A friend came over the other day and kindly left a bottle of wine. It looked like a very ordinary honest bottle of French red, the sort that is the everyday lifeblood on so many tables in France.

I noticed that the label said ‘Chinon AOC’’ and that it was from the Loire.

Chinon is basically made from the Cabernet Franc grape (aka Breton). It is a light subtle red mostly used for blending with more robust varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in Bordeaux. It turns out that Cabernet Sauvignon is actually a cross of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc, and so naturally will live in harmony with its one of its parents in a bottle of claret.

The first point of confusion is that Chinon sounds like ‘Chenin’ as in Chenin Blanc, a white wine also from the Loire. But don’t rely on the word ‘Blanc’ to tell you the colour of the wine, for example Chateau Cheval Blanc is a well known Bordeaux where the vineyards are over 50% Cabernet Franc, and so you guessed it is not a white wine as the word 'Blanc' in the name may suggest.

So sorting out our Cabernets, Chevals, Chenins and Chinons can be tricky. The red and white battle lines are distinctly unclear to the novice, and seem to fiendishly merge at times. Having a few glasses too many in France, and with slurring schoolboy French accidentally ordering a bottle of expensive Premier Grand Cru Classe(A) Cheval Blanc at say £1000 instead of Chenin Blanc could be a very expensive mistake.

This Chinon was obviously not expensive but it was absolutely delicious.

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You will have to excuse me as I am writing this post in a public room with lots of computers. The upshot is that I am squeezed next to some weird bloke who has his racing post out and appears to be gambling online. This brings with it his odd distracting groan of disappointment along with an almost unbearable whiff of cheap aftershave that he seems to be covered in (presumably to mask the nervous sweating). I am sure with prolonged exposure, any wine I drink this evening will have it’s virtues masked by my damaged nostrils that feel like they have been invaded by a heady mix of rose water and pigs urine.

Sorry , back to the bottle in the title...

Some friends gave me three bottles of rather nice looking red wine the other day completely out of the blue. Their reasons were simple. They prefer white wine, and these bottles were gifts in the first place. There was no hesitation from me. I am now working my way through them and this is the first bottle from ‘Bodegas Faustino’.

The bottle is dark, and the whole package is almost cartoon like. If Mickey Mouse drank wine....In fact it would also not look out of place on the film set of a Spaghetti Western, soon to be crashed over some poor unsuspecting head. It is adorned with bold red lettering on a smokey yellow label with a large picture of Mr Faustino (presumably) in a neck ruff looking rather serious. The Faustino brand is very well know due to Faustino I, Gran Reserva in its famous wired frosted glass packaging. Again a bit like a forger has recreated an ancient bottle but forgotten to give it that imperfect genuine look and feel.

My bottle’s looks may be dubious, but as far as brand awareness is concerned it has done the job. An instantly recognisable bottle that promises a good drink, and appears a cut above the run of the mill supermarket brand.

Faustino VII Rioja Tinto 2007 is 95% Tempranillo (which I am sure you are familiar with) and 5% Mazuelo (aka Carignan, know for being planted in great quantity in the Languedoc region of South France. It is a heavy grape with big tannins, colour and acidity, therefore perfect for blending. The third most planted grape in Spain). It is 13%ABV and has been aged for 10 months in American oak from Pennsylvania and West Virginia (much like adding a vanilla pod).

I cut the ample foil and pulled the proper cork. I finished off preparing my baked beans on toast (I know what you are thinking, but there is quite an art to making good beans on toast. It will act as a modern take on a typical tapas bean dish in my overactive imagination).

The wine was very smooth and smokey with that distinctive Rioja drying road tar aroma punching through. An almost overwhelming experience. As distinctive in character to red as New World Sauvignon Blanc is to white. Much like the aromatic chap sitting next to me, I certainly will not forget it, except I actually quite liked the wine. After all it was free and for that I am really grateful.

Lets dig deeper into the Faustino empire. There is actually a ‘Grupo Faustino’ which has several brands, one of which is called Bodegas Portia. At this point I will make reference to a news story that was released today about Winston Churchill covering up a UFO sighting. The new winery built in the Ribera del Duero for Bodegas Portia looks exactly like one of Winston’s UFOs has landed. Designed by the creators of the famous London Gherkin, Foster+Partners (Norman Foster), it is the most extravagantly modern winery you could ever see (not that I am a winery aficionado, I just cannot imagine anything more outlandish). Even the constituent parts are carefully thought out, as it it made from just four materials that are part of the wine making process - concrete, steel, oak and glass. Check it out.

