Our Top 10 Spring Wines Under £10 features a selection of the best value wines we are recommending for this season. 5 whites, 5 reds, all delicious and all under £10.

Reds

L'Ameillaud Vin De Pays D'Orange 2011, Vaucluse, £8.50
A blend of grenache, syrah and carignan, It is an intense dark red colour. Aromas of plum lead on to a robust palate with cherry flavours supported by well-rounded, soft tannins.

Secateurs Red blend 2010, South Africa, Normally £9.95, with 15% off now £8.45
Full on, succulent wine which is full of energy & character – a blend of several varieties produced from old bush vines. Brilliant for BBQs & parties or just as an after work relaxant!

Artadi Laderas El Seque 2011, Spain, £9.50
A full-bodied, hearty wine at a very affordable price. This quintessentially Mediterranean wine shows ripe fruit and balsamic freshness. A delightful partner to barbequed meats!

Corvo Rosso Nero D'Avola 2010, Italy, £9.99
Velvety flavours of red berries, oak, spice and a slight trace of chalk in the finish. A great accompaniment to meat pastas and full-flavoured fish.

Mourgues Du Gres Galets Rouges 2010, Rhône valley, £9.99
On the palate, spicy red and black berry fruits come beautifully together in a wine that is perfectly balanced. Will go wonderfully with meat dishes such as duck, steak or game.

Whites

Domaine Bellier Cheverny 2011, Loire Valley, £10.00
Better than many cheap Sancerres, this is a fresh and succulent sauvignon blanc, with a bright note of tangerine and a dry finish. Is very fish friendly!

Sartarelli Verdicchio Classico 2010, Italy, £9.75
Textured and rich with ripe mango fruits and orange zest. Definitely one to try with rich fish dishes or chicken.

Boekenhoutskloof Wolftrap White 2011, South Africa, £8.95
The Wolftrap White is taking the world by storm. With only the third vintage bottled it has become a rising star of the JN portfolio.

Lascaux Domaine Cavalier Blanc 2012, Languedoc, £8.99
Citrus fruits and grapefruit on the nose are followed on the palate by a fresh, aromatic mouthfeel unrepinned by tingling acidity. Drink this wine within 2 years and accompany with sushi or shellfish.

Mourgues Du Gres Galets Dores 2010
The wine is crisp, fresh and full. Galets Dorés makes for an excellent aperitif. A good companion to veal and poultry dishes and cheeses such as cantal and goats cheese.

Character:
Pinot Noir is one of the lighter black grape varieties.  The flavour of the wine varies depending on where it’s grown, but usually it would be somewhere in the raspberry, strawberry, red cherry area of the spectrum.  It is a low tannin variety (tannins are the substances that come from the skins and stalks and make your mouth dry out, just like a strong cup of tea) and it needs a light hand when it comes to oak treatment.

Pinot Noir has a reputation for being somewhat capricious and difficult – a bit of a diva if you like.  When it’s good it’s amazing.  When it’s bad it’s awful.  The best Pinot Noir is delicate, perfumed, aromatic, complex and beautiful - the kind of wine to be sipped and savoured and appreciated; the wine of poets.  The best are extremely ageworthy and take on an earthy, mushroomy, farmyard kind of flavour as they mature.  Because Pinot is so delicate any imperfections in the wine seem all too obvious.

This particular grape has a thin skin (hence the lower tannin levels) which means her natural defences against the elements aren’t very strong.  Pinot Noir suffers if it’s too hot, too cold, too wet, too windy or too humid so the climates she is suited to are somewhat limited.  Sadly this all means that cheap and cheerful Pinot Noir is not easily found.

Best areas:
Pinot Noir needs a cool to moderate climate.  Burgundy is the perfect home for Pinot Noir in France – it’s also one of the three grape varieties used in Champagne.

In the New World, Chile, Oregon, California and New Zealand are all capable of making great Pinot Noir.

Food matching:
Pinot Noir and duck is a match made in heaven, but it also works brilliantly with salmon and tuna – especially if they are grilled, seared or barbecued.  The earthy notes in Pinot make it a great match with mushrooms and also beetroot.

The fresh acidity of Pinot Noir cuts through the fattiness of lamb making both taste fabulous, the same principal goes for pork belly and pulled pork.  The softness of Pinot also works brilliantly with rabbit and veal.

Examples:

New World:
Cefiro Pinot Noir, Chile
Felicite Pinot Noir, South Africa
Mud House Central Otago Pinot Noir
Dog Point Pinot Noir, Marlborough
Mount Edward Pinot Noir, Central Otago
Neudorf Tom’s Block Pinot Noir, Nelson

Old World:
JN Red Burgundy
Jacques Girardin Santenay 1er cru
Rossignol Savigny Les Beaune 1er cru Les Lavieres 2009
Tardy Hautes Cotes de Nuits 2009

Our Easter highlights invariably revolve around 2 things – roast lamb and chocolate. Not together I hasten to add, but an Easter weekend without suitable quantities of each would be somewhat incomplete.

For those of us who plan our meals around what we want to drink (nothing to be ashamed of there) an occasion like this calls for a good bottle of red wine. My personal preference is for a Spanish Rioja; the weight, structure and tannin of a Rioja is perfectly suited to lamb. Marques de Murrieta Reserva is an absolute classic – this has all the typical hallmarks of Rioja, soft, well-integrated fruit and a warming vanilla finish from the oak ageing. Artadi’s Vinas de Gain is a different style; it’s not aged as long so the fruit plays a more dominant role with the French oak subtly adding complexity and depth. Paco Garcia Crianza is somewhere in the middle, lots of ripe fruit and a lovely vanilla finish.

