SUNDAY LUNCH WINES
Victoria Moore’s top picks
Eating together is supposed to be an act of shared closeness, but in a family situation it can also be about as relaxing as careering down a rickety helter-skelter with no mat and a flappy scarf. My own gatherings are currently dominated by two- and three-yearolds, which means adult conversation happens in 12-second bursts, and is interspersed by management of food fights, food refusals and requests for attention; some of them delivered via the prongs of a fork. As chief glass-filler, I have learnt that, at Easter and Christmas (and any other occasion when we all get together), wine choices need to be pragmatic. This is not the time for a bottle that needs a single word of explanation let alone a moment’s thought. What people want to drink are box-office favourites: pale rosé, sauvignon blanc and easy reds like rioja. Does it even need to go with the food? Well of course it never needs to go with the food but it is more satisfying if there’s a general mood and taste fit. After all, my favourite sips are those taken in the lull before everyone sits down when you can smell the food in the oven and then see it going onto the plates. Lamb is often eaten at Easter – a meat that has the grace to go very well with so many wines that it’s easy to kill two birds with one bottle here.
If it’s warm or sunny enough to be thinking along Mediterranean lines, then go rosé. Who doesn’t love the first glass of rosé of the season? La Vieille Ferme Rosé 2018 France (£7.75-8.79, Co-op, Waitrose) is always a winner, as is Muga Rioja Rosado 2018 Spain (£9.99, Waitrose), which tastes like strawberries and cream. Rosé goes with practically anything, and where lamb is concerned it loves accents of rosemary, garlic and anchovies; also springlike incarnations such as pink rack of lamb served with fresh peas cooked with lettuce, or a raw courgette and lemon salad, though, as I said, more or less anything will work. I’m having a love-in with the reassuring qualities of red Rioja at the moment. Baron de Ley Reserva Rioja 2015 Spain (£11, Co-op) is a seriously good wine for the money. It’s assertive, but with mellow edges – all spicy oak and soft cooked strawberries. Rioja is also beautiful with lamb. Again, with just about any kind of lamb but if you have slow-cooked lamb falling off the bone and a couscous salad with raisins and pine nuts, then an aged Rioja is almost essential.
Finally, Sainsbury’s has a fiendishly good own-label red from Down Under – Taste the Difference Western Australian Shiraz 2018 Australia (£8.50 but down to £6.75 from 15 April until 5 May). It is made by David Hohnen, the quietly determined winemaker who was the man behind Cloudy Bay and it’s very much a cut above the wines you normally find in a supermarket at this price. Shiraz also loves lamb – the more rosemary and garlic you throw at it the better. And if you’re putting something on an early barbecue, then this will be great, too.
Victoria Moore is an award-winning wine columnist and author. Her most recent book is the The Wine Dine Dictionary (£20, Granta).
My favourite sips are those taken in the lull before everyone sits down