The results are in and we are pleased to annouce the winner of our third Golden Grape Award…

Benegas Malbec, Libertad Vineyards 2008 Mendoza, £17.99
Buy 2 bottles save £6 = £14.99

A deserved winner in a seriously close competition – just one vote in it!

“Wow! This is truly serious stuff. Leaping straight from the glass are clear and bright cassis aromas with a dusky, brambly, summer-fruit-pudding backdrop. The palate is velvety smooth and caresses with a sweet kick of blackberry and strawberry fruit, swiftly evolving into bottomless blackcurrant balanced by a savoury coffee note that lingers on and on and on. The tannins are integrated and so well masked by the almost viscous, fruity palate that you hardly notice them. While other Malbecs can batter your palate into a pleasurable submission, this simply hums and vibrates with intensity and power – perfect with a fresh, juicy char-grilled steak from the barbecue. Outstanding!”

Kevin Dacey, Assistant Manager, Berkhamsted

The competition was ridiculously close but we were not surprised as the runners up are all fantastic examples of Argentinian Malbec. So in a well deserved second place with 24.5% of the votes we have Catena Malbec 2008 (£11.99 or buy 2 bottles save £4 = £9.99 per bottle) also from Mendoza. This wine is currently storming ahead on the customer poll we’re running alongside our staff vote with 41.67% of the votes. The customer poll is still open and you can vote now to let us know your preference!

Fighting for 3rd and 4th place we have 2 of our Viñalba wines… Viñalba Gran Reserva Malbec 2008 Mendoza (£13.99) came a close 3rd with 22.6% of the Majestic store votes and Viñalba Malbec Reserva 2008/2009 Mendoza (£10.99 or buy 2 bottles save £6 = £7.99 per bottle) at 16% came 4th.

And let’s not forget about the Mendel Malbec 2008 Mendoza, (£17.99 or buy 2 bottles save £6 = £14.99 per bottle) this beauty had 11.3% of the staff vote and concludes our poll to find our ‘Mighty Malbec‘ in 5th position.

As mentioned earlier our customer poll is still open so you can cast your vote now! We’d love to hear from you as to what it is about your preferred Malbec you love so much. You can comment on our blog’s to let us know or simply log-in to the Majestic website and write your own review.

Thanks and Enjoy!

The thing about the web is it’s constantly changing and evolving in ways that would have seemed unimaginable just a year or two previously. I was reminded of this last week when Twitter celebrated its fifth anniversary. The stats are unbelievable:

Twitter users now send more than 140 million Tweets a day which adds up to a billion Tweets every 8 days—by comparison, it took 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day to reach the first billion Tweets. While it took about 18 months to sign up the first 500,000 accounts, we now see close to 500,000 accounts created every day.

Sadly, majestic.co.uk can’t boast quite such figures – I’d be writing this from my own Caribbean island if it did. But in our own way, we do have a phenomenon that is showing a similar snowball effect. I’m referring to the enhancements we made to our local store pages back in November, allowing staff in all of our 164 stores to post news, details of events, and other items of interest to their customers. In many ways it’s one of the biggest team efforts Majestic has ever delivered – not just the 7 of us in the Ecommerce team or our lovely web designers, but hundreds of staff members up and down the country.

It started slowly; we’re pretty busy in November and December, so it’s unsurprising and quite appropriate that our hard-working store teams concentrated on keeping their stores ship-shape, getting deliveries out and offering the best customer service in-store they possibly could at Christmas. But since the turn of the year we’ve seen a continuous ramping up of activity on store pages, and I’m absolutely thrilled at the results.

We’ve supplied some very simple publishing tools, so that store teams can publicise their local tasting events, introduce team members, and post news on what’s happening locally. There’s even an up-to-date feed of what’s on the tasting counter, so now you can check for any interesting new wines you’ve not tried before leaving work and plan a quick detour to Majestic on the way home.

As tends to be the way with Majestic staff, they’ve not only picked up the ball; they’ve run with it. In fact, at the moment they’re doing a pretty fair imitation of Jonah Lomu in his pomp, and have in a few short months begun to find things to publish that I never imagined they would. A few examples – and I stress that these are essentially random selections:

• You simply are going to want to cook Amanda in Bromley‘s pigeon with black pudding recipe.
• If you’ve ever wanted to be a contestant on Blind Date, and you’re a fan of Spanish wine, then Majestic Macclesfield are with you 100%.
• Danielle in Brighton is one of many, many staff to rave about our new Pétalos Bierzo.
• If you thought New Zealand was all about Sauvignon Blanc then Vicky in Wilmslow would be happy to persuade you otherwise.

