It is easy to pay too much for a bottle of wine, and easy to be taken in by a label. Hence the wine industry has given rise to the wine information industry, devoted to manipulating, exploiting and (just occasionally) alleviating our ignorance. How do you deal with all this advice about products from all over the globe, and usually coming at you from behind a screen of appalling metaphors? Where should you place your trust: with the growers, the merchants or the critics?
In the past, the British have favoured the merchants, whose reputation depends, in the end, on long-term customer satisfaction. Critics are a newer breed, downstream from the Victorian oenophile Professor Saintsbury (who never lapsed, incidentally, into sensual metaphors and who seldom tried to describe a taste). They are vying for territory in a new and volatile market, and this explains their clamorous style (never exemplified on this page, naturally). But it doesn't explain why you should trust them. As for the growers, they have leapt to prominence partly on account of the critics, who compound their appalling literary manners by touring through the places that they should be visiting only in the glass, and reporting back on the wizened old geezers whom they have dragged from their cellars. But these reports from the front don't really help us: in the new economy, growers come and go, and even the most settled winemaking family will fall at last to a prodigal son.
My inclination, therefore, is to look for the reliable merchants. In a search for affordable Rhone, I turned to Yapp Brothers of Mere, who specialise in Rhone, Loire and Provence. Among their treasures is a Vacqueyras 1998 - from a village that achieved its appellation only in 1990 but which is now a rival to nearby Chateauneuf du Pape, with smooth, Grenache-based reds that make food, friends and faces glow with health and good humour. This particular example is made by Denis Cheron, who has dedicated his energies to Vacqueyras. It is mature, integrated, mellow and spicy, and comes from one of the best vintages of the past decade. Yapp Brothers are prepared to reduce the price (normally £9.50) for NS readers. Send a copy of this article to them at Mere (BA12 6DY) and they will, during November, let you have the wine at £100 a case, to include VAT and UK mainland delivery - a rare bargain.
Meanwhile, visit www.yapp.co.uk, where you will find a collection of autumn and Christmas offers - mixed cases from the lesser-known vineyards of the Rhone and Provence, all of the highest quality, with an organic Cotes de Provence red from Domaine Richeaume that shows why this appellation, too, like Lirac, Vacqueyras and Cornas, is upwardly mobile and able to keep company with the best.
