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).
