I have never really found wine list tasting notes very helpful but yesterday I came across this twaddle in in Italian restaurant, describing a £26 bottle of white.
"Light yellow with a nose of green aromas and yellow plums opening onto a palate of pears, zesty and fresh tasting, flaunting a citrus veined finish"
Do any contributors find that this show-off writing actually helps them to choose a wine? I thought only estate agents used the word "Flaunt" and a Veined Finish sounds like marble or my Granny's legs!
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It's twaddle, in my humble opinion.
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It is and it isn't.
Its light yellow in colour, smells of leaves, and has slight tastes of pears and plums with an after taste of citrus fruits.
Ok the writing is flowery, but its probably pretty accurate.
My only complaint about tasting notes is when the wine is crap, they never say so.
"Has the visual hues of aged engine oil shimmering in a puddle, the gently steamy aroma of a Jersey cow pat in a warm balmy English meadow evening, and a persuasive primary taste of acid rain filtered through freshly laid tarmac that lingers, forever, on the palate.
I still have a bottle of that ready to be handed over to mine host at the door of the next party invite, whereupon you head for the booze table and try to avoid other abominable concoctions dumped by the other revellers.
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I think wine is generally much better than when I first started drinking it 25 yrs ago*
I've never been truly disappointed by a bottle that I pay at least 6 quid for.
Below that price the risk seems to rise sharply however.
*strawberry Concorde anyone? ;-)
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>> *strawberry Concorde anyone? ;-)
>>
Now that's descriptive. I immediately thought of a sweet fruit flavour, with an aftertaste of burned Jet A-1, best drunk very quickly and produces a splitting headache with a ringing in the ears afterwards.
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With tax/duty on a bottle of wine @ £2 and then VAT on the cost of the wine it follows that you are paying about £2.50 before you have got any wine at all and thus anything under £4 is going to be pretty rough. I was in Portugal last month and the supermarkets had litre bottles and litre tetra paks of wine @ €1 which I think would have been equally as unpalatable.
Majestic in Calais sell their wines at £3 less than the UK price, so I pick there as I go the the ferry/tunnel.
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>> litre tetra
>> paks of wine @ €1
I live on that stuff when on my summer holidays in Spain or France. usually the white, super shilled. Usually fairly low in alcohol (10%), goes down a treat.
During my recent week in Paris, I decided to up my game, buy it in glass bottles and deploy my unfailing value-for-money test on bottles of wine. This is a calculation based on the price of the bottle to the versus the depth of the dimple on its bottom. High price and shallow dimple = poor quality at an unacceptable price.
The holy grail is to find a low priced bottle with a deep dimple on the bottom. This is invariably good wine at a good price. For that week in Paris I was living on a very delicious Cabernet/Merlot from some part of France or other, with a satisfying dimple in the bottom, for €2.03 a bottle.
Avoid flat bottoms. That's my rule.
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>> Avoid flat bottoms. That's my rule.
A gently rounded bottom is highly attractive.
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Dimple bottomed bottles date from the days when glass bottles were blown. It was difficult to achieve a flat bottoms so the base was made concave. The shape became traditional
Now its just a marketing and design thing. Wouldn't place much store by judging the wine by the bottle!
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My theory is that wine which is intended to be served by a waiter needs to be in a dimple bottomed bottle. And French restaurants don't want to be associated with plonk - that can be decanted and served in carafes for a lower price to blokes in flat caps with a spitty roll up on the go. Mind you, carafe wine in French restaurants is usually more than good enough for me.
Mike Hannon seems to confirm the theory from the French horse's mouth below. I get quite giddy when I find a cheap bottle in a French supermarket with a deep dimple. Perhaps my expectations then colour my enjoyment positively, but, whatever, it works for me.
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>
>> I've never been truly disappointed by a bottle that I pay at least 6 quid
>> for.
>>
I've never been truly disappointed by any bottle. All wine has its uses, the trick is in matching the quality to the occasion.
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"Greets the nostrils like an elderly relative" is a note that I left when offered some wine to taste.
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I do love wine and pay some attention of the tasting notes but some do appear to be rather random ..... but I would far rather make my own judgement by sampling..... and I drink what I like.
I have sampled wine from most everywhere and can say without fear of contradiction that the wine in Shanghai was the worst I ever tasted ...so dry that my mouth ended up like a furred up kettle...
