It's just like… Nectar – Berberana Riserva Rioja

Given some of the wines I consume, I sometimes think I deserve a reward. And finally, here it is. A wine with reward points. Actually, a wine with its very own loyalty scheme.

Now, I’m a little wary of loyalty schemes. Every other shop and service seems to ask me whether I possess their loyalty card. “How dare you, madam,” I am often tempted to answer. “Do I look like one of your regular customers?” 

Or, perhaps, “Are you saying that some people come back?”

Mrs K, however, carries around a wad of loyalty ID like a deck of playing cards. There’s one from the poncy bread shop, one from the gastropub, and several from coffee bars, the very word ‘several’ surely making a mockery of any concept of loyalty. She also has a sophisticated one from the chemist, where I hope never to be returning myself unless I develop a loyalty for verrucas.

So wine is late to the game. Reward schemes have been around for quite a while now; some forty years ago, my father used to collect the vouchers from his Players No6 cigarettes. Designed to look like tiny banknotes, they sat in a sideboard drawer like miniature wads of cash in a villain’s briefcase. Eventually he would have enough for a ‘gift’, from their glossy catalogue. Little did we realise he was smoking himself into an early grave, although I believe someone did publicise the absurdity of the scheme by asking how many coupons they required for an iron lung.

Then there were Green Shield Stamps. Someone has calculated that, in order to get sufficient stamps for a Kenwood Chef in 1965, you would have had to spend £1024, the price then of a large family car. A single book of stamps cost £32 to acquire, which would be a staggering £511 today, and could be exchanged for…a mouth organ. 

In moments of boredom I confess I have participated in online surveys, where I have earned Air Miles, thanks to my fictitious demographic of an immensely affluent globetrotting father of nine. I’ve earned, ooh, several Air Miles. I could probably fly for nothing, right now, from Gatwick to, say, Stansted.

But primus inter pares is the Nectar card, upon which we accumulate hundreds of points by shopping at Sainsbury’s, and driving our car unnecessary miles in search of BP petrol stations. Now, don’t get overexcited. 500 Nectar points gives you £2.50 to spend at Argos, or Amazon. Which means that spectacular-sounding, TV-advertised offer of 1000 Nectar points – a thousand! – when you buy your car insurance through a particular website is actually worth…a fiver. A whole £5. 

So it was with mixed emotions that I saw this bargain bottle of Berberana Riserva Rioja, proudly announcing its “One Cork, One Point” rewards scheme. “Log In, Collect Points, Get Rewards” the back label confirms. 

I think I will approach with due suspicion any wine which has to reward people for drinking it. And a first, tentative and somewhat unsatisfying sip confirms that this is a mediocre, drinkable but actually rather unrewarding wine. However, I am to be compensated for my efforts! I hurry to their website for my reward, like a child promised a sweet after cough medicine.

And of course, it’s a letdown. Out of 17 ‘rewards’, 12 are from venues like hotels which are part of the same conglomerate as Berberana itself. Not one is particularly appealing to me. For 5 points, I can claim two free glasses of wine at their London restaurant; frankly, after getting through 5 whole bottles of this stuff, the last thing I’d want is two glasses more. And the points required for rewards rapidly escalate, through 10, 30 and 75 points (eg bottles), until they are eventually asking 100 points for a “luxury” reward.

Now, I’m sure that Berberana are not suggesting that they are encouraging us to drink to excess. Nevertheless, I do feel it would be medically ill-advised to actually set out to drink 100 bottles of mediocre wine.

This is not because of the consumption of what I calculate to be 1,010 units of alcohol, or just over eight months’ constant daily drinking at current NHS guidelines. 

It has more to do with the potentially violent reaction of one’s wife, as case after case of Berberana are ferried through our front door like Mickey’s brooms in Fantasia. 

“Don’t worry dear,” I’d cry, as the boxes pile up into a Rachel Whiteread sculpture, “My liver can take it, and at the end we’ll have a luxury two nights at the Hacienda Zorita in Spain. 

“Travel not included.”

Realistically, the only people I can imagine collecting all those corks are waiters and event organisers, pocketing the points from bottles other people have paid for. 

If you are unfortunate enough to pay the full price of this wine, you will spend £1049 to gain your reward of two nights in their hotel. Where you will stay in ‘luxury’ alongside a bunch of off-duty waiters. And never mind that, you will have to consume more than eight entire cases of utterly mediocre wine.

For which I would expect far greater reward.  Like, two mouth organs.

