Sabina Tempranillo, Navarra, Spain 2022 (£7, Booths) Like its southern counterpart Waitrose, the wine range at Booths, which has 27 stores across the northwest of England, is closer in spirit to a specialist independent wine merchant than the big-gun multiple grocers. But if, also like Waitrose, that means it has a reputation for being posh, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s expensive. Indeed, my notes from a recent press tasting of 140 Booths bottles are peppered with variations on themes of “good value” and “bargain”. Such are the costs of production and duty these days, real value, as opposed to a wine being merely cheap, tends to start around £10 at Booths as it does everywhere else. But there were a handful of skilfully sourced exceptions that are worth a diversion (or a visit to amazon.co.uk, which sells the wines nationally), notably the lively peach, pear, and lemon of dry white EH Booth Fiano, Sicily 2023 (£7.50) and the vivid dark blackberry-juiciness of Sabina Tempranillo red.
EH Booth & Co Grüner Veltliner, Wachau, Austria 2022 (£11, Booths) Many of the highlights in the Booths range are in the retailer’s EH Booth & Co own-label selections, which, taken as a whole, is a very consistent set of true-to-type (region, grape variety, style) wines that are in most cases a step or two up in quality from equivalent bottles in other supermarkets. It helps to have some top-notch wineries to work with, of course, such as Domäne Wachau, one of Europe’s best-run, and most quality-conscious co-operative producers on the steep slopes of Austria’s Wachau region, home to some of the country’s finest riesling and grüner veltliner white wines, and source of the dancingly fluent pure EH Booth Grüner Veltliner. Or La Rioja Alta, the reliable maker of comfortingly traditional, savoury, coconut-scented Rioja behind EH Booth Gran Norte Rioja Reserva 2018 (£14.50). Or Pulenta Estate, the excellent Argentinian producer responsible for the luxuriously suave plush plummy EH Booth Malbec, Mendoza, Argentina 2022 (£10.25).
Le Chant du Côt à la Négrette, Fronton, France 2022 (£9.50, Booths) Another thing I liked about the Booths range was a willingness to work with lesser-spotted regions. This is not, I should point out, as unusual as it used to be in UK supermarkets, who have broadened their sourcing horizons considerably in recent years. But whereas, in many examples, these apparently adventurous additions from hitherto overlooked places can feel a little random and price-driven (with supermarket marketing teams effectively making a virtue of “exploration” out of the necessity of selling the cheapest wines their buyers could find), at Booths the more outré wines are worth their place on drinkability alone. That certainly applies to a brilliant pair of steak-frîtes-ready reds from the neglected haven for unique indigenous varieties that is France’s southwest: A violet-scented, peppery-spicy blend of négrette and côt (aka malbec) from Fronton near Toulouse, and the tangy damson and cherry raciness of Rébus Organic Braucol 2023 (£9.50) made from braucol (aka fer servadou) an hour or so east of Fronton, in Gaillac.
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