A red and a white Chilean (From The Northern Echo)

A red and a white Chilean

4:56pm Friday 26th September 2008 in

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We start with a red this week called Chono, a 2006 syrah from the Elqui Valley - Chile’s most northerly wine growing region.

I haven’t had a wine from there before but I’ll certainly try it again. This wine is a 14 per cent blockbuster whose grapes were grown only 30km from the sea.

It has a nose of black fruit with a little tar and spice integrated with French and American oak coming from six months maturation. This wine is best with full-flavoured foods, barbecues, roasts and game and at the moment is on sale at Oddbins at £6.69.

The white is a classic viognier which was £8.49, now £6.49. It’s from Concha y Toro and is a wine from the Casablanca region. This is a concentrated peachy wine with a touch of apricots and spice. It’s pale yellow with a complex nose and a long rounded finish.

The grapes were hand-picked, fermentation was in French oak barrels and then aged in the same barrels for ten months on the lees. This makes for a really concentrated wine with bags of flavour - one of the best viogniers I’ve tasted. Strangely enough it goes well with spicy Indian foods. It’s labelled “Winemakers Lot” - a title I’ve found to be reliably good.

By the way if you’re a Veuve Cliquet fan there’s £9 off a bottle for the two weeks following 15th September and for malt whisky enthusiasts there’s a 20 bottle tasting (£6 per head) on Sunday 5th October. Also keep your eyes open for the Oddbins wine festival later in the year.