PK

SPAR Autumn Wine Event: Valencia Vino Blanco

So PK gets one of his mad enthusiasms, insisting that he's found something that I cannot afford to pass up and that, whatever it is, it has got me written all the way through it like a stick of Brighton rock. Turns out he's referring to the SPAR autumn winefest rather than a Bentley, but I am no match for his implacable energies and have to admit that, yes, an hour spent poking around a small shabby supermarket chain looking for rock-bottom wines is pretty much my idea of a good time.

Not that you could tell this from the associated SPAR press release, which waves its arms frantically as it announces 'A host of fantastic quality SPAR brand wines' to be 'Backed by extensive marketing support including consumer press advertising, POS material, in-store tastings and PR.' Apparently, 'SPAR’s spring Wine Festival earlier this year saw sparkling success', while 'As a mark of their fantastic quality, a host of SPAR brand wines have been recognised by the international wine trade this year'. SPAR is actually a Dutch company, its name originally De Spar, an acronym for Door Eendrachtig Samenwerken Profiteren Allen Regelmatig, or Everyone Regularly Profits Through United Collaboration, which has a nice 1930's collectivist ring to it, a hint of North Korea. Equally, and at the same time, it is not what you'd call a glamour destination, usually found in largeish villages in the sticks, or at the marginally more weed-strewn ends of smallish towns.

In fact it takes me a while to locate my nearest SPAR, which although not a million miles as the crow flies, involves a forty-minute drive of scarcely plausible complexity at the end of which I find myself parking my car round the back of an Isthmian League football ground amid a heap of yellowing newspapers and discarded crisp packets. As I walk away from it, I turn and raise my hand in tremulous farewell, expecting never to see the vehicle again.

On the other hand, I am right next door to the SPAR, which turns out to be a local micromart with a few sausage rolls slumbering in a warmer and some copies of Closer on the rack. The in-store wine tastings and PR are either not there or so subtly done that they are invisible. In fact wine of any sort is almost invisible, so cunningly spread over three different locations within the store that it keeps coming as a surprise to me to find anything stonger than Listerene on the shelves.

Still. I elbow aside a pensioner and an obese schoolchild and get down to business. There is a dusty knot of wine giveaways (two for a tenner, white and red) on a shelf at about knee height but no, I am strong and head remorselessly for things that look like they might be part of the big SPAR Autumn Wine Event. I find the usual suspects, Wolf Blass, Gallo brothers' Turning Leaf, that kind of thing, but no again, you can get these anywhere, especially at the local newsagent, what I want is something authentically SPAR, and after what seems like a lifetime of fuddled probings under the increasingly scornful gaze of the guy behind the counter, I find a bottle of Valencia Vino Tinto at ￡5.49 and another of Valencia Vino Blanco for a mere ￡4.99. Both 'Hand Selected By WIne Experts For SPAR' it says comfortingly on the label, and although the choice in this particular outlet is nothing like the range listed on the SPAR website (e.g. the SPAR Bronze Award-winning Chablis, or the SPAR Commended Montepulciano, with full heavy-breathing text accompaniment) it's near enough and the stuff comes home with me.

Taste sensations? Could be worse: the white (no grape varieties named) gives you a spritz of citrus at the start with a quick burp of acidity at the end and nothing much in between, but there's nothing wrong with that. Similarly, the red (no grape varieties named) has a bit of Fruit Gums, a bit of Sarsons Malt Vinegar, and a nice, chesty finish that can be felt between the shoulderblades. It does the job, and what else did I expect? I mean if Waitrose can make me feel that they're doing me a favour when they sell me their everyday drinking rust remover, then I'm not going to complain about SPAR's more self-effacing take on the same stuff.

My only grievance is nothing much to do with the wine and more to do with SPAR's half-arsed, indeed, faintly tragic, idea of what constitutes a promotion. Where are the tables with gingham tablecloths? Where are the glossy brochures? I mean, they've got something worth celebrating: a selection of borderline drinkable wines at marginally approachable prices. Let's not hide it like a guilty secret among the Dreft and the Maltesers. Let's get behind it. Let's be proud, in a low-rent kind of way. Let's shout it from the rooftops, or failing that, from the junction of the A238 and the A2043, just south of Norbiton Station.