So what does this mean for you? Well, with stores from Totnes to Inverness, the chances are there’s a Majestic in your area, and even if you’re a die-hard web shopper these are the same people who call you to arrange your deliveries, so why not check out your local Majestic store’s page now?

As for keeping up-to-date, each store’s page includes a link to an RSS feed of their updates. Alternatively , if you’re thinking about me referring to Twitter earlier and thinking “wouldn’t it be great if Majestic had given every single one of their stores a Twitter account?”, well then you’re in luck – that’s exactly what we’ve done.

(I realise that it is 1 April. The contents of this post are entirely serious, and devoid of foolery.)

With 20% off continuing in New Zealand, Australia, Chile and the Rhône, we’ve lowered the price of some key products further, including:

• Unbelievable value party fizz Undurraga Brut for just £4.99
• Torres Viña Sol for a bargain £4.99
• Long-time Majestic favourite Côtes du Rhône Guigal for an incredible £6.79
• Value you wouldn’t believe from Bordeaux: Haut-Médoc Cru Bourgeois Ch Lachesnaye just £6.99, St-Emilion Grand Cru Château Tour St-Christophe 2007 just £9.99 and Château de Sales Pomerol 2007 for just £14.99
• Wonderful, crisp New Zealand fizz Lindauer Special Reserve Blanc de Blancs for just £7.99
• A couple of big names for less than a tenner: Châteauneuf-du-Pape Serabel and Barolo Roversi just £9.99
• Just about a perfect turkey wine: Robert Mondavi Pinot Noir reduced to just £9.99
• One of our biggest sellers at Christmas, the wonderful Marqués de Riscal Rioja Reserva just £9.99
• And, of course, big name Champagnes at fantastic prices: Pol Roger for £25, Louis Roederer for £27 and Bollinger for £28

Don’t fear though; those November offers haven’t gone anywhere yet, there’s still just under a week to take advantage of them. I can tell what you’re thinking already: a week with both sets of offers at the same time? Let’s call it an early Christmas present.

All of which heralds the latest, winter edition of Grape to Glass, our seasonal wine guide. It’s so packed with goodies that the download comes in at a hefty 5.4mb, but of course you can browse much of the content on this very site now, and there’s a few more treats to come over the next day or so.

The range is absolutely packed with new arrivals, and we’ll do our best to introduce as many as we can over the coming days. The offers that will see us through to the new year include:

• 20% off New Zealand
• 20% off Australia
• 20% off Chile
• 20% off Rhône wines
• Offers from right across France
• Big savings on Italian and Spanish wines
• A dazzling array of deals on sparkling wine and Champagne

In addition to the winter range, there are also a number of spectacular offers that are scheduled to run until 29 November only, including:

• Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc 2010, £8.99 £7.49 or £5.99 when you buy 2 or more
• Rioja Crianza 2001 Marqués de la Concordia £9.99 or £5.99 when you buy 2 or more
• Veuve Clicquot Champagne £37 £27
• Laurent-Perrier Rosé Champagne £57.50 £45

As usual, the best place to head for our top 10 offers is the, er, Top 10 Offers page.

We’ve had quite a packed schedule this Autumn and I’m not sure we’ve given enough coverage to the South African offer. In the spirit of balance, allow me to pick out a few highlights:

Biggest bargain

Robertson Winery Merlot 2010, £5.49 £4.99 or £3.99 for 2 or more

We’ve tasted countless samples of value wines from South Africa and simply haven’t found a wine that offers this level of quality for anything like the price. It’s classic Merlot, with plum and damson fruit, and has that lovely balance that good South African wine has – it’s riper and softer than  old world Merlots, but without the jamminess or obvious sweeteness of many new world Merlots. The same winery’s Chenin Blanc is pretty amazing value too.

If you like New Zealand Sauvignon, you’ll love…

Vergelegen Sauvignon Blanc 2009 Stellenbosch, £10.99 or £8.79 for 2 or more

We’ve been big fans of Vergelegen’s wines for years, and I’ve personally always favoured the slightly more restrained, minerally style of South Africa’s Sauvignons over their more extravangant cousins from New Zealand, so this wine is a real favourite. There’s a lovely pea/broad bean note on the nose, a decent weight on the palate, and this is all-round a great food-friendly white wine.

Treat yourself

John X Merriman 2007 Rustenberg, Stellenbosch, £12.99 £12.49 or £9.99 for 2 or more

There’s a debate in the customer reviews for this wine whether it is “Bordeaux style”. Allow me  my two-penneth’: it’s sort-of Bordeaux style. It is made with similar grapes (Merlot blended with Cabernet), and has a similarly appetising savouriness and freshness that sets it apart from richer new world styles. However, it’s bigger-boned and more alcoholic than most claret, so I’d reserve it for bolder, richer dishes. Last weekend I made ox cheeks in red wine – this would have been a perfect accompaniment. Superb.

