Who is popular today?

Escape the gloom with these big red wines bursting with the flavours of warm countriesCuevas de Arom Altas Parcelas, Calatayud, Spain 2021 (£18.99, shelvedwine.com) I’m open to almost any of the many suggestions for lifting the bleak, wintry post-Christmas mood proffered in columns like this at this time of the year. Whether it’s a matter of taking up running or cold swimming, practising yoga or meditation, or joining the abstinence anti-party of Veganuary or Dry January, it’s each to their own as far I’m concerned. But I would like to put in a word for another kind of self-care, one that is rooted in pure escapism and the healing power of the sun. It works best, in my experience, if you first find a diverting but not too taxing book (pioneering British food writer Elizabeth David’s Mediterranean Food from 1950 is my nostalgic choice) to set the imaginative scene; then it’s just a question of finding the right wine to provide a direct infusion of southern sun from a brighter place and season. The herbal, wild berry and blood orange tanginess of Cuevas de Arom’s intense but fluent red from Garnacha bush vines grown in the dusty bleached-out highlands of Aragón in northeast Spain is an ideal first choice.Olifantsberg Grenache Noir, Breede River Valley, South Africa 2023 (£16, Tesco) The Mediterranean is, of course, not short on candidates for January-proof wine-mindfulness, and many of them will have one or both of the region’s great red grapes, grenache (aka garnacha) or syrah (aka shiraz), at their heart. Among those I’ll be turning to in the next few weeks are two from southern France: Sainsbury’s warm and plummy, spicy old favourite Taste the Difference Saint Chinian 2021 (£9.50), an 80% grenache / 20% syrah made by the reliable Laurent Miquel; and the sinewy, supple, plummy blackberry and peppery-spiced syrah-based Maris Minervois Vieilles Vignes 2022 (£11.99, Waitrose). The same grape varieties are also widely used to frequently fine effect even further south, in South Africa. Tesco has two Cape examples, one of each grape variety: the excellent-value Tesco Finest Swartland Shiraz 2023 (£8) a dusky mix of summer evening barbecue smokiness and juicy black and red berries, while the Olifantsberg Grenache Noir is succulent and wonderfully fragrant, almost pretty with its rosehip, cherry, citrus peel and thyme. Continue reading...