My favourite was probably a 1957 Bual ( Madeira ) wine which was like nectar.
I have just returned from long weekend trip to France with friends and on the way out through Calais in Auchan we picked up a dozen or so bottles of wine which looked good value which we sampled liberally over the weekend ....... and collected a couple of cases of the ones we liked best on the way back....... including a very nice Merlot indeed for the equivalent of £2.79 a bottle .
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>> I have just returned from long weekend trip to France with friends and on the
>> way out through Calais in Auchan we picked up a dozen or so bottles of
>> wine which looked good value which we sampled liberally over the weekend ....... and collected
>> a couple of cases of the ones we liked best on the way back....... including
>> a very nice Merlot indeed for the equivalent of £2.79 a bottle .
A good friend of mine has family near Bordeaux. When he visits, he comes back with locally produced red that costs a couple of quid a bottle, and which is normally traded or bartered among locals rather than sold formally. It is exquisite.
I wouldn't claim to come up with any wine tasting spiel, but suffice to say it's as good as anything I've bought here at anything up to my usual ten quid limit.
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Re the OP, it definitely sounds like pretentious twaddle.
I know naff all about wine but I know what I like so I pretty much stick to what I know. I like a nice red rather than white.
I've often had very good wines from my local co-op at less than £5 a bottle, and then endured bottles of utter horse ssip at £20 a pop.
Jilly Goolden used to annoy the hell out of me when she was a regular on TV talking about wine.
'Hints of Autumn leaves with an after taste of wheelbarrow and moss'. Yeah, whatever Jilly!
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>> Jilly Goolden used to annoy the hell out of me when she was a regular
>> on TV talking about wine.
I'm not a violent man, but she just made me want to slap her every time she opened her mouth.
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>> she just made me want to slap her every time she opened her mouth.
Oh I dunno. She tries hard and probably has a good palate. 'I'm getting frooot... hints of leather... ' If it's real wine it would be a bit odd if she didn't get fruit of course.
I used to love wine and drink too much of it. Favoured red and got many a headache from it. Now hardly touch it at home, preferring syrupy vodka and orange or Leffe blonde, preferably on draught. I do drink wine when travelling in wine-producing countries though. The worst wine I ever tasted was Israeli (white, sweet, very weak). Once got some cheap red wine in an Italian small town that was so horrible we threw it away.
Everyone else here likes proper wine and there's always some around. One is a bit spoilt for choice with all the new world, South African and Aussie brews.
In the pub last night and for lack of choice had two pints of local bitter. It tasted fine but I feel a bit odd today. Naturally I had several proper drinks at home after the pub. It's possible I drink more than I should.
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"I like a nice red rather than white.
I've often had very good wines from my local co-op at less than £5 a bottle, and then endured bottles of utter horse ssip at £20 a pop."
What you have to remember with expensive wine is that at the end of the day you are paying for scarcity. It all comes down to supply and demand. Expensive wines tend to be more complex in their flavours but that doesn't necessarily mean that you will necessarily enjoy them any more than your cheap bottle of plonk. Price doesn't guarantee a wine you will like.
Of course at the bottom end of the market by the time you take out tax, bottling costs, and distribution you aren't paying much at all for your wine and anything under £5 is likely to be pretty poor stuff. Around £6 to £7 currently buys a reasonable bottle of "everyday" wine.
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I must have very unsophisticated tastebuds. Everything I've bought from Aldi foe between 3 and 5 pounds has been great. Cotes du Rhone at £3.49 is currently a winner. As is their French Pinot Noir for 4 quid.
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ALDI Ribera del Duero, "Minarete", is pretty good for the price (a smidgen over a fiver, IIRC)
Their cheapo red & white Baron St. Jean is surprisingly drinkable at around three quid a bottle.
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>> ALDI Ribera del Duero, "Minarete", is pretty good for the price (a smidgen over a
>> fiver, IIRC)
I've enjoyed that one too as well as the 'exquisite collection' Australian Cabernet Saivignon. The standard range Shiraz/Cabernet at £4 or so is also OK.
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I usually buy wines that were at a previous price and been reduced. Sometimes you get some fantastic stuff, last one was a white from Morrisons, so good I cleared out the remaining stock in my local(ish) store.
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>> I usually buy wines that were at a previous price and been reduced. Sometimes you
>> get some fantastic stuff, last one was a white from Morrisons, so good I cleared
>> out the remaining stock in my local(ish) store.
