On the 10th of March we are launching our new Macon Villages so in February I was forced to travel to Burgundy to visit the producer and confirm the blending before bottling. I can almost hear your sigh of sympathy at my desperate plight!

The Macon Villages is the next wine in our drive to broaden the number of wines that we have at £4.99, allowing customers to trade up. This is especially important as recent statistics show that the average price paid for a bottle of wine in the UK has gone above £4 for the first time and the fastest growing sector is the already large £4 to £5 category. Macon lies in the most southerly part of Burgundy, any further south and you are in the Cotes du Rhone. It produces some red wines from gamay or pinot noir grapes, and sparkling Cremant du Bourgogne, which is very popular in France. However its reputation comes from the white wine which is 100% chardonnay. In fact the village of Chardonnay, from where the grape gets its name, lies in the heart of Macon.

Although some wines from the region are oak aged, the vast majority are fruit driven with a mineral quality and this is the approach we have taken with our blend. It is bright with green apple and citrus flavours, a broad mouth feel and a long mineral finish. I love it and I hope this style is appreciated by customers. Interestingly enough a colleague of mine said boldly that he didn’t like chardonnay but on trying this I converted him. He had an aversion to oaky styles and had assumed that all chardonnays were made that way. So if you have grown up on Aussie chardonnay and want to try something different, give this a go!

One of the pleasures of being a wine buyer is that you are occasionally invited to take part in unusual and interesting tastings. In late January I was tasting my entire range with the agency that will help me with wine related quality control issues. This took place over 3 days and during that time I was asked if I would like to be involved in a tasting that was taking place on behalf of a German wine Institute. The sampling consisted of 23 bottles of Riesling, all from the same tank, bottled on the same day, the sole difference being the type of closure.

We were faced with 10 different types of natural cork-ranging from the cheapest agglomerated cork, made from cork pieces and glue, to an expensive one piece cork, 10 different synthetic corks, 1 glass stopper, a stelvin screw cap and a metal beer bottle cap. The wine had been bottled in late 2005 and kept for two years in ideal cellaring conditions.

The wine itself was inexpensive basic quality Riesling but the purpose of the tasting was to discover the impact, if any, of the closure on the wine. The results were clear. After 2 years in bottle all of the cork stopped bottles had a very flat taste profile with very little flavour. In general the cheaper corks had performed worse than the more expensive ones but there was little to choose between them.

The synthetic corks had also flattened the wine but in many cases there was an unpleasant rubber note. After tasting 20 Rieslings my palate was becoming a little shell shocked and I was beginning to wonder if I could pick out any differences any longer. Then came the bottle sealed with the stelvin screw cap. What a difference! This was the first sample where you could detect an appley fruit character in the wine and as a result the taste was far more harmonious. The next sample was the beer bottle cap, and to my surprise, the result was almost identical to the stelvin closure. I shouldn’t have been so shocked as I then remembered that all Champagne is aged with a similar cap before the yeast is removed and the final corking takes place.

Finally we tasted the glass stopper and this was a definite no. 3 in the tasting. Our conclusions were clear. If you want to keep a wine’fresh’- put a cap on it!