Recent Additions From The New World

Australia

With the Soldier’s Block lines creeping up in price, and the Shiraz going through the £8 barrier (thanks mostly to George Osborne and a terrible exchange rate) we have looked again at our straight Chardonnay and Shiraz options from Australia and returned to a couple of lines we featured at our pre-Christmas tasting last year from Murphy’s in the Murray River.  The Shiraz is deep in colour with characteristic red fruit notes and the Chardonnay is unoaked, fresh and clean.

In due course these will be joined by The Black Craft Shiraz from Magpie Estate in the Barossa (when the ship eventually gets here in July sometime) which is fat and rich and we are sure will win many friends!

Australian wine - click here to browse our full selection of wines online

New Zealand

The ripe tropical fruitiness of The Cloud Factory Sauvignon Blanc was such a hit that we have now added this to our New Zealand section.  It means that we now carry two Kiwi Sauvignon Blancs with the Bascand providing the crisp, green gooseberry flavours as a foil to Cloud Factory’s riper style.  We have also added two wines from Waipara Springs in the form of their 2010 Dry Riesling and 2010 Chardonnay.  Two new Pinot Noirs are also included; the 2011 from Bascand Estate in Marlborough and, after extensive tasting, we settled on the superb 2010 Beetle Juice (great name eh?) Pinot Noir from The Wooing Tree in Central Otago.

New Zealand wine - click here to browse our full selection of wines online

South Africa

With the £ being clobbered against most other currencies at the moment South Africa (where the exchange rate has been less worse) has provided a rich seam of new faces this time around.

We have a couple of new entry level wines (a Merlot and a Sauvignon/Colombard blend) from Cape Heights in the Western Cape.  At £6.25 these are excellent value.  Tasting Pinotage is always a challenge for us but the False Bay version is clean and full of black cherry fruit and joins the ever popular Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc and Shiraz trio from the same producer.  We are still listing the fabulous Secateurs pair from Adi Badenhorst, though they have gone up in price, so we were delighted to discover a pair of wines called The Curator (a Chenin/Chardonnay/Semillon white blend and a Shiraz/Mourvedre/Cinsault/Viognier red blend) also made by Adi Badenhorst, which hit the list at £9.25 – you must try these, they are super!  Further up the tree is a deliciously smoky Mourvedre called The Spice Route and a deliciously rich straight Semillon from Swartland called “Mon Vieux”, there’s not much of it about though so be quick!

  
South African wines - click here to browse our full selection of wines online

What we love about our new flexible buying regime at Wines of Interest is the opportunities it provides us with to tune into wines like these as we find them rather than having to wait to include them in our annual printed list.  We can sniff out new discoveries and take advantage on suppliers' promotions as and when they appear by adding them to our website, where you can buy wine online and either have it delivered to your door, or collect it from our shop.  You can buy these wines online now - click here to start shopping!