Penfolds Max’s Shiraz, South Australia, Australia 2018 (£19.99, Waitrose) In a post-match interview after a 7-0 away win for his team just before Christmas, Liverpool FC manager Jürgen Klopp wondered aloud if it was better to have one 7-0 win or seven 1-0 wins. Wine producers sometimes ask a similar question: is it better to make large quantities of keenly priced wine as well as possible – or to spare no expense or effort to make the very finest wine possible in tiny quantities? Few producers bridge the divide between the everyday and the special occasion, equally adept at managing millions of litres and a handful of barrels. But one such is Penfolds, whose vast range moves from sound wines under a tenner to Australia’s most expensive wine (Grange) via such polished, warming winter weekend treats as the Max’s Shiraz.
Errazuriz Cuvée Aconcagua Pinot Noir, Aconcagua, Chile 2019 (£11, Tesco) Like Peter Gago at Penfolds, Errazuriz winemaker Francisco Baettig has earned plaudits for his versatility. Baettig’s near two decades at the helm have been times of change for both the company and Chile’s wider winemaking scene – with Baettig influential in moving Chilean wine back towards a more elegant, classical, less oaky style in the company’s various vineyards in the Aconcagua and Maipo valleys. This shift was evident in a recent Zoom-based tasting hosted by Baettig of four vintages – from 1989 to the latest poised, perfectly ripe Don Maximiano Founder’s Reserve 2017 (£55, Noble Green). But Baettig does a fine job with more everyday offerings, too, such as the red-plum and strawberry-scented mix of the lush, fresh Cuvée Aconcagua Pinot.
Bodegas y Viñedos Alnardo Psi, Ribera del Duero, Spain 2018 (from £33, Vinatis; Corney & Barrow; Lay & Wheeler) The Danish winemaker Peter Sisseck is best known for his remarkably expensive, tiny-production red, Dominio de Pingus. Made from a four-hectare patch of vineyard in Ribera del Duero in the high-altitude plain of northern Castilla y León, Dominio de Pingus was a cult hit from the moment it was first produced in the mid-1990s. It’s a tempranillo red of huge depth that is nonetheless graceful in a way that doesn’t necessarily justify the £1,000+ per bottle price tag (no wine does), but does make it the sort of wine to convert sceptics to the idea that some wines really do have a special something. That said, another of Sisseck’s projects, Psi, made from very old vines across the Ribera del Duero region, provides a good measure of Pingus’s luxurious slinkiness, for a fraction of the price.
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