Traditionalists would argue that Bordeaux is the perfect match for roast lamb. No arguments here and your choices are almost endless. Ch Mylord, Ch Chollet, Lamothe Bergeron, La Gravette de Certan and d’Aiguilhe all offer excellent value for money and will work perfectly with a roast dinner. Bordeaux wines are predominantly a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. They are elegant wines, which means they’re not bursting at the seams with bold fruit flavours, they are more subtle and have interesting earthy and spicy flavours too. Good Bordeaux wines aren’t aggressively tannic or full bodied, they’re medium bodied with smooth tannins and this is what makes them so well suited to roast meat – it’s the same with Rioja. Happily both wines have moderate alcohol so you won’t be floored after a couple of glasses at lunchtime!

If your Easter lunch is more likely to feature a roasted bird or some fish, a white wine will be the order of the day.  We’re all drinking our new Macon Lugny from Domaine St Denis.  This is the perfect springtime wine and it goes spectacularly well with roast chicken.  It’s refreshing and elegant and satisfying – perfect white Burgundy actually and just as good with fish as it is with chicken.

Now to the tricky part.  Wine with Easter eggs is not is an easy match; in fact wine with chocolate is generally pretty tricky.  Milk chocolate and creamy chocolate is a bit of a wine disaster – Andrew Quady’s Elysium is your best bet - this unusual wine is just the job and has a very loyal following indeed.  If your dessert features dark, bitter chocolate a red Vin Doux Naturel such as the sublime Fagayra Rouge is the wine you need.  Heaven.

What Easter treats will be featuring at yours this year?

My taste in wine has evolved somewhat over the years and it seems to follow a particular pattern.  I stumble across a wine that I love then I drink around it - I look for wines made from the same grape(s) or from the same area to try to really understand what it is that I loved about the original bottle and how to find more wines in a similar vein.  This is how the whole world of wine has opened up to me - in little pockets which lead on to other little pockets.  Admittedly there have been a few horrors along the way but at the end of the day it's a labour of love and I'm happy to persevere.

Part of the fascination of wine is the huge variety of wines out there to be discovered.  There is always something new to learn, something else to try, but with such endless possibilities available we sometimes need a nudge - a reason to try something new or a hint that something is just what we're looking for.  We all love recommendations so we've put together some mixed cases to inspire some new discoveries.  The wines are grouped together by style; the essential characters of the wines are the same but there is enough variation between them to keep it interesting and varied.  All the wines are great quality and very enjoyable.

Light whites (available as 6 or 12 bottle case) are wines that are fresh and fruity with no oak (for the 'anything but chardonnay' people).  These are very easy-going white wines that can be drunk alone or with food.  If you love the fruity nature of Sauvignon Blanc and the delicate freshness of Pinot Grigio then these are similar in character and well worth a try if you’re looking for something new.

Sumptuous whites (available as 6 or 12 bottle case) are rich, generous and broad flavoured.  These white wines have more body and fullness than light whites.  Because they have more depth and flavour they go really well with food and will stand up to roast chicken or pork or even cheese or creamy dishes.  Some of these wines will have been aged in oak barrels but the oak is never overpowering – it supports the fruit and gives the wine a savoury, warming edge.  Chardonnay would generally fit into this category as do the gorgeous wines of Alsace and there are some fabulous blends to discover too.

We’d love to hear what you think, what’s your style?

Why not join our club ?

As a JN Club member you receive a mixed case of wine every second month so you always have a bottle of wine in the rack for when the mood strikes you.

We select the wines for our cases to encompass a broad range of styles from all across the winegrowing world – each wine carrying the James Nicholson seal of approval and representing great value for money. It’s a great way to discover new, high quality, interesting wines.

Choose your case make up.

ALL RED CASE
ALL WHITE CASE
8 RED & 4 WHITE 
4 RED & 8 WHITE

Suspend a case for a month if you are away on holiday or the budget is tight, and resume when the time is right without charge or penalty. Your case will be delivered direct to your door every other month.

Each case comes with notes to explain a little about the wines and why we love them as well as ideas for which foods will best complement your wines – making dinner an even more pleasurable experience!
JN Club members receive 12.5% discount on the wines making up their club cases as well as 12.5% discount on any other wines bought from JN Wine either in the shop or online.
JN Club members also receive exclusive discounts and priority invitations to tastings and events at JN Wine.

Costs:

Getting Started:

Simply decide which case(s) you'd like to receive and we'll organise everything.

Special Introductory Offer!

Special Introductory Offer! Get your first case for £50 instead of £95
if you sign up today. This special introductory case with 6 red and 6 white wines is intended to give you a taster of our JN Club cases.

Of course, we hope you’ll love the case and want to become a long term member of the JN Club to receive a bi-monthly standard case or quarterly speciality case. But we won’t be offended if you decide the JN Club membership is not for you!

And that’s not all! Persuade a friend to join and we’ll send you a £10 voucher to redeem at jnwine.com or in the shop against a future order (12 bottles of wine or more, 1 voucher per order).

How to avail of this Special Introductory Offer:

Just phone the shop on 02844830091 or email shop@jnwine.com to confirm that you would like to join the JN Club and take the special introductory case at £50 (normally £95), and provide the names of your friends with their email addresses or phone numbers who may also like to join. If any of the friends you recommend join up we'll send you a voucher.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR CASE TODAY

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