Just a quick heads up that a few of our current offers will end online at 3pm today (and in store at the end of the day):

• Vergelegen Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon for £7.99
• Taittinger for £25
• Veuve Clicquot for £27
• ‘R’ de Ruinart for £30
• Ruinart Rosé and Blanc de Blancs for £35
• Laurent Perrier Rosé for £45

You can see all of these on the main site here, but don’t delay!

But saving money isn’t the only reason to visit the channel ports, as our introductory video shows. Majestic customers Jessica and James found that Calais makes a great day out, and with a choice of convenient pre-ordering before you travel, or a well-stocked tasting counter in-store to help inform your purchases whilst you’re there, we offer everything you need for a great shopping trip.

• 25% off Spain
• 20% of South Africa
• 20% off Portugal
• Deals right across our Argentinian range
• A range of offers from the south of France and south-west France

A new promotion also brings with it a flurry of new wines to explore, and of course our unsurpassed selection of Champagne offers (including Taittinger for just £25, Veuve Clicquot reduced to just £27 and Laurent-Perrier Rosé down to just £45).

We’ve also just updated this very blog with the latest from the Autumn edition of Grape to Glass. We focus on Argentina and Portugal, meet Gérard Bertrand and Cristina Forner of Marqués de Càceres, look in depth at the wines of Green Point and Torres, and learn more about food and wine matching. You can also find out what happened when the poor Majestic buying team were “trapped” in Spain by the volcanic ash cloud with only a company credit card and San Sebastian’s restaurants for company…

• 20% off New Zealand
• 20% off Australia
• 20% off Chile
• 20% off Italy

We’re also drawing a line under some amazing Champagne offers:

• £17 Nicolas Feuillatte
• £20 Heidsieck Gold Top 2004
• £25 Pol Roger
• £25 Laurent Perrier
• £30 ‘R’ de Ruinart

All in all, if post-bank holiday replenishments are needed – and after this weekend’s barbecue-fest I’m including myself here – this evening would be a great time to get your orders in!

The team in Muswell Hill needed no second invitation, and after a visit to the Cheeses of Muswell Hill, a fabulous small cheesemonger just around the corner from the store (and long time favourite of yours truly), they set about matching four distinct styles of cheese to different wines from across the world.

The basics

With the plethora of styles of cheese available it’s difficult to generalise on perfect wine matches, but I reckon there are three fundamental features common to virtually all cheeses that play a big role in determining which wines will “work” and which won’t: fat, salt and acidity.

Fat is important because of the effect it has on your palate. Fatty foods tend to coat the mouth and reduce perception of some flavours in the accompanying wine. Most cheeses are between 25%-35% fat, so you need a wine that can cut through that effect.

Salty foods can make dry and/or tannic wines seem bitter on the palate, which is why dessert wines can be such a successful match for some particularly salty cheeses (blues for example).

Since cheese is made by souring milk it is naturally acidic, although some cheeses have more pronounced acidity than others. More acidic cheeses will need a more acidic wine to be in balance.

Something else to consider is that there is often a geographical association between local wines and local cheeses, in much the same way as there often is between and wine and food generally (as you’ll see in the results of our tasting session). It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation as to why this happens, but I’m a firm believer in it, and it probably explains why the results of the tasting seem so Francophile – four French wines picked with three French cheeses.

The results!

As you’ll see in the video the team reached some pretty clear conclusions about their favourite combinations.

Valencay with Sancerre

It’s a classic partnership from France’s Loire valley – a delicate goat’s cheese with a crisp glass of Sauvignon Blanc. The freshness and delicacy of the cheese demand a wine that won’t overpower it, yet with crisp acidity to balance the creaminess of the cheese.

Valencay is a small town famous for its beautiful château, its cheese, and more recently its wine  - it has an AOC for both cheese and wine, uniquely in France. The cheese has a distinctive cut-off pyramid shape (I’ve heard that Napoleon objected to the original ‘true’ pyramid reminding him of his Egyptian campaigns). It is dusted with charcoal before being ripened in caves or humid maturing rooms for three weeks to develop a light bloom. It’s not the “goatiest” goats cheese, hence its delicacy of flavour.

