Some time back, in these pages, I told myself off from being so dismissive of 'supermarket wine'. Some wineries (in that instance Villa Maria) manage to produce consistent, varietally correct wines at low prices which hit the mark when the budget is tight and/or it's just a mid-week dinner.
To be fair we only bought the Jacob's Creek Riesling to play a part as cooking wine in the Oxtail Stew that's featuring at tonight's dinner party. And I'm only drinking it now because I'm too greedy to wait for the Verdejo we're having as an aperitif to chill.....
So what is sub $10, mass-produced supermarket Riesling like?
Sugar wafts up on the nose dominating any fruit flavour that might be lurking underneath and after the initial shudder of introduced acid (?) fades the over-riding impression is of..... cooking apples. Lemons and scary not-for-eating cooking apples. It's a short and narrow wine, flat of structure and plain of song. Cooking apples. Is it.
Rich reckons it's redeeming feature is so confidently asserting the flavour he remembers of cooking apples. I think it's verging on undrinkable. But that can't be right as I'm drinking it. I'm not much surprised that Riesling is a poor cousin to other aromatic whites if this is most peoples introduction to it.
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