CJ

Drinking wine with the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace

As I was drinking wine with the Archbishop of Canterbury,…

There now, that’s got some attention. Some of you may remember my legendary piece about drinking wine with the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street. (If you don’t remember it, you can visit it here and now, and I’ll just pause until you get back.) Last week, I was able to climb even higher in the UK’s Order of Precedence, having been invited to a reception at Lambeth Palace, for wine with the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

Step one was to check how to address the Primate of All England. I then spent the prior evening at home practising, with a slight, deferential lowering of the head, the phrase “Good evening, Your Grace”, a phrase I am unlikely ever again to be able to utter appropriately. 

(As that evening wore on, Mrs K became increasingly irritated with my other, less appropriate variations such as “Thank you, Your Grace”, “Yes, another glass please, Your Grace”, and “Well, if there is another sausage going, Your Grace…”) 

Like most Londoners, I’m familiar only with the somewhat forbidding dark Tudor brick gatehouse of the Palace, on the bank of the Thames. But behind it, after namechecks etc, lies the path to  the Palace itself, in a rather more collegiate yellow stone.The surrounding grounds contain gardens and apple trees, of which (as you will soon see) the Palace kitchens make use. 

You pass through the Palace doorway, and realise you must be in the company of good people, because the cloakroom lacks not only an attendant, but any kind of numbering or security system. Who indeed would steal from the house of an Archbishop? (Apart from a King or two…)

Then up a grand staircase, to where the Archbishop of Canterbury himself waits in the corridor, and welcomes each of his guests personally. This is a different tactic to that employed by the Prime Minister, who ghosts into the reception room once it’s filled. I therefore got my chance to shake hands and say my cherished phrase. Sobriety at this early stage ensured that I did not say “Good Grace, your evening.”

And you pass on, along a corridor lined with portraits of his predecessors, to the Archbishop’s reception itself, held in The Guard Room, a magnificent panelled chamber with arch-braced roof. The Lambeth Palace website unfortunately refers to this as having been  “the Archbishop’s principle audience room”. I imagine they mean to say “principal”; either that, or audiences without principles are simply not entertained. 

Unlike Downing Street, we were trusted with proper wine glasses, presumably on the basis that no-one could possibly be thinking of “glassing” the host. As opposed to glassing the Host, which would be another matter entirely. And I was delighted to see that cocktail sausages were among the canapes. Perhaps, after all, I might be grateful for having rehearsed a sausage-related remark. 

The apple sauce offered alongside the sausages comes from the Palace itself, a waitress explained. What about the wine, I asked? She looked at me as if I was insane. No, she said with a patient smile, I think that comes from New Zealand.

What I meant, of course, was to ask whether it comes from the Archbishop’s own cellar, or whether a van pulls up every once in a while purely to, er, service his guests. Because the white was indeed from New Zealand; Fairleigh Estate Sauvignon Blanc 2011. It costs £8.99 from Majestic, the wine warehouse, and given that it’s produced excusively for them, I think we can assume that, barring divine intervention, from thence it actually came. I stuck to the red, a perfectly palatable Australian; Oxford Landing Estates Cabernet Sauvignon & Shiraz 2010. Coincidentally this is also available via Majestic, who say that it “goes well with Sunday roasts”, a relationship to the Sabbath which may or may not boost its Church credentials. 

It seemed just a little disappointing, to be in such unique circumstances, chatting with the Archbishop of Canterbury (about the poetry of TS Eliot, as you ask…) and drinking wine from somewhere as commonplace as Majestic. I mean, I shop there. CJ has shopped there. Like the venue and the meeting, I wish the wine could have been special and interesting too. When the occasion is unique, it’s a shame the wine is everyday.

What hosting tips have I gleaned from drinking wine with these two most senior figures? Well, it seems that Rule Number One of hosting a reception with wine is that…you don’t drink the wine. Neither of my hosts drank any of their wine. Now of course, they may be nervous of committing an inebriated faux pas, lunging for remaining sausages, stumbling into people and spilling wine, which would be quoted all over the newspapers next day (CRASH N’SPLASH BANGER CLASH AT ARCHBISH BASH!)

But it may be that they know how humdrum the wine actually is at such functions. Of course, you’re not supposed to notice or remember it. The exclusive surroundings, the speech, your one and only conversation with the host, all of those you are supposed to remember; the wine is simply lubrication. If the occasion, the host or the venue are once in a lifetime, it seems the wine can be everyday. Which is a shame for those of us who think the wine could easily be special, too.

The lesson of all this is simple. The more significant you are, the less significant the wine you can serve.

Which is why I must always serve my guests decent wine.

PK