You have to watch it, they make the prices up. I recently bought 36 bots of Hardys Bankside Chardonnay in Morrisons, reduced from 9.99 to 3.99. It definitely wasn't £10 wine but it was ok.
Unfortunately I also bought 36 of the red Shiraz equivalent with the same reduction. That's not so good, though I manage to force it down after pouring from great height into a jug to get some air into it.
Tesco are the most blatant. Their cheap champagne is always "half price" which is obviously a lot nearer what it's worth than the pre-reduction one.
Last edited by: Manatee on Fri 7 Jun 13 at 08:59
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>> I must have very unsophisticated tastebuds. Everything I've bought from Aldi foe between 3 and
>> 5 pounds has been great. Cotes du Rhone at £3.49 is currently a winner. As
>> is their French Pinot Noir for 4 quid.
>>
If anyone here is on holiday in Austria this year, Aldi trade under the name of Hofer, and they sell some excellent award-winning wines at good prices, e.g. Australian cabernet/shiraz at €2.99, Chilean cabernet at €2.49, a Spanish 6-year old tempranillo at €2.79, and a Toscana at €2.79. The latter is the only one that I've also found in Aldi in the UK, but it retails there at £3.99.....also plenty of very drinkable Austrian wines.
Last edited by: Mike H on Thu 6 Jun 13 at 21:08
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>....also plenty of very drinkable Austrian wines.
Do they still make them to BS 6580?
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>> Do they still make them to BS 6580?
>>
Well, it does get cold here in the winter !
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We'll be in Zell am Ziller for a fortnight this time next month and the nearest Hofer is in walking distance of the apartments, which strangely enough are at Camping Hofer [no relation :-) ]
One has to have something that tastes different from Zillertaler Bier every now and then, so we'll get some to stick in the fridge, although SWMBO is quiet keen on the old viertel of Gruner Veltliner in the bar of an evening
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>> One has to have something that tastes different from Zillertaler Bier every now and then,
>>
I don't rate the Hofer own-brand beer, "BierKönig", but they also have "Kuhles Blonde" which is OK (made by Ottakringer). The "Karlskrone" is also a bit suspect. Find a Billa or Spar, they'll have a decent range of more interesting beers to try. The Raschhofer in a blue & yellow bottle with a cartoon character is surprisingly nice, not what you'd expect! Also try the Urbock, a smaller bottle with a black label, it's one of the strongest beers in world at 10% ABV.
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The Kuhles Blonde has done us proud or the past two weeks, with a couple of variants thrown in. There is very little choice in Aldi/Hofer, which makes things easy. Spar and Billa get too complicated when you are buying a crate of bottles and there is a deposit on both :-) and if you are buying cans you need to read carefully otherwise there is a real risk of buying 'alkoholfrei' and that just wouldn't do. Also tried somebodies 'Schankbier' which claimed to be 4.2° but you could have fooled me
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"Everything I've bought from Aldi foe between 3 and 5 pounds has been great. Cotes du Rhone at £3.49 is currently a winner."
Try their Rioja. Had a bottle tonight. If you like the oaky style very drinkable. £6.49
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>> "Everything I've bought from Aldi for between 3 and 5 pounds has been great. Cotes du Rhone at £3.49 is currently a winner."
>> Try their Rioja. Had a bottle tonight. If you like the oaky style very drinkable. £6.49
We are great fans of a good rioja.
If you can find Campo Viejo Reserva at around £6 to £7 - usually over a tenner - do try it. We bought a few bottles back with us: 4 in a box for 19.95€ ,on special Xmas offer at Al Campo, (Spanish Auchan) Marbella.
Once, we vowed after all our years in Spain that we would splash out on a more expensive rioja and paid around 20€ for a Gran Reserva from a good year. Bliss - but not for everyday!
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Nice to find another Rioja fan. A lot of people don't seem to like heavily oaked wines.
If you can stretch to £12.99 Waitrose's Beronia Reserva makes a nice treat.
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>> >> "Everything I've bought from Aldi for between 3 and 5 pounds has been great.
>> Cotes du Rhone at £3.49 is currently a winner."
>>
>> >> Try their Rioja. Had a bottle tonight. If you like the oaky style very
>> drinkable. £6.49
>> We are great fans of a good rioja.
>> If you can find Campo Viejo Reserva at around £6 to £7 - usually over
>> a tenner - do try it.
