YOU PLONKERS!
Daughter opens dad’s wine to make sangria at party – but doesn’t realise it’s £2,000 Petrus
HAVING kept it safe for nearly two decades, Pete Jones was looking forward to the day he would finally open his prized bottle of wine on a special occasion.
But the restaurateur expat’s dream of savouring his 1999 vintage Petrus, worth £2,000, was shattered when his teenage daughter and her friends used it to make sangria.
The British father, 56, who has lived in Madrid for more than 20 years, had gone out for the evening to allow youngest daughter Lara, 19, to host a party for her friends.
When he woke last Saturday morning, his treasured bottle was nowhere to be seen.
When he quizzed Lara in a text, she replied: ‘I hope it wasn’t expensive… I think my friends drank it.’ He informed her it was a ‘€2,500 bottle’. Rather than hitting the roof, he blamed himself for leaving the bottle in plain view with a bunch of teenagers in the house.
‘I am just gutted that after saving it for 17 years, I didn’t even get to taste it,’ he said. ‘And the tragic thing is, neither did they, well not properly. It was used to make a tinto de verano’, the typically Spanish summer drink of red wine mixed with soda and poured over ice. Usually the cheapest red wine is used, often from a carton.
‘I got home and the party was in full swing. I had a drink with them, did some embarrassing dancing in the kitchen, then headed up to bed to leave them to it,’ Mr Jones said. He also left the bottle from Bordeaux estate Chateau Petrus on display and it was opened around 5am. The famous wine maker only produces about 30,000 bottles a year, and its product is consistently ranked among the most expensive in the world.
‘It used to be hidden away in the cellar. But I got it out recently to show a friend… and I hadn’t got round to putting it back,’ the distraught dad admitted. The next day, he ran to the bottle bank near their home to check as Lara had disposed of the recyclables.
‘There it was. A dusty old Petrus lying empty on top of all the beer bottles. My daughter didn’t believe me when I told her how much it was actually worth. Then she cried a lot and asked if I could ever forgive her,’ he said.
Mr Jones bought the wine by accident while in a rush on Christmas Eve in 2004, telling a shop owner to get him ‘a bottle from the top shelf’. He added: ‘My wife, Silv, was furious but I explained it away by insisting it was a vintage from the year of our eldest daughter’s birth and we could keep it to drink with her on a special occasion.’
He has had to break the news to Sele, 21, that her birthday vintage had been opened without her.
THERE was a time when to be a bona fide wine buff meant knowing your Bordeaux from your Burgundy. But forget talk of decanters and corkscrews. Because with young drinkers becoming ever more ecoconscious, the hot topic is wines made with the health of the planet in mind, and with demand booming, the market is growing fast. Welcome to the world of ‘woke’ wines.
With glass and transport accounting for at least 50 per cent of the industry’s carbon footprint, woke producers are opting for environmentally friendly packaging.
This week, essex-based winemaker The english Vine became the first in the world to commit to switching all its glass bottles for paper ones.
It’s not just the packaging. Vegan wine lovers are driving demand, too. The Delevingne sisters Cara, Poppy and Chloe recently launched their own brand of vegan-friendly Prosecco, and actress Cameron Diaz boasts her own ‘clean’ wine brand in the u.s., called Aveline.
But do woke wines taste as good as their old-fashioned counterparts? our wine expert HELEN McGINN picks some of the best of the sustainable bunch …
BOX WINE I’D ACTUALLY DRINK Domaine Jones Grenache Gris 2.25l Bag in Box, £38.50, bibwine.co.uk
FOR YEARS bag-in-box wine had a bad reputation as what was inside was sometimes undrinkable. But for the woke wine lover, boxed wine offers one of the most sustainable packaging alternatives, with a carbon footprint ten times lower than glass. now companies like this are putting properly good wines inside them.
This one is from Languedoc in France and although not yet certified organic, the grapes are sustainably grown by winemaker Katie Jones. A fruity, floral gem that’ll stay fresh once opened for up to six weeks in the fridge.
