Barrels & Bottles Wine Blog

After some hard negotiating with the manufacturer we finally managed to get a price reduction on the stunning Precision range of glasses by Raymond Blanc. There is now over £4.00 saving per box on the Bordeaux and Burgundy glasses and over £3.00 per box saving on the rest of the range.

Every little helps to make your wines taste better!

Labels: glasses, raymond blanc

Keeping you all in chocolate this Christmas is no mean feat!


Here we see :

24 chocolates per box
100 boxes per table
12 tables

That's a lot of Chocolates in one day... we have another 30 days of packing to be anywhere near prepared for the festive season.

Labels: chocolate

Our wine tasting event on 28th November 2007 now features a vertical tasting of wines from Chateau Longueville and Chateau Pibran.

Along with a Champagne reception and a 3 course meal this should be a fantastic event to kick start the festive season.

Labels: bordeaux, tasting

We have just found a bin end parcel of wines by Simon Gilbert, Australia. Based in Mudgee (New South Wales) their wines show great varietal character - as well as some splendid label artwork!

The range includes:

Simon Gilbert Semillon Sauvignon
Simon Gilbert Chardonnay
Simon Gilbert Riesling
Simon Gilbert Cabernet Merlot
Simon Gilbert Cabernet Sauvignon

At only £4.99 per bottle (including the dreaded VAT) this is a great find for such a prestigious producer. My favourite has to be the Cabernet Merlot... with it's soft berry fruit flavours and gentle use of oak to create a really mouth-watering red wine. I had this with cajun chicken and couscous and it wend down a treat... the big fruits and bramble nose really lifting the spicy food into another dimension. With 42% merlot grapes in the blend these really soften down the tougher cabernet sauvignon to ensure a beautifully balanced drink.

Highly recommended.

Labels: australia

The UK market will not sustain many more increases in the price of generic Châteauneuf-du-Pape, suppliers and retailers have warned.

The top southern Rhône appellation has enjoyed several strong vintages, with 2006 described as "the eighth very good year out of nine vintages" by the Châteauneuf-du-Pape growers' association.

Wine trade figures contacted by OLN have praised the 2006 Rhône vintage as "refined" and "elegant", but have expressed concern about the continuing price rises.

Andrew Coghlan, managing director of independent merchant Barrels & Bottles in Sheepbridge, Chesterfield, said sales of Châteauneuf from top producers would remain strong despite price rises, but generic Châteauneuf had started to hit a price ceiling with customers. "I think the limit is around £16-£17. People are looking at alternatives from the Rhône, such as Gigondas and Vacqueyras, as well as wines from elsewhere," he said.

Off License News 23rd August 2007

Labels: france, rhone

We have just finished what has to be the most tedious job we do - stock taking. Counting never ending rows of bottles is nobody's idea of fun regardless of your love for the world of wine. Better still it was on my day off - which was nice.

Still - once we have added the figures, sorted the vintages and rationalised the range we always have a few remnants, oddities and "stuff we forgot we have forgotten" marked down to clear the decks (actually - it is so we don't have to count them next time!).

Watch out for some amazingly discounted bin end clearance offers.

There has been an awful lot of press recently about Nigella Lawson and her series on BBC2 TV, recommending Riesling as a superb grape variety to match with food. We have been hearing for the past 10 years about a Riesling revival, the renaissance of Germany's classic grape variety, whether it is grown in Germany or in Australia New Zealand or South Africa.

Our company history is very much tied in with German wines as our original company founded by my parents, The Wine Schoppen Ltd which was situated on the corner of Archer Road and Abbeydale Road South (Sheffield) was specifically started to import the finest end of German wines, mainly Riesling Grape variety, to the UK for the first time. This culminated in the award from the wine magazine as the UK German Wine Merchant of the year.

So why then did we need a revival if the wines were so good?

The real problem for this style of wine happened in the mid 1980s when the Austrian ethylene Glycol scare was prevalant. Effectively adding anti-freeze to grape must to boost sugar was not the best way to advertise the quality of the product, especially as both Germany and Austria were renowned for their purity laws. Scandals followed in Germany and the wines of the best estates which were pure clean and vibrant were tarred with the same brush.

The 1990s turned into a New World Fiesta with people clambering for the taste of Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand as well as Chardonnay from Australia and South Africa. German Riesling became less and less trendy.

This really is a shame. A good Riesling is about as good a white wine as you can buy. The Riesling grape offers big juicy fruit, massive acidity, big body and legs and a chance to age for 30 years or more. No we are not talking about Liebfraumilch, but estate bottled wines from the Rhine and Mosel, Nahe and Rheingau as well as the Rheinpfalz and Franconia.

Whichever style you try, take Nigella's advice and try it with food. In terms of value for money you cannot beat it, with many wines being well under the £10 bracket even now, when we were selling them at about that price over 20 years ago!

The Riesling revival might actually start to happen if people take it seriously once more!

An article by Andrew R. Coghlan for City Business Magazine (Nov 2007)

Labels: germany, riesling