Currently £7.40 at Costco, just bought some so I'll report - 2007 vintage.
They had the Gran Reserva for £10.
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>> >> >> "Everything I've bought from Aldi for between 3 and 5 pounds has been
>> great.
I have bought some absolute shockers in Aldi at that price range. Elephants urine was superior.
And their cheap port! good lord, I would far sooner drink red hot fresh lava.
So you have to beware in there, as everywhere, with cheap booze. You win big time, and you lose big time. Its a gamble.
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If anyone is interested in English Wine and a nice day out I can recommend a visit to Denbies in Dorking .. take the train to Dorking station and walk though if you intend to partake ....its a pleasant stroll.
www.denbies.co.uk
Food there is OK but a bit pricey...
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Me don`t pretend to be a connoisseur of fine wines, if its red, i`ll try it! - my favourite upto now is a £3.99 bottle of "Turning Leaf" ( a Californian 2011 vintage, from Bargain Booze). Last weekend I was given a bottle of "Via Di Cavallo" a deep red chianti as a thankyou prezzie. Although it was from Italy and the name may suggest something to do with Horses, it was quite good ;-), later, when I re-thanked the person and said I enjoyed it, he said at £12 a bottle I hope you did! - so sometimes mid-range priced plonk is worth it!
If only Wine merchants did little taster vials, so that you could try a sip before lashing out on the bottle!!
Last edited by: devonite on Thu 6 Jun 13 at 14:29
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We were in Burgundy a couple of evenings ago, in a nondescript hotel dining room where the cheapest bottle on the list was a 2011 Lussac St Emilion at €27.75. That really is a leg-lift but hotel wine prices in France these days have become, very often, just that.
In my experience, wines of the south west - Bergerac, Gaillac, Pecharmant, Cotes de Duras or Marmande, etc, are more reliable these days than the Bordelaise. Merlot or Cab Sauv from the Oc region are also as good as day to day, cheap drinking wines get, I reckon.
As far as the Bordelaise goes, my French pal of excellent judgement says the depth of the dimple and the length of the cork are a good guide if you don't know much.
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>> my French pal of excellent judgement says the depth
>> of the dimple and the length of the cork are a good guide if you
>> don't know much.
>>
Glad to have my theory confirmed!
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... the depth of the dimple and the length of the cork are a good guide...
...so the holy grail must be for the cork and the dimple to meet in the middle?
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>> ... the depth of the dimple and the length of the cork are a good
>> guide...
>>
>> ...so the holy grail must be for the cork and the dimple to meet in
>> the middle?
>>
As the actress said to the bishop!
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We went "on a Warner's" back in January. Three of us decided it would be a diversion to do the wine tasting activity.
The callow wine waiter in charge tried very hard, and had obviously done some homework, so we participated enthusiastically to encourage him.
He asked if anyone knew what the dint in the bottle bottom was for.
As it happened, driving there a couple of days earlier I had heard exactly that explained on the wireless (Radio 4 of course).
So I said it was called a "punt" and it's origin dated back to hand blown bottles, when a lump of glass would be left on the bottom of the bottle where it was broken off in manufacture. So as not to make the bottle unstable, a depression was made in the bottom of the bottle.
Far from beaming with delight at this contribution, he looked flustered by this authoritative contribution from Nobby Know All. " Ah yes" he said. "That too. It's also to put your thumb in so you can get a good grip on the bottle and reach across the table to serve it."
Subsequently I googled it, and seemingly there's no consensus as to what it's for. But now we know.
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>> If anyone is interested in English Wine and a nice day out I can recommend
>> a visit to Denbies in Dorking .. take the train to Dorking station and walk
>> though if you intend to partake ....its a pleasant stroll.
>>
>> www.denbies.co.uk
>>
>> Food there is OK but a bit pricey...
so are their wines, tho the Surrey Gold is always a dependable brew.
Interesting note about the hills at the Denby Winery, the ground is exactly the same as the champagne region in France, being the other end of the same layer. The romans knew, growing grapes there as soon as they popped over.
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English wine always seems a bit of curiosity. Interesting but essentially a novelty as you can make the stuff easier, more reliably and certainly cheaper in France or Germany. last year was a wipe out for nearly all English growers.
