It’s official: spring has arrived! The days are getting longer and Easter bank holiday is fast approaching. Oz has picked out his favourite wines to enjoy this season, including a fizz fit for Easter Sunday, a Rioja to enjoy with your roast and a lush Pinot Gris.
Jansz Sparkling Wine
2009, Tasmania
Australia
£24
Oddbins
Are you after absolutely riproaring, humdinging, super-stimulating bubbles this Easter? Tiptop Champagne? At a non-Champagne price? Do you mind heading 13,000 miles south to seek it out? Then head to the chilly Aussie outpost of Tasmania, where Jansz make this vintage sparkler, foaming over with style and flavour for Easter fun.
Yealands Estate
Pinot Gris
2015, Marlborough
New Zealand, £12.95
With this gorgeous white open and ready to drink it won’t matter whether spring is here or not, because it matches freshness and lushness in equal measure. Pinot Gris is a wonderful grape, debased by cheap Italian Pinot Grigio. But this example, from grapes grown on a bluff overlooking the wild Southern Ocean, with Antarctic winds swirling at the vineyard’s edge, manages to drip with the juicy fruit of Williams pears and unfeasibly ripe grapefruit, as well as throwing off a heady scent of jasmine, mediterranean fennel and garden mint.
Contino Rioja Reserva
2007
Rioja, Spain
£24
M&S
If you’re going to have a truly wonderful roast on Easter Day, you’ll want a red that gives it full respect and gets full respect back. There isn’t a roast in Britain that wouldn’t welcome this gentle, mellow single vineyard (that’s VERY rare), with ripe red plum and strawberry fruit wrapped in vanilla, losing its youthful exuberance now, but as yet nowhere near the carpet slippers, pipe and footstool of full maturity.
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