The Guardian

Wines of the week

Don’t assume that non-vintage wines are plonk. Many are very classy indeed.

By David Williams

Tesco Finest Châteauneufdu-pape, Rhône France NV

£20, Tesco

The idea of the vintage is a big part of the romance of wine. By basing each release on a single year’s crop, we’re reminded that wine is an agricultural product, one that changes from year to year according to the conditions. That brings a constant flow of novelty, too, with each vintage effectively a new wine. One possibly malign side-effect of the emphasis on vintage, however, has been to ingrain the idea that non-vintage bottles, containing wines from two or more years, can never be as good as those from a single season – an assumption given credence by the fact that mass-market plonk doesn’t mention a year on the label. A bold move, then, by Tesco to make the latest release of one of its most upmarket own-labels, its Finest Châteauneuf-du-pape, a non-vintage wine.

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2023-06-04T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-04T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://guardian.pressreader.com/article/281917367459488

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