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>>I have sampled wine from most everywhere and can say without fear of contradiction that the wine in Shanghai was the worst I ever tasted ...so dry that my mouth ended up like a furred up kettle...
does it feel like the thermal cutout is tripping, cooling and resetting, tripping, etc, etc..
try descaling it. Best is Hydrochloric Acid, (or white vinegar) if HCl not available off the shelf cheaply in the local DIY store.
But make sure you rinse and boil before use. :)
(advice from another thread)
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>> "Greets the nostrils like an elderly relative" is a note that I left when offered
>> some wine to taste.
It least it's tea and not wine I'm wiping off the keyboard........
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I try not to be pretentious, but I do keep a little book with rough descriptions of the wine I have bought and drunk. The point is simply to avoid buying something I hate for a second time, and helping to remember the names of the ones I do like.
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Years ago (at least 15), both my neighbour and I had latched onto a cheapy at Sainsburys that went down far better than a sub £3 bottle had any right to. Indeed, if you had a blind tasting, you'd have said a bit more than £5 even then.
All was well until the insert your own swear word Daily Telegraph cooed and recommended it. The wine promptly vanished - never to be seen again.
From memory, a Vin de pays d'Ardeche, googling it suggest about £7.50 a bottle now, although I can't remember what grape and there are several.
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If only Wine merchants did little taster vials, so that you could try a sip before lashing out on the bottle!!
Majestic Wine always have bottles open to sample and they do not pressurise you to buy.
Talking of Sainsburys , try the Macguigan Black Label Shiraz and Merlot which is normally £8 per bottle but occasionally they do a half price offer, a very nice gluggable wine IMHO.
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>> Years ago (at least 15), both my neighbour and I had latched onto a cheapy
>> at Sainsburys that went down far better than a sub £3 bottle had any right
>> to.
In same sort of timescale, possibly longer, they sold a few Bulgarian varietals. Cannot now remember the grapes involved but two reds were both very nice indeed and the same sort of £3 price point SP mentions. Only around for a couple of years. Also a white called Irsai Oliver, that lasted a little longer. Dry and fruity - very good with fish.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Fri 7 Jun 13 at 08:38
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On holiday in Portugal we found the local supermarket selling some stuff at one euro a bottle. Well, you've got to try it. I've tasted worse, but wouldn't recommend it.
We were advised to steer well clear of the heavily promoted stuff from Cliff Richard's place.
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When wines were not as limpid as they now routinely are the punt served to concentrate the sediment and make it less likely to find its way into the glass.
Wine is virtually all the alcohol I ever drink and, at 12 to 14 units a week, I am not too fussy about price. One problem with online order outfits, including supermarkets, is that I might note down a wine I like, to find that it has disappeared from the list an order or two later. I suppose these companies (Majestic included) buy up bin ends and so offer them for limited periods. The same wine is likely to be listed for longer, the more expensive it is.
I have tried over a dozen such suppliers including Laithwaites, major supermarkets and the once-excellent, now abysmal Wine Society and find Majestic as good as any, especially as it has a branch a few minutes away from me and sometimes delivers with the hour. It has an unusual rosé "partridge eye" (oeil de perdrix) champagne at £18 which my womenfolk like and does in fact seem to stay on their list.
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Krithinos Oinos is an acquired taste, earthy, dark in colour, lots of fruit and toffee flavours.
It can reach an alcohol strength of 8 to 12% by volume and is brewed from specific gravities as high as 1.120.
Nice though :)
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Not a wine fan myself, but I do like these descriptions of (hopefully fictitious) wines from the Monty Python team.
Black Stump Bordeaux is rightly praised as a peppermint flavoured Burgundy, whilst a good Sydney Syrup can rank with any of the world's best sugary wines.
Château Blue, too, has won many prizes; not least for its taste, and its lingering afterburn.
Old Smokey 1968 has been compared favourably to a Welsh claret, whilst the Australian Wino Society thoroughly recommends a 1970 Coq du Rod Laver, which, believe me, has a kick on it like a mule: eight bottles of this and you're really finished. At the opening of the Sydney Bridge Club, they were fishing them out of the main sewers every half an hour.
Of the sparkling wines, the most famous is Perth Pink. This is a bottle with a message in, and the message is 'beware'. This is not a wine for drinking, this is a wine for laying down and avoiding.
Another good fighting wine is Melbourne Old-and-Yellow, which is particularly heavy and should be used only for hand-to-hand combat.
Quite the reverse is true of Château Chunder, which is an appellation contrôlée, specially grown for those keen on regurgitation; a fine wine which really opens up the sluices at both ends.
