As the day's chores recede into the background, they are replaced by the yearning for something fresh to pour across the palate. The wine of the season for al fresco drinking has to be rose. Here are a few tips to pour across the threshold:

Les Pins Couches

Jean-Luc Colombo Rose 2013

This is a top tip for wine lovers. If you want refreshing, crisp acidity and subtle but bright red summer fruits, then this is your wine.

Jean-Luc Colombo is the living legend of the Rhone Valley and the vines that make this wine are grown over looking the Mediterranean sea. What more convincing do you need? Get involved!

RRP £9.99,

Retailers: Fresh and Wild, Les Caves du Patron, Luvians, Noble Green Wines, Bacchus et Al, Clifton Cellars, Kingsgate Wines, The Whalley Wine Shop, Cambridge Wine Merchants, Partridges of Sloane Street, Wine Rack, Wimbledon Wine Cellars

Cune Rosado 2012

Cune rose

I love Cune wines so its great that we’re seeing them more often in the UK. This is good value, dry rosado with a hint of strawberry and lots of potential for “one more glass” syndrome. Don’t hold back!

RRP £9.49
Retailers: Majestic, Dunedin Wines, Refreshers, Ellies Cellars, Hailsham Cellars, Fountainhall Wines, www.winedirect.co.uk

Joseph Mellot Sancerre Le Rabault Rosé 2013

sancerre - joseph mellot

It’s a little more expensive but Sancerre lovers wont bulk at this price tag. Made from pinot noir, La Rabault Rose is refreshing, peppery and raspberry on the nose with a tasty compote of summer fruits once it rolls across the tongue. Once bottle is never enough so try and do a deal on a case and enjoy the rest of the summer (or week at least!).

RRP £16.99
Retailers: Famous Wines, Eagle Wines, The Leamington Wine Company, Kingsgate Wines.

Nick Breeze
June 2014
@NickGBreeze

 

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Last week a picture was posted on Twitter of vines in Shabo, a large estate that lies to the west of Odesa on southern Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline. The image seemed benign at face value but the reality, of course, is that the city of Odesa has been bracing itself for attack by Russian forces. 

 

As COVID-19 conspires with the grimmest of winds and rain to force a societal retreat behind our own front doors, the word ennui springs to mind. The muddle of displeasure is pierced when Natalia hands me a large bulbous glass of a liquid I do not recognise.

 

 

Britain’s lamentable exit

On the eve of Britain’s official departure from the EU, my partner and I decided to explore a small town on the Italian Riviera where thewintry cold doesn’t feel so much like cold war bite.

I had warned my significant other that I would be having an inverse departure party, a release of the sanity valve if you like!

 

Sitting inside the ancient castle walls inside the town of Soave, a short drive from Verona in northern Italy, the unique slightly almond aroma of the indigenous grape, Garganega, rises gently from my glass. The castle sprawls up the side of an extinct volcano that gives the region its variant soil structures that mark out the better quality of Soave wines.

 

Tanisha Townsend decided to move to Paris 4 years ago after regularly passing through the city en route to the world’s most famous vineyards. In fact, it was about 2 years ago at the Printemps de Champagne Bouzy Rouge tasting in Reims that I saw (who we shall now refer to as) GirlMeetsGlass chirpily speaking to her web followers on Snapchat.

 

The cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, the final resting place of Saint James, rises out of the landscape, infested with antiquity. The rambling steep streets give way to shafts of dramatic light, emblazoned chapels, and tightly packed tapas bars, dusty, as old novels pressed together in antiquarian bookshops.

 

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