Sancerre is about 60 miles to the east, and along with near-neighbour Pouilly-Fumé produces a definitive Sauvignon Blanc, elegant, chalky, floral and boasting crisp citrus acidity. In this tasting, the example wine was the superb 2008 Château de Sancerre (£14.99 or buy 2 save £2 = £13.99), but this brilliant wine and food match would work equally well with one of our other grower’s Sancerres. Likewise, this would work nicely with a similar goat’s cheese such as a crottin de Chavignol, which comes from farms around Sancerre itself.

Roquefort with dessert wine

Another tried-and-tested partnership from French cuisine, marrying a strong, salty blue cheese with a rich dessert wine. Powerful blue cheeses such as Roquefort, Stilton and Cabrales will overpower most wines, and in particular the combination of saltiness and acidity will tend to over-emphasise the tannins in a dry red and make it seem bitter. The sugar in a dessert wine counteracts this perfectly, although I would be careful with particularly pungent stickies like Rutherglen Muscat. Of course, Port is another excellent option.

As an East Midlands man I’m duty-bound to describe Roquefort as the world’s second most eminent blue cheese. Saltier and moister than Stilton, it is an unpasteurised sheeps milk cheese from the south of France. AOC rules state that can only be aged in the caves of Mount Combalou, where the blue-green Penicillium roquefortii mould that makes this cheese so famous occurs naturally (although nowadays is usually introduced in a more controlled way during moulding).

The farmhouse example the team tasted is sublime, as is the dessert wine - Saussignac 2005 from Clos d’Yvigne in Bergerac (£19.99, 50cl). Regular Majestic customers may be familar with the Clos d’Yvigne wines made by ex-pat winemaker and author Patricia Atkinson, but this luscious dessert wine is only available in limited quantities so you’ll need to check stocks in your local store. It’s somewhat Sauternes-like, being made from Semillon and Muscadelle, but is more tropical and exotic. It has superb concentration but with plenty of freshening acidity to cope with the richness of the cheese.

Brie de Meaux with Chablis

This is the combination that is perhaps most surprising; I guess most people would traditionally match creamy cheeses with red wine. As the team discovered, that creaminess can dull the fruit of red wines and leave just the bitterness of the wines tannins to come through on the palate. They opted instead for an elegant white with good acidity, but still with the richness to stand up to all that gooey loveliness.

Brie is probably France’s most famous cheese, and Brie de Meaux is an appellation for the cheeses produced in the heartland of the region centered on the town of the same name. Made from unpasteurised cow’s milk, it is instantly recognisable with its fluffy white rind and creamy yellow interiour. To my mind it is at its best when mature, when it softens to a luscious gloop and takes on savoury bacon notes.

The team opted for Chablis La Maladière 2008 from William Fèvre (£13.99 or buy 2 save £4 = £11.99), a long-standing Majestic favourite that’s a cut above entry-level Chablis and worth every penny. A close runner-up with the brie was a richer Chardonnay from Chile’s Casablanca Valley, Montes Alpha Chardonnay 2008 (£11.24 or buy 2 save 20% = £8.99) – my guess is that if the brie had been a touch riper this may have won the day.

Montgomery Cheddar with Claret

The only cheese that seemed to work well with reds, this cheddar’s crumbly hardness and richness of flavour combined well with a Médoc with it’s elegant fruit and tannins. The team draw attention to the effect of proteins on tannin – a similar effect you’ll find when you drink red wine with red meat.

Really good cheddar is so much better than wet, soapy supermarket cheese it’s a revelation; personally I’ve found none better than Montgomery, made from milk from the farm’s 140 Fresian cows not far from Yeovil in Somerset. This is a cloth-bound, unpasteurised cheddar that is aged for up to 18 months  - when really mature the texture becomes almost parmesan-like, but always balances lovely creaminess with a pleasant lactic acidity and savoury notes.

The team favoured Château Lachesnaye 2004, a cru bourgeois Haut-Médoc (£9.99); it’s a delicious, medium-bodied claret from an underrated vintage that is drinking very nicely now. They were also pretty impressed by a more powerful red – Catena Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 from Mendoza, Argentina (£11.99) – but felt the claret edged it.

Do you have any particular food and wine matching combinations you’d like us to investigate? It’s a difficult task but someone has to do it! Drop us an email or comment below.

Or, of course, you could brave the weekend’s sunshine and call in to see the team in your local Majestic who would be happy to help you load your car…

Update 12:45: Some customers may be experiencing issues accessing the site, but not all. Apologies if this affects you, we’re working on it!

Update 9:55: We’re back in business!

9:35: If you’ve tried to reach our main website at majestic.co.uk this morning you’ll have noticed it’s not available. There is a major network failure at our data centre which has taken a large number of sites out of action. The boffins are beavering away and we’ll get up and running as soon as we can.