Real emetic fans will also go for a Hobart Muddy, and a prize winning Cuivre Reserve Château Bottled Nuit San Wogga Wogga, which has a bouquet like an aborigine's armpit.
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Big-volume wine dealers selling to young affluent buyers used sometimes to give their cheap lines joke names. Even saw one in London called 'Plonque' once. No, I damn well didn't try it.
Herself was drinking some Spanish red last night, 14%. I tried a couple of sips... surprisingly dry, a bit forbidding for my taste... too much oak perhaps...
I used to like heavy Algerian reds before years of Muslim carping and government interference took the heart out of the very profitable and thriving industry the French had left there in 1962. A dusty old bottle of Soviet Russian red taken from a shelf in a Lagos cafe turned out to be surprisingly good. Must have been robust anyway, sitting there for years in steady 80 degree temperatures.
Red from a barrel, brought to the table chilled from the fridge in old whisky bottles, reduced a lot of French volunteer doctors and a couple of hacks I was dining with in Chad one night to horrified silence, which one eventually broke with the words: 'Well... it's wine.' When it had warmed up for half an hour it turned out to be perfectly all right, everyone cheered up and more bottles were quickly ordered so that they could warm up too.
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>>Red from a barrel, brought to the table chilled from the fridge in old whisky bottles
I used to enjoy a glass or ten of Red from a barrel when I worked in Clarkenwell in the 70's Sire.
But when it was available, I had a preference for Double Diamond from a pump.
:)
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>> Double Diamond from a pump.
Keg, chilled!
How very East End of you Perro... Tsk!
Of course I catch yr reference to the rightly-derided Watney's Red Barrel...
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Of course I catch yr reference to the rightly-derided Watney's Red Barrel...
Odd one but years ago, perhaps 20, I came across a pub (I think in Yorkshire) serving draught, not keg, Watneys Red Barrel. Or at least that's what the pump clip said it was.
Can't rule out it being a local joke, but whatever it was, while not that special, was certainly quite drinkable.
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>>How very East End of you Perro... Tsk!
East End!! - gawd blimey guvnor, I'm from the Borough, orf Great Dover St., ain't I.
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Would that be Dover St W1.? Alas, I fear not. Borough, Stepney... not much discernible difference from W1... No offence though Perro.
Watney's Red Barrel wasn't keg but draught bitter. It was quite often terrible although on rare occasions one could choke it down.
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"Watney's Red Barrel wasn't keg but draught bitter. "
Afraid you're wrong there AC . Definitely a keg beer, in fact you could say it was the archetypical keg beer, introduced to replace traditional draught ale as it was easier to transport and store and required no expertise on the part of the seller. Watney's advertising line was "The Revolution starts Hear". In fact they triggered off a revolution they didn't intend as beer drinkers rebelled against the disappearance of their favourite brew and led to the formation of CAMRA.
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>> you're wrong there AC . Definitely a keg beer,
Not when I got to know it. Flat and warm... often awful. Perhaps they rebranded it as a keg beer before doing away with it altogether. I may be wrong but I don't think so.
It's certainly true that Red Barrel was a byword for commercial awfulness that led to the formation of CAMRA. Of course it wasn't the only crap product of that sort.
My local in the Grove was originally a Courage house. It's bitter was well kept and one could drink it. But other pubs couldn't look after the stuff and it could be unspeakable. Later that local got a new management and stopped having draught bitter at all. I stopped going there at that point.
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Was actually always a keg - introduced apparently as far back as 1931- even before your time! In fact it was the first keg beer. In the sixties and seventies brewers reduced the strength of many beers and no doubt Red Barrel suffered the same fate.
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OK CGN, I'm no expert. But WRB was never refrigerated that I can remember, and was deplorably flat as a rule. When I became aware of keg as opposed to bitter, keg was refrigerated and pressurised, bitter was cellar temperature (if you were lucky) and hand pumped.
Pub I used sometimes to drink in when I was at school had Courage bitter and 'John Courage' which was keg... perhaps a degree stronger too. I was never an ale connisseur though.
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I recall Red Barrel as keg beer.
Wki says
"Watneys Red Barrel was a bitter popular in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s and was a cultural phenomenon in that era in the Monty Python "Travel Agent" sketch and the BBC series Life on Mars (Series One, episode three). It was introduced in 1931 as an export keg beer that could travel for long distances by being made stable through filtering and pasteurising – as such it was the first keg beer.