VINO VERDICT: 8/10
CELEBRITY VEGAN BUBBLES Della Vite Prosecco, £19.95, dellavite.com
IT’s no surprise that when the party-loving Delevingne sisters decided to turn their hand to wine, they went straight to Prosecco. And this vegan-friendly offering (in most wines, gelatine or fish is used in the clarification process) is pretty good quality, as it should be at that price. Made by the Biasiotto family in the Veneto region, the winery is mostly solar-powered and online purchases include a donation to MyTrees charity to protect five trees. To drink, it’s fresh and frothy with soft pear fruits. Delightful.
VINO VERDICT: 7/10
SAVING THE OCEANS Hidden Sea Chardonnay, £8, Co-op
THIS Aussie wine brand is on a mission to remove plastic from the world’s oceans and for every bottle sold ten plastic bottles are removed and recycled from the sea. The Resea Project hopes to remove and recycle one billion plastic bottles by 2030.
The label, which is laserprinted using organic waterbased inks, depicts a fossilised whale found underneath The hidden sea’s vineyards in south Australia’s Limestone Coast and inside the bottle is a peach of a wine, all tropical fruits with a touch of oak adding oomph to the flavours.
VINO VERDICT: 7/10
SWEET TASTE OF GOING ORGANIC Castellore Organic Prosecco, £7.49, Aldi
THE organic wine selection from this discount retailer is a bit hit and miss but the hits are smashing. This one’s a real favourite, not to mention an absolute steal. simply packaged, it’s labelled as extra Dry, meaning there’s a little more sweetness to it compared with most but to be honest, that just makes it even more drinkable.
There are no nasty chemicals used in the vineyards so you can sip this in the garden and feel as smug as Tom and Barbara from The Good Life especially if you grow your own veg, too.
VINO VERDICT: 8/10
PAPER BOTTLES FOR YOUR TIPPLE
No.1 Paper Bottle Bacchus 2020, £13.99, theenglishvine. co.uk (main picture) FOUNDER Neil Walker’s mission is to move all the english wine he sells via his website away from glass within five years.
By launching england’s first wine in a paper bottle (above), he’s walking the walk. The packaging is five times lighter and with a carbon footprint 84 per cent lower than a glass bottle.
Inside, is a deliciously crisp white made from Bacchus grapes grown in essex and it’s
brilliant. Just the kind of english hedgerow-scented white I want when the sun’s out and the crisps are on the table.
VINO VERDICT: 10/10
EMPOWERING WINE IS ALL HEART Great Heart Chenin Blanc 2020, £14.99, Waitrose
The idea for this wine came about during the pandemic when south African vineyard owners Chris and Andrea Mullineux saw how hard their team were working under the challenging circumstances.
They wanted to reward them properly and so Great heart was set up, a staff empowerment company aimed at improving the livelihoods of all employees and their families. All profits go straight to the staff who own the brand as well as make the wine.
And fabulous it is too, rich and zesty with lemon peel flavours.
VINO VERDICT: 8/10
PHIL’S FLAT WINE IS A BELTER
Phillip Schofield Organic Nero Di Troia, £9.99, amazon.co.uk TV hosT and selfconfessed wine aficionado schofield launched his own range of boxed wines last year, showing his sustainable side. now he’s launched a wine in a flat 100 per cent recycled plastic bottle and it’s a belter. With a lower carbon footprint than glass, it also allows the producer to fit more wine on every pallet shipped, cutting environmental costs further.
Made from the little-known nero di Troia grape grown in Puglia, in southern Italy, this gorgeous organic mellow red is packed with rich plum and blackcurrant flavours. The bottle’s an odd shape, but once you sip what’s inside, you’ll soon forget!
VINO VERDICT: 9/10
VEGAN CAN IS BRILLIANT
Nania’s Rosé Spritzer, 6 x 250ml, £24, naniasvineyard. co.uk When James Bayliss-smith and shelley nania inherited a 50-yearold vine in the garden of their house in Bristol, it inspired them to create their own wine brand.
Their canned vegan-friendly wine is made from essexgrown Rondo grapes, blended with Glastonbury spring water and infused with a raspberry shrub to make a bonkers but brilliant Rosé spritzer.
Cans have a much lower carbon footprint than glass and are infinitely recyclable. And even the labels are made using a compostable corn starch wrap. The wine’s lightly carbonated and loaded with red berry flavours and a touch of sweetness. Joyous. VINO VERDICT: 7/10
HELEN’S BOOK, The Knackered Mother’s Wine Guide, is out now (£8.99, Bluebird).