Papa Luna 2007, Calatayud

‘Flying Scotsman’ Norrel Robertson is a well-travelled and studied Master of Wine, who has sourced blocks of old vines and collaborated with local growers in the Calatayud region, to produce this quality Garnacha-dominated blend. Lifted aromas of raspberry and black cherry are enhanced by complex notes of pepper, herbs and vanilla.

Buy this wine
Spanish Offers

This weekend is a rather notable one for myself and the Ecommerce team at Majestic. On Sunday 18 April it is the tenth anniversary of online ordering at Majestic.

It seems remarkable to think that there was ever a time when the web wasn’t a significant part of our lives, but back in April 2000 the dot-com boom was just beginning in earnest and thousands of people were discovering the possibilities of online ordering. We’ve come a very long way since then, but the mainstays of our online offering – the same broad range and competitive pricing as our stores, with free delivery of a mixed case arranged at a time to suit you – have remained constant throughout.

To mark the occasion we have a range of wines which have featured in our range consistently since that first day, which this weekend only we’re offering with special online offers. All the wines are the same price or cheaper than they were back in April 2000 and the range includes some real Majestic favourites. These deals are only available online, and are valid until Sunday 18 April whilst stocks last.

I’d like to extend a big thanks to everyone who has worked in the Ecommerce team at Majestic over the last decade, not to mention the staff in all of our stores who play such a big part in delivering the customer service that we’re famous for. And, of course, to all our online customers. Here’s to another 10 years of great wines online.

They’ve already been busy posting detailed information about the upcoming Bordeaux 2009 campaign, and I’ll reproduce the highlights here over the weekend, but customers of fine wine and en primeur will want to subscribe to Lay & Wheeler’s RSS feed and/or follow them on Twitter.

I’m delighted to announce that I will be joining The Times from March 4 for the launch issue of a new weekly food and drink section. My new column will run to around 950 words and will include a main, 700 word story as well as half a dozen recommendations.

See Tim’s website or Decanter for more.

Kangarilla Road is a brilliant winery in McLaren Vale. You may be familiar with the Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz that we have stocked for many years, but winemaker Kevin O’Brien is not afraid to experiment with unusual grape varieties, and this limited availability parcel includes Sangiovese and Primitivo (aka Zinfandel), not at all common varieties in South Australia, making this a really exciting opportunity. Both wines are available in cases of 12 bottles for £107.88 – equivalent to just £8.99 a bottle. Because they’re pretty rare it’s difficult for us to give you an “RRP” to compare that to, but trust me, they’re good value!

As a side note, Kangarilla Road wines benefit from stunning black-and-white packaging including an image of the leaf of each variety, which makes them one of the most impressive dinner party bottles around!

Tim has written for The Observer since 1993, and although he will continue to write for the paper’s Food Monthly supplement, the decision has caused waves of disappointment among wine-loving readers not to mention the wine trade as a whole, following as it does cutbacks in wine coverage in other broadsheet titles.

But now the power of the internet is being harnessed to try and save Tim’s column. Freelance journalist Rebecca Gibb has started a Facebook group whose aim is to send a message to newspaper editors that wine coverage is a valuable and important part of their lifestyle coverage:

There are more people drinking wine than ever before yet there are fewer column inches. How does that equate? If Rage Against the Machine can make it to Christmas number one with a facebook campaign, then we can make a stand against the loss of wine coverage in our national newspapers. Come on people!

Impartial, informed and genuinely useful coverage of wine in columns such as Tim’s have been a huge factor in the democratisation of wine over recent decades. To show your support for preserving the wine columns in the national press, join the Facebook group here.

As well as being named High Street Chain of the Year, we were delighted to pick up the Innovation of the Year award for The Wine Course, a free 2-hour introduction to wine that’s now being offered in the vast majority of Majestic stores. It’s a credit to all the staff who run these excellent courses that this has been recognised by the industry.

If you’ve not attended one of the courses, we have a short video to give you a flavour (if you’ll pardon the pun…)

Interested? Contact your local store to book a course today!

At the same time we’re releasing the all-new Spring Edition of our Grape to Glass guide. You can download the full publication as a PDF, or browse all the content here on this blog. Highlights include interviews with Paul Mas, Mike Brown of Waimea Estate, and author and winemaker Patricia Atkinson of Clos d’Yvigne. There’s also a range of suggestions for matching wine with great British seafood and French goats cheese, as well as dishes to accompany one of the trendiest wines of the moment, Argentinian Malbec. All-in-all it’s a bumper selection of really interesting articles.