Marks & Spencer Found Alicante Bouschet, Alentejo, Portugal 2021 (£8, Marks & Spencer) There is no end in sight to food and drink inflation, which means the destabilising, stressful feeling of never knowing the price of something from one week to the next is also here to stay. And when it comes to wine, it’s only going to get worse once the new duty rates kick in in August. A lot of people I talk to in the wine trade are to the say least pessimistic about how retailers will go about meeting the sort of price points shoppers have got used to, which will come down to a choice between cutting their margin or cutting corners on quality to absorb the 44p per bottle hike. In that context, regions with the knack for wines with a high quality-to-price ratio are going to be all the more popular, which is why so many retailers seem to be building up their Portuguese ranges at the moment, with wines such as M&S’s brambly, barbecue-friendly Alicante Bouschet.
Waitrose Loved & Found Trincadeira, Alentejo, Portugal 2021 (£8.99, Waitrose) The southern region of Alentejo is one of the best sources in the world for good-value, robust, richly flavoured reds. Waitrose’s offering from the region is a well-made example of the finicky trincadeira grape variety, which, going by its other name of tinta amarela, is one of the grapes used to make port further north in the Douro Valley. In this case it has a lovely ripe blackberry compote character with a subtle softening oak sheen. (It’s also, incidentally, one of a handful of Waitrose wines being bottled without a bottle-top sleeve over the cork, a move which, as well as saving an estimated half-a-tonne of waste per year, will also presumably help keep the packaging costs, and retail price, down). Staying in the Alentejo, Esporão Colheita Red 2021 (£11.50, hic-winemerchants.com) is a super-vibrant blend of five grape varieties with a really juicy herb-inflected red-and-black-fruited style that scores very high on any bang-for-buck index.
Extra Special Dão, Portugal 2021 (£6.75, Asda) Further north, Asda’s red from the Dão region has been a stalwart of the retailer’s sometimes-optimistically named Extra Special range for many years, and it’s still a very good buy: a blend of three varieties with a gently spicy edge to its brightly berried fruit and just the right level of textured tannin to match up with red meat. At Tesco, the Finest Douro 2021 (£10) is a bright, surprisingly light (12%) take on the classic unfortified red blend from port country with a ripple of fresh fruits of the forest juiciness, while M&S’s Quinta de Fafide Reserva, Douro 2020 (£11) is richer, darker, altogether more serious – a good smart buy for a Sunday roast. The country’s whites, while a little less prevalent in UK supermarkets, can be every bit as interesting and good value, with wines such as the fragrant exotically fruited The Hidden Vine Vinho Branco 2022 (£8.25, The Coop), a blend of five local grapes from the Douro, and M&S Classics Vinho Verde 2022 (£8), a zippy, light (10% abv), just-off-dy white for peri-peri prawns.
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