The beer could be purchased in cans called the Party Seven and Party Four (at seven and four pints, respectively), introduced in 1968.[
A 3.9% abv pale lager with the name Watneys Red Barrel was sold by the Sleeman Brewery until 1997 and a 6.0% beer with the same name is still brewed by Alken-Maes."
I was born and lived near the Islewoth Brewery so with local knowledge I used to say re Red Barrel that The Duke of Northumberland's river flowed through Heathrow, alongside Twickenham Rugby ground and then in a big trough right through the largest sewerage works in England / Europe before arriving at the Isleworth Brewery.
I do not know where their water comes from but - ENJOY!
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>> Wki says
>> "Watneys Red Barrel was a bitter popular in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s
Wiki agrees with me anyway. But I think it is wrong to say WRB was 'popular'. People drank a lot of it because half the pubs in London were Watney's houses and they couldn't get anything better.
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>> "Watneys Red Barrel was a bitter popular in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s
>>
I think I might even have one of the Red Barrel key rings hidden away in an odds n sods box. How sad is that?
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"Wiki agrees with me anyway."
No it doesn't It clearly states it was a keg beer!
I think you are confusing the terms bitter and traditional draught ale.
Bitter or indeed any type of beer used at one time to be always sold as a traditional barrel conditioned ale. The head was a supplied by natural fermentation in the barrel. It is a natural process. This is real ale
Bitter can be eihter a real ale or a keg product.
As Wiki says in 1931 Watneys introduced keg beer in the form of 'Red Barrel' . This is a pasteurised product. i.e the yeast is dead. Since there is no live yeast the head has to be simulated by adding CO2 under pressure. Without the beer it is completely flat The pasteurised nature of the product makes it ideal for exporting or being sold by outlet who do not have the capacity to deal with real ale like clubs and hotels. Nearly all lager sold today in pubs is a keg beer. It tends to be fizzier than real ale but has a tendency to lose its head quicker than a traditional ale
Keg has its place but in the seventies Watneys decided that selling a standardised weak keg bitter made business sense and was the way forward and promoted Red Barrel at the expense of real ale. Soon in many of their pubs you could buy nothing else . Norwich was virtually a Watneys monopoly for example as they had taken over the local brewery.
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I had a feeling that there was a brief period when there was a cask conditioned version of Red, but I can find no reference to it.
Red Barrel and Double Diamond were the common keg bitters when I were a lad, sold at 2/6 vs. the traditional ales at 1/9 - 2s. A triumph of marketing to compare with bottled water, cheaper to produce and transport, heavily advertised, and sold at a premium.
A lot of real ales were fairly debased at the time, weaker than they had been. People believed advertising in those days, and some of them would travel miles for muck like Younger's Tartan Bitter.
Camra has done an amazing job.
If you want to see what it was like in the late 60s - early 70s, go to Scotland. I had one proper pint there last week, in the Sulwath brewery in Castle Douglas. The other two pubs my uncle took me to served fizz only.
British lager is muck still. Guinness is a stunning marketing job too - positioned as a traditional product, not many people think of it as the pasteurised (nitro)keg beer it is.
If I could only have one beer on my desert island, it would be Timothy Taylors bitter.
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"If I could only have one beer on my desert island, it would be Timothy Taylors bitter."
Mine would be Adnams Explorer.
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>> "If I could only have one beer on my desert island, it would be Timothy
>> Taylors bitter."
>>
>> Mine would be Adnams Explorer.
Well I suppose as you have no chiller on your desert island, you might as well drink warm beer.
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>>>> Double Diamond from a pump.
Keg, chilled!
How very East End of you Perro... Tsk!
Of course I catch yr reference to the rightly-derided Watney's Red Barrel...<<
DD wasn't always keg and chilled. I distinctly remember drinking a few pints of the real one from a pump when I found it at a pub in Ludlow (I think it was) about 15 years ago. Very nice it was too - and I was quite partial to the keg version.
My late uncle was high up with Mann, Crossman and Paulin, then Watneys and eventually Grand Met via various takeovers and he had an OBE for his services to the business. He was in on the original launch of Red Barrel and we had many friendly arguments over it through the years. His line was that, by the late 1950s the UK brewing industry was on its knees, partly though the rubbish that was being produced on a local basis and a reliable standard beer was vital to keep Watneys' part of the trade in business. And it worked. I eventually agreed he had a point.
