with it.
The full list of The WIne Society's 2015 Wine Champions, and more info on how they're selected, can be found here: http://www.thewinesociety.com/featured-range-wine-champions-jun15
I bought a few others on the list, most of which I haven't yet tried, but the A Mano Italian white was really good, and I really enjoyed the Corvina Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, somewhat unsurprisingly. So much so, that it might have just edged out Averys for the number one spot.
Solera is a small, unpretentious tapas restaurant in the North Laine that proudly represents the Cadiz area. As such, alongside the fantastic food there's an excellent array of sherries on offer. The wine list is pretty fine too, but they no longer sell my old favourite there - an inexpensive fruity Rioja called Mitarte Joven ('Mitarte' is the name of the wine, 'Joven' means 'young').
I've been half-heartedly trying to find a good substitute for a while, which is harder than you might think. Most of the Riojas I've found in the shops or through the usual stockists online have tended to be Riservas or Gran Riservas, meaning they've spent a long time ageing in oak barrels. There's nothing wrong with that - a fine old Rioja can be a wonderful thing - but that oak ageing makes the wine heavier and imparts a noticeable vanilla flavour to the wine. I prefer lighter and fresher Spanish wines, particularly to go with tapas.
Prior to yesterday, the closest thing I'd found to my beloved Mitarte was Tesco Finest Old Vines Tempranillo - RRP £6.99. It's a pretty good drop, and available at a discounted price pretty regularly. Certainly, it's much better than Sainsbury's Marques de Montino Rioja Joven - RRP £6.50, mentioned in a previous blog post, which didn't offer anything like the bright fruitiness of Tesco's offering.
But The Wine Society gets its first entry in this wine blog's Hall of Fame with 3C Carinena - £5.25.
I cooked tapas last night: patatas bravas, chorizo in sherry, prawns in garlic, and simmered summer vegetables, and opened a bottle of 3C to go with it. I ordered it off the back of TWS's 2015 Wine Champions list and mailing, along with a few of its peers. This was actually the cheapest wine on their list, and it is truly wonderful. The colour is really bright and almost hot pink on the rim, with a deeper plum at the core, and it's just bursting with raspberry and cherry flavours on the palate. There's good length to the finish, and it is lip-smackingly refreshing. It's frighteningly quaffable which makes it all the more surprising that it's a hefty 13.5%. Careful now. Anyway, at the frankly silly price of £5.25, I'm giving serious thought to filling the garage with it.
The full list of The WIne Society's 2015 Wine Champions, and more info on how they're selected, can be found here: http://www.thewinesociety.com/featured-range-wine-champions-jun15
I bought a few others on the list, most of which I haven't yet tried, but the A Mano Italian white was really good, and I really enjoyed the Corvina Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, somewhat unsurprisingly. So much so, that it might have just edged out Averys for the number one spot.