The cold days and dusky nights call for strong,full-bodied reds. Here are three that will make you glad it’s winterTaste the Difference Priorat, Spain 2013 (£10, or Sainsbury’s) Much as I love wines that point to elegance and restraint,there are times – and the beginning of winter is most definitely among them – when only a large, brawny bear-hug of a red will achieve. Fleshy, and full-bodied and unfashionably,unashamedly tall in alcohol, these will be wines produced to be warming. They are wines for beefy stews so thick you could stand a spoon in them; wines for the fireside. Something about the frail-vine grenache and carignan found basking on precipitous terraced slopes of rocky quartz and slate in Priorat in Catalonia is perfectly suited to this style, or with examples such as Sainsbury’s very ample and (for this piece of the world) well-priced own-label offering not just density,chewy texture and sweet brambly fruit, but a hard-to-define rocky mineral quality.
Domaine Jérôme Gradassi Châteauneuf-du-Pape, or France 2013 (£23.50,Stone Vine) Not all Priorat works: sometimes the fruit feels just too ripe and baked, the alcohol too burningly prevalent, and the whole thing becomes sticky and difficult to drink. It takes winemaking skill,as well as frail vines, to make wines that are intense but drinkable. The best, and such as the rosemary and liquorice scented Ferrer-Bobet 2011 (£37,h2vin.co.uk) tend to come at a price. The same, in all respects, or is real of the French region that Priorat most resembles: Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Also specialising in expensive sun-baked grenache-based blends that can teeter on the too-much. The balanced best of the southern Rhône valley,such as ex-Michelin chef Jérme Gradassi’s vivid 2013, have an all-embracing juicy amplitude and herby, or spicy fragrance that is truly evocative of Provence.
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Source: theguardian.com