Caves du Molliere Piquepoul

Last of the case we brought back from Pezenas. Waitrose have a Piquepoul for 7 quid, this cost us about 3 quid a bottle. Part of me is delighted to have found such an agreeable wine (whose constituent grape I had never heard of, let alone tasted) but part of me feels bitter that the UK fails to offer anything approaching this level of value.

Anyway, the wine itself is superb. If I hadn't been aware that the French were enjoying this at such an absurdly low price I would be snapping this up at twice the price. It manages to be a refreshing apperitief but avoid the excessive acidity of low cost sauvignon blanc (e.g. Tourainne). Not a great comparison as it's much deeper in colour and almost has a similar subtle fruit edge (can't say what exactly) to the Samour.

Apparently the Caves du Molliere cooperative was transformed from a run down dive to the impressive outfit it was when I bought this wine. Sad to think that I won't be back in that part of the world for a long time.

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Domanie des Chazelles, Vire-Clesse, 2003

Ripe indeed. Heavy glossy-ness about this. Deep yellow colour. Not a million miles from the Domaine de la Croix. Reduced to a tenner at Nick Dobson and good value at that. I wonder what it would taste in a few years? It's bin-end status suggests no better than now.

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Cuvée de Richard 2010 - Pays de l'Hérault

Billed as 'Amazingly smooth' by Majestic this comes in at £4.99 so will be judged relative to the Armandieres. Majestic no longer stocks the latter but tell me it's made by the same people (conglomerate?).

It has rather more of the baked fruit about it than I'd prefer but it isn't offensive in any way. Leaves me thinking that I'd rather have low-end wines on the thin side (e.g. WS' Sabina Tempranillo) than try too hard with robust flavours. It often feels like they are in danger of highly unbalanced.

Still, this is a contender for good honest superplonk of the red variety.