The Race To The Bottom: Bella Vite

So the wife and I are in Sicily for a week, and everything is very agreeable, sun shining,

delightful little streets, 

fantastic markets selling eye-boggling fresh fruit,

and seafood, 

adorable faded Baroque grandeur, 

some ruins.

But what seals the deal? Some of the cheapest, and, it has to be admitted, least drinkable wine I have ever come across. The most provoking being a half-litre of white which appears on our dinner table one night (along with an overflowing skipload of fish stew) and which looks fab until you get within sniffing range, at which point it turns out to have a nose like uncapped Araldite plus an oily, bilious mouthfeel so startling that I am quite unable to do anything about it, like send it back, instead humbly chewing my way through about a third of it before admitting defeat. Oddly, there's no perceptible hangover the next morning, even though I am convinced at the time of drinking that I will end up blind and hospitalised.

Everything other than that is a step up: nameless reds and whites, brush cleaner/emetic combinations, a meaningful encounter with some Nero D'Avola, and all is fine and inexpensive, until I get to this: 

a whole litre of anonymous red, branded Bella Vite, whatever that means, in a waxed carton, with a plastic stopper and a gouache of a sexy bicycle girl on the label, all for €1.40. It is only 10% alcohol, but that's fine, too: I can drink it unheedingly without getting tinnitus or the blue horrors. You tell me if life gets better than that.

Actually, I may know the answer even before I ask the question: the day after my €1.40 red, I find what seems to be exactly the same stuff - minus the girl on the bicycle - for a scant €1.30. And next to that, a terrifying stockade of clear, two-litre plastic bottles, each the size and shape of a party Fanta, completely unlabelled, holding red, pink and white. Wine, I guess. They work out at €1.00 per litre, but I am half-way through my holiday, and with the best will in the world, I cannot get outside two-thirds of a litre of unmarked gutrot every day, just before dinner. The experiment must remain untried. There may be yet lower highs I can try; but for now, the bottom-dollar Bella Vite will do about as well as anything costing less than a daily paper possibly can.

CJ

Spring wine – a cautionary tale

Mrs K: “Evening, dear!”

PK: “Evening!”

“Oooh, it’s so nice to finish work and have the sun shining. Lovely! Shall we have a glass of wine in the garden?”

“Oh! Er…yes! But…”

“Shall I get glasses?”

“Hang on a minute…I need…We haven’t sorted out the garden furniture yet this year. It’s only April. I just need to put the table up. Needs a bit of a wipe. Bit of bird poo.”

“Will tumblers do?”

“How does this chair go…? No, tumblers will not  do. If we’re going to do this thing…”

“Alright, I’ll get the proper glasses down, then. Is there some white wine in the fridge?”

“Well, there is. It’s the bottle left over from last night, though. We put about a quarter into the poached salmon, and then I drank about half before you took it away. Put  it away. So there’s only about a quarter of a bottle left. I don’t think that’s quite enough…”

“Don’t you have any in your famous ‘cellar’?”

“There’s that gorgeous Pouilly-Fumé I brought back from Paris, the one I was telling you about… But of course, that’s not chilled. And we haven’t started putting ice into the freezer yet. It’s only April.”

“I know! Isn’t it nice to have such lovely sunshine in April?”

“Even if we did have ice, it would take ages to chill now. Should have thought of this earlier. There’s that puffa jacket thing which does chill a bottle faster. But we haven’t got that in the freezer yet either.”

“Oh, well…”

“Really, if we’re drinking in the garden, it should be rosé. That’s your wine for drinking in the sun.”

“Ooh yes, a glass of rosé! That would be lovely. Have you got any of that?”

“Well yes, I have, a really interesting Provencal rosé actually, which we didn’t get around to last summer. But of course that’s not cold, either. And you don’t want warm rosé. And remember, you wouldn’t let me buy an ice bucket. Not that we’ve got any ice, anyway.”

“Well, what about a glass of red, then?”

“Oh I’ve got that alright! Red, yes. Something light, something… Spring-like?”

“A Spring-like  red?”

