Adnams English Bacchus, Crouch Vale, Essex, England 2019 (£13.99, Adnams)
Most specialist drinks producers tend to stick to what they know best. Even big multinationals usually major in one of spirits, wine or beer – it’s certainly rare for them to make a success of all three. But some all-rounders do exist. Suffolk’s Adnams is one such. The firm is best known as a brewer, with the recently launched Kobold English Lager (£16.99 for 12 x 440ml cans, adnams.co.uk) – a bright, refreshing but multilayered lager brewed with ale yeast, and the latest addition to a consistently excellent beer range. But the firm also makes some seriously impressive gin, vodka and whisky (my favourite is the honeyed Adnams Single Malt Whisky; £34.99, adnams.co.uk) and has a nice line in own-label wines, such as its brisk, gooseberry and cut-grassy Essex bacchus.
Rey Fernando de Castilla Vermut Jerez, Spain NV (from £14.45, allaboutwine.co.uk; ndjohn.co.uk; thegoodwineshop.co.uk) In southern Spain, the bodegas of Jerez have always had more than one string to their bows, with brandy de Jerez a sometimes-luxurious foil for the region’s most famous gift to the booze world: sherry. In recent years, when sherry sales have been in a long-term slump, some of the biggest names in Jerez have capitalised on the surprising return to fashion of another fortified wine, vermouth (or vermut). This isn’t without historical precedent: Jerez’s sherry triangle was a big producer of vermouth until the 1970s. But the latest Jerez vermuts are among the best around. Top sherry producer Fernando de Castilla’s dark version, which blends sweet, treacly PX and bright, tangy oloroso sherry with 27 botanicals, is a figgy, earthy, herby concoction that works as a cocktail ingredient and (my preference) with ice and a slice of orange, and a bowl of olives as an aperitif.
Allegrini Grappa di Recioto, Veneto, Italy (from £32.84, 50cl, masterofmalt.com; butlers-winecellar.co.uk; valvonacrolla.co.uk) One sideline common among wine producers all over the world is to make a spirit from grape skins, pips and stems left over from winemaking. There’s a thrifty sense of leftovers being used up that is still rather too often apparent in the fiery finished products, many of which never travel much further than their local market. But there are examples of a spirit known as grappa in Italy and marc in France that are good enough to give you the impression that it’s the wine that’s the sideline. It’s perhaps not surprising that the domaine regularly lauded as the world’s finest wine producer, Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, makes one of the most elegant, silkiest marcs around – nor that it should be (at £800 and rising) the most expensive. For a more realistic price, I love the grappa made from the remains of the dried-grape sweet wine recioto, with its ghostly traces of that style’s herby fruitiness, by the northeastern Italian wine producer Allegrini.
Follow David Williams on Twitter @Daveydaibach