It can produce one million bottles a year. Impressive. The design somehow injects character to the unattractive concept of mass produced wine.

Who knows it may even take off and deliver the bottles personally.

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I like to think of wine being made and bottled at the vineyard and then shipped in cases to its final destination, but this is not how some of the big boys do it at all.

Moving wine around in bulk is an expensive ugly business. On the roads fuel prices and congestion do not sit well with profits. Trans Ocean who are part of the Hillebrand group specialising in what they term as 'bulk liquid logistics' (sounds thoroughly dull), have given this some thought and have done a deal with Constellation Brands (who supply 15% of all booze drunk in the UK, are the largest wine company in the world and are unfortunately responsible for Hardys amongst a mind boggling amount of other familiar wine brands).

Part of this deal involves moving wine by train from the South East ports to Bristol, initially about 8.96 million bottles a week. These are not actually bottles though. They are VinBulk Flexitanks, more like giant wine boxes, just like the ones you buy with the silver bladder inside, except they can hold a maximum of 24000 litres which is 32000 bottles. Picture one of those on the go in your (imaginary large) kitchen, that should be enough to cover most house parties (in your area). Given the estimated 6 month shelf life of an ordinary wine box, I make that a mere 175 bottles per day to consume before it goes off.

These tanks sounds so ‘battery farmed’ and vulgar. The cold mechanics of getting mass produced drink to the 60 + million of us is really off putting. It is a practical reality though, keeping us happy pigs.

The romance would be improved in my impractical mind if the trains were actually carrying bottles of wine (preferably glass). There again I struggle to have a love affair with the big brands anyway, not through natural prejudice, but more from repeated bad experiences. I always give a bottle of wine a go, and have more often than not been disappointed in this arena.

So presumably these vats of wine arrive in a warehouse somewhere around Bristol where they are unceremoniously squirted into bottles, and labeled accordingly with exotic enticing descriptions from all over the world.

Give me a free range bottle any day.

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This was one of my bulk party blind buying bottles. It was reviewed very well by Anthony Rose and Jane MacQuitty, and has a best Merlot trophy, so I was expecting great things for just £4.99 a bottle.

So to the packaging. Ugly to say the least. Looks like the label has been spray painted on. Not dressed to impress. Still surely the contents would recover the situation...

No. Not at all. Imagine eating a rotten plum buried in earth with your hands tied behind your back. That is the most accurate description of the wine I could come up with. Simply disgusting.

A real shame as I am now left with 5 bottles of the stuff, which I do not have the heart to palm off onto friends. I know that taste is very subjective, but the above two wine critics complementing the bottle feels about as convincing as someone recommending eating dog food as a replacement for pate.

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This wine was a gift. It is from Sicily with Cerasuolo di Vittoria having the advantage of being DOCG. Italian DOC wines are the loose equivalent of the French AOC system which basically guarantees quality. The additional ‘G’ means that the wine has been tasted by a government committee and then sealed with a magic number for authenticity. It is already sounding like a good present.

The tasting notes from Planeta state -

‘To drink at once or keep for 4-5 years, following its evolution’

So looks like I got to it just in time. Who knows what creature it may have ‘evolved’ into next year.

The grape blend is 60% Nero d’Avola (a big rich grape) and 40% Frappato (lighter bodied), both very typical Sicilian varieties. The strength is 13% ABV which is not too much of a headache recipe for the next morning.

The bottle is pretty unremarkable to look at. Easily passed by and not at all sophisticated or glamorous. The potential for understated brilliance. Almost shabby chic.

I cut through the thick foil, a long pull of satisfying cork and poured myself a generous glass to accompany a chicken couscous thing I threw together.

The wine was full of life, dry yet fruity, and layered with all sorts of aromas, keeping my subconscious guessing. Really delicious. If you swill it around your mouth then your tongue has that dry tannic feeling, but only for a moment, as the richness of the wine punches through. A really good balance.

I will be searching out more wines from Planeta.

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