#NWTW Week 17: The Verdict On French Viognier

May 8, 2014

So I’ll be honest here. Last week kind of fell apart a little bit due to my complete lack of forward planning, so apologies for firstly not posting this until the middle of Week 18. Also sorry for the…actually I’m going to stop there, look it wasn’t the most efficient of weeks, but I tried three of the wines and here goes the review!

I had a couple of issues this week. Not really issues I guess, cos they were both really good things. One of my bessie mates in the whole wide world, Charlie, announced he was in town and asked if he could bum our spare bedroom on the Tuesday night. Absolutely mate. Well what better time to try the viognier?

I really like to try the wines with mates who aren’t really wine-o’s. Sure they drink it and love it, but they don’t express their thoughts in any kind of “regulated” way. They say what they think and don’t really bother with the terminology. Which to me is great to listen to, it really adds to what I’m trying to do as well.

We started with the Morrison’s Signature Viognier. I got flavours of melon, honeysuckle (don’t you roll your eyes at me!), and grapefruit, all of which came through in the mouth too. The acidity wasn’t all that high, but the finish was sharp enough to carry that as the grapefruit citrus flavour was the lasting taste in the mouth for a while. Charlie loved the sharpness of it, and also the price when I told him. £6.99 is not bad at all! 7/10.

Next up was the Elegant Frog Viognier from Sainsbury’s. Slightly lighter in colour this one, with more tropical mango and (dare I say it) papaya flavour to it. The acidity was much better and it went much better with the prawn and pea risotto that we had with it (not the best food pairing, it was a Tuesday, I panicked!). Slightly disappointing was the short finish on it, the flavour didn’t last, but altogether a solid Viognier and at £8.69 you can’t moan. 6/10.

Finally we went for the Paul Mas Estate Viognier from Majestic Wine priced at £7.99. And blow me down if I haven’t gone and lost my notes on this one! I blame Charlie! I do remember more stone fruit character in this one, and very easy balance at the end, but I don’t feel I can really mark this one. A week and a half after the event is more than my head can cope with, so apologies to Paul Mas and Majestic for that.

So yeah, a tad unprofessional this week, so sorry for that. I think it’s a week I’m probably just going to repeat it all in my own time some point in the future.

I hope you had more successful weeks yourselves.

Cheers

Other posts in NWTW Week 17:

#NWTW Week 17: Viognier, France (Part One)