“Yes, honestly! Like a Beaujolais. You can have that chilled, you know. With ice. Well, not tonight, obviously, but it’ll be cold from the cellar.”

“Basement.”

“From the basement. It’s still quite cold down there. Not cold enough to chill a white or a rosé, but a Beaujolais will be fine. That’s certainly Spring-like. And we could carry on drinking it indoors, with supper.”

“What are we having? Something Spring-like?”

“Sausages.”

“Oh dear. The sun’s gone in…”


 
PK

Wine Night on BBC4

CJ is away this week; but don't forget that to-morrow night on BBC4 is Wine Night - a celebration of all things winetastic - starting with:

7.00 pm: Last of the Summer Wine Special

A one-off return to the much-loved, long-running comedy series - with the main parts being taken by much-loved, long-running wine writers. In this special episode, 'Foggy' Dewhurst finds his taster's notes overrun by ferrets; while Compo attempts to open a case of 1986 Château Beychevelle using a combine harvester.

Norman Clegg - Hugh Johnson

'Foggy' Dewhurst - Andrew Jefford

Compo - Oz Clarke

Nora Batty - Jancis Robinson

7.30: Michael Portillo's Great Wine Journeys of the World

This week, the former Member for Enfield Southgate travels at the TV licence-payer's expense from the Central Valley Region of Chile to the Barossa Valley of Southern Australia, via the Majestic Wine store, Uttoxeter, and the Co-Op in Honiton.

8.30: Phylloxera! The Musical That Wouldn't Die

Documentary about what became known as 'Shaftesbury Avenue's Killer Infestation': the 1990s musical Phylloxera!, based on the great scourge of nineteenth-century European vineyards. The musical proved to be almost as pernicious as the original aphid-like insect, taking seventeen years to eradicate from the West End Stage. Michael Ball - who appeared in the original production - talks to performers, writers and musicians who found themselves unable not to participate in a song-filled spectacular described by The Times as 'Simply excruciating'. Also appearing: Bonnie Langford, Sir David Hare, Esther and Abi Ofarim, Ritchie Blackmore, Professor Sir Roger Penrose, Joan Armatrading.

9.30: Telly Beverage Madness! Your Thirty Greatest Wine Shows!

Count down your favourite wine, or wine-themed, TV shows from the last fifty years - and vote for your number one, the all-time greatest wine show! Among the candidates:

Late Night Wine-Up - classic wine discussion format from the 1960s

The Rockford Oenophiles - starring James Garner as the eponymous Sonoma Valley-based crime-fighting detective

Thunderbirds Are Go! - classic 1960s marionette action series, fortified by the preferred drink of bums and hobos across the generations

Top of the Papes - remember how, every Thursday night, we used to tune in to now-disgraced BBC TV presenters uncorking the latest from a famous French wine-making region?

Whose Wine Is It Anyway? - popular TV improv series (on both sides of the Atlantic) in which comedians dispute the ownership of a glass of wine

The Riojaford Files - spin-off from the American original, starring Javier Bardem as the bodega-based crime-fighting detective

Presented by Phillip Schofield.

11.00: Wine Movie Classic - My Grapes Are Unpalatable (1959)

Legendary winecentric drama starring Anthony Quinn, Sophia Loren, Gert Frobe. Quinn plays Nikos, a Greek wine-maker who sees real export potential in his particular blend of Retsina. Aided by gorgeous love interest Susanna and buffoonish UK wine importer Sir Geoffrey Stirrup, he maps out a five-year business strategy to make Retsina the most popular wine on the British dining-table. But arch-rival Gunther has other ideas... 

Little-known movie facts: Quinn was a secret teetoller in real life; and see if you can spot a very young Robert Parker, playing the part of Kostas, the peasant boy.

Nikos Kyriakou - Anthony Quinn

Susanna - Sophia Loren

Gunther Mannheim - Gert Frobe

SIr Geoffrey Stirrup - Thorley Walters

Police Chief - Thanassis Vengos

Army Officer - Ernest Borgnine

Interrogator - Telly Savalas

Chief Torturer - Martin Balsam

Director: John Ford

1.00 am: Wine News and Weather

Tonight from Puligny-Montrachet.