As you can see from recent stories in inside information and tasting notes on purple pages, this week is devoted to Spain’s most fashionable red wine region Toro. Fashion + Spain = high prices usually and some of Toro’s most celebrated wines will cost you well over £20/$40 a bottle but here is a perfectly creditable example that is usually on sale at Sainsbury’s supermarkets for £5.99 a bottle but from tomorrow, 27 Apr, is being discounted to £3.99 a bottle in about 350 out of their 450 stores – all part of their spring wine fair.
This is a great price for a big, gusty wine – very sweet and floral on the nose, but then all that rudely healthy fruit is reined in by some reasonably unobtrusive oak. It’s very slightly astringent on the finish but also very long and flattering. Fantastic value at £3.99 – especially since it has had four months in American oak barrels. This is a wine that is recognisably from Toro – and is ready to drink now or any time over the next year.
Apparently by far the biggest order for this wine, from one of the older bodegas in Toro, has come from a Bordeaux-based distributor. Perhaps he, or she, was looking for a big, sweet Rolland style of red at a fraction of the usual price.