He made the same argument about the state of pub food by the 1970s and went on to help found Chef & Brewer. That worked as well.
Last edited by: Mike Hannon on Sun 9 Jun 13 at 12:58
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>> My late uncle was high up with Mann, Crossman and Paulin, then Watneys and eventually Grand Met via various takeovers and he had an OBE for his services to the business
Certainly deserved a gong if he got people to drink Red Barrel as I remember it Mike... but I'm no connoisseur and not a CAMRA member.
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>> Certainly deserved a gong if he got people to drink Red Barrel as I remember
>> it Mike... but I'm no connoisseur and not a CAMRA member.
>>
Nor me, for years, but I might re-join. I continue to buy the Good Beer Guide, which Zero (I infer only from his warm beer comment) probably uses as a list of pubs to avoid.
Now I buy the eye-phone version which is easier to use and costs £4.99 vs about £12 for the print one.
Those lads and lasses know how to organise a beer festival too. Dutiful daughter, who also likes proper stuff, took me to the big Cambridge one last month. Good portable food on offer, beer by the 1/3, 1/2 or 1/1 pint, and tasters provided on request.
I really like beer but don't drink much because I manage my weight so I can live forever, so I try to make sure I only sup the good stuff.
Last edited by: Manatee on Mon 10 Jun 13 at 14:07
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I used to earn about £20 or so (plus overtime) in the early 70's, I'd get paid on Friday afternoon and was skint before the day was out, most of it went on DD, Red Barrel, or Worthington E, although DD was my favourite.
Thing is, it was little more than fizzy golden pi$$ so you could knock back 7 pints at lunchtime, then drive back to the office/factory to sleep it off.
Great days! - we shall not see their like again.
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"Even saw one in London called 'Plonque' once. No, I damn well didn't try it. "
I often buy a bottle of "Chat en Oeuf" which is actually a quite reasonable Southern French wine. Used to see "Goats do Roam' which I believe was South African but not seen that for a while.
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>> Used to see "Goats do Roam' which I believe was South African
>> but not seen that for a while.
>>
Banned by the Nanny State when they realised that it wasn't a real name - they were just kidding.
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>> I often buy a bottle of "Chat en Oeuf"
I get that sometimes too, in my local Budgens. It's good not because of its amusing name, but, as someone pointed out upthread, it's a Pays d'Oc red, which is a region that has been long ignored and derided by wine snobs, but actually IMHO produces some great wines at very low prices. Pays d'Oc is the first thing I look for at the moment. It can be surprisingly hard to find in UK supermarkets currently, so perhaps I'm not the only one who has spotted the value and it gets bought up quickly.
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>Herself was drinking some Spanish red last night, 14%.
Last Nov/Dec we were on hols and had just been seated at our table in a restaurant. An English couple were at the next table and the guy was loudly berating the wine waiter about the wine list.
"What? You don't have a white more than 11%? I only drink wines with more than 12 and a half percent - surely you have better wines than these?"
The wines were actually quite palatable stuff from South America and Spain and I was going to recommend one for him but Mrs K. gave me the "Don't!" look.
I'm glad she did because once he'd forgotten about his "twelve and a half percent" he started bitching about pension schemes. He was a retiree from the company that I currently work for.
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>> he started bitching about pension schemes. He was a retiree from the company that I
>> currently work for.
Oh they are the very worse, Hate them. Scum of the earth.
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Are Kevin and Zero saying they hate meeting their former victims by surprise when they are on holiday?
I'm not surprised.
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Found in ALDI - special purchase, for IIRC, circa five squids;- Hardy's Stamp of Australia Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot.
If you like intense, really intense, blackberry notes with a decent amount of oaky tannin, but not overpowering, do try this - it's gorgeous for the money.
It's on my "to buy" list if I can find it at sensible money again.
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I think its about the same price in Tesco.
Not really my cup of tea. Don't like the Australian Red style very much - too much like alcoholic Ribena.
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>> I think its about the same price in Tesco.
>>
>> Not really my cup of tea. Don't like the Australian Red style very much -
>> too much like alcoholic Ribena.
Aussie wines are like the country that makes them. Unsubtle, loud and in your face.
Wasnt always the case, but it is now.
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Pretentious Wine Tasting Notes - DP
