From £14.25 (until 4 Nov), €20.21, 36 Swiss francs, 314.49 Ukrainian Hryvna, 2,290 Roubles
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As I reported yesterday in 25% off all Waitrose (and Tesco) wine, these two major UK supermarkets are so keen to lure wine buyers in to their stores and on to their websites that they have both slashed the cost of buying at least six bottles of wine – Waitrose until Tuesday 6 November, Tesco until Sunday 4 November, and now M&S have joined in – but not in Scotland where controls on the selling of alcohol are much stronger. I have already published detailed tasting notes on 138 wines sold by Waitrose and recently tasted a wide range of wines available from Tesco and M&S.
I'll be publishing these two sets of tasting notes some time this month, but in the
mean time here is a Tesco wine to which I gave a score of 17/20 and which is currently discounted by 25%, reducing the Tesco price from £18.99 to £14.25. This brings the price below the cheapest listing found in its native Spain by winesearcher.com. The wine is available not just in Spain but also in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Ukraine – and Russia where it costs about twice as much as elsewhere.
Marqués de Riscal, Finca Torrea 2007 Rioja is new to Tesco who claim it's available in 289 stores (so only about half of them). I found it beautifully judged and full of fruit with an attractive earthiness, very rioja. (This wonderful most inspiring tasting ever, of mature riojas, organised in London by Jesus Barquín and our Spanish specialist Luis Gutiérrez rekindled my love of the wines of Spain's best-known wine region.) I felt this blend of Tempranillo with a little bit of Graciano would drink well over at least the next seven years. The French oak is not too obvious at all (tant mieux) and nor is the 14% alcohol. They say they deliberately pick early enough to retain freshness; the wine seems a bit less dense than their Baron de Chirel bottling.
This is the wine that the venerable Marqués de Riscal makes from the old vines on the clay limestone next to their bodega. It was bottled early last year after 18 months in Allier barriques.
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Marqués de Riscal, Finca Torrea 2007 Rioja
