Friday 27 April 2012

Anything described by Tesco as "oaky" .

Were to start on this one... A while back Tesco had an excellent selection of wines, well chosen balanced and of good quality. Somewhere over the last 2 or 3 years the wine buyers at Tesco  must have lost their collective minds and started buying randomly like panic stricken kittens.  The result is frankly shite.  Where at one point it was quite possible to purchase a wine at £4.99 that tasted reasonable it is now impossible to do so under a tenner.  The vast majority of the low cost wines can be compared to ribena that has had a tramps sock in it for three months.  The worst culprits are the so called "half price sale" items which seem to be bulk purchases from an anti-freeze company in Tunisia.  Of course the "half price" thing is a bit of a swizz anyway, the definition of a sale is that it has to be on sale at the original price in one store in Britain for 28 days sometime in the proceeding year.  Essentially Tesco and pals can sell "Chateau Grot - Reserve" at the full price at one Tesco Express far from civilisation and then claim to the rest of us that they are slashing their prices.  These end fillers look great and always carry the title "Reserve" or "Special" in a way that makes us all think "by god this is a bargain" of course reserve and special mean nothing more than some bright spark at an ad agency thinks it sounds posh.  Over Christmas these are especially popular and thousands of people are put off red wine taking a swig always followed up by the sentence "I don't really like red wine you know".  You know what I don't when its shit!! The worst criminal in  the Tesco pantheon however is anything they describe as "oaky".  Oak aged means usually that a wine is literally kept for a long time in a oak barrel, oaky on the other hand means fuck all. Quite often the "oaky" flavour is just a mask for the myriad of crappy chemicals in the wine itself, or a euphemism for "tastes like Brut aftershave.  Tesco's slide from world leading retailer, that treated its customers and staff with respect (and knew what tastes ok) continues . My estimation is that by 2015 the entire wine aisle will be lined with paint thinners cunningly renamed as "classic red reserve" and the acrid taste described on the label as "cheeky" or "lively".  Avoid.

No comments:

Post a Comment