Cornas is usually quite rough and masculine, this is a refined version.

Cornas Domaine Saint-Pierre 1995, Paul Jaboulet-Aine
The nose is silky with ripe, dark fruit. It has a good earthy character as well. It smells reasonably complex and perfectly mature, with a pleasing voluptuous character. There is a degree of masculinity on the palate, but it is very smooth and silky. Also quite sexy. The concentration and fruit are really good. This is a really good Cornas, mature but but still full of life. Yummy yummy, I like this.

It is a compare and contrast session with two 1997 Mourvèdres.

Bridgehead Mataro 1997, Ridge
The nose is quite polished and round, but it seems that the fruit is beginning to leave this wine. It doesn't smell particularly complex. The palate has a bit of fruit, but it is quite angular and drying out a bit. The wine is drinkable, but past its best.

Bandol Cuvée Spéciale 1997, Domaine Tempier
This is much more like it. Grilled meat, earth and dark fruit on the nose. It is very complex. There is a degree of arsehole character on the nose, but it is by no means distracting. It tastes very soft and smooth, with plenty of fruit and a long, complex finish. It is very much in good condition and is very pleasurable. Good stuff!

What a lovely day it has been in Town! The sun has been shining, there has been a gentle breeze and I have been trying a new Champagne producer. This is his most basic stuff and it is a bargain.

Champagne Brut Cuis Premier Cru, Gimonnet et fils
This smelled very fresh and malic on the nose, there was also a pleasing degree of minerality to it. The palate was very apple-y, a bit angular, but not short on concentration. It was quite nice. Don't get me wrong, it was by no means special, just a good bottle of fizz for €16.

Continuing my theme that wines do not have to be frighteningly alcoholic to be good I was very pleased with this little number clocking in at 12.5%. It was lovely.

Vosne-Romanée 2002, Domaine Rene Engel
A fresh nose of complex, exotic fruit. It is quite beautiful and stylish. The fruit and minerality of the nose sing a lovely song of integration and balance. The palate is fresh and light, but not short of concentration. It is very long and very classy. This is a really lovely village-level wine.

M. Engel died last summer, on his yacht in Tahiti, just before I attempted to book a tasting chez Engel. He was a great source of affordable Vosne and will be greatly missed.

Zind-Humbrecht do not hold back when it comes to making large-scale wines. Even in moderate vintages they can be real behemoths. 2003 was incredibly hot all over Europe, so some very ripe wines have been produced. Z-H produced some wines that have been quite terrifying in terms of ripeness.

Riesling Grand Cru Rangen Clos Saint-Urbain 2003, Domaine Zind-Humbrecht
The nose smells very strongly of tropical fruit-flavour chews, really confected. It smells quite hot and alcoholic too, despite only being a claimed 13.5%. Much to my surprise the palate is pretty much dry, lots of sweetness from the alcohol and confected fruit, but not so much sugar there. It is really confected, though, and I found it hard to discern any real terroir characteristics. Most of the class has been roasted out of this. I suppose it is quite a crowd-pleasing drink, but hardly fine Riesling. The price was pretty steep.

I've really hated every Egly-Ouriet Champagne I've had. This was recommended to me by someone reliable who claimed it was nice and fruity; niceness and fruitiness are characters lacking in their other fizzes I've tried. As it is their most basic cuvée it should have been fooled around with less. It is pure Pinot Meunier.

Brut "Les Vignes de Vrigny", Egly-Ouriet
The nose is bready with some fruit, but it smells pretty confected to me. The palate is short and lacking any form of complexity of favour. It is really one-dimensional and bland. What fruit there is there is strange and confected, nothing nice to report at all. It is very thin and what flavours it has are really actively unpleasant. The finish is seriously disgusting. No way, this is vile to the extent that even my first glass will not be finished.

A mixed bag of wines this month, some decent Burgundy and top-flight Cornas. You'll note it is not only European wines that get a nod this month.

Clos de la Roche Grand Cru 2000, Domaine Arlaud: A vintage that is up for drinking soon. Arlaud's Clos de la Roche might not be as good as Dujac's, but it is a seriously lovely drink. £35.00 from Stone, Vine and Sun.

Chambolle-Musigny 1999, Domaine Ghislaine Barthod: A great village wine for drinking now or ageing a few years. Read the note here. £21.95 from Stone, Vine and Sun.

Cornas Domaine Saint Pierre 1995, Jaboulet: An excellent, sophisticated, stylish Cornas. The price is very good. £19.50 from the Wine Society.

Bourgogne Rouge 2002, Domaine Arlaud: One of the best Bourgogne Rouges I've had, at this price it is a steal. £10.25 from Stone, Vine and Sun.

Cabernet Sauvignon 2001, Tim Adams: A personal favourite, this is as cheap as good wine gets. Whilst this is nice and ripe it also has a good degree of rigour and balance. It is not over ripe or over-blown. It is mostly Cabernet Sauvignon with a bit of Cabernet Franc. £9.95 from the Wine Society.

More prices and availability from Wine Searcher.

I've had Coulée de Serrant loads of times and I've always hated it. I like Savennières very much, but what is supposedly the ultimate has always struck me as being too dirty and lacking any real charm. It is fiercely expensive, too. So image my surprise when I tried this.

Savennières Coulée de Serrant 1988, Nicolas Joly
The nose is really quite interesting, it smells somewhere in between a mature dry Riesling and a bottle of Grand Cru Chablis. It is a bit toasty, very ripe and really mineral. The palate is very weighty and dense, but the complex assortment of flavours it displays are all in balance with one another. The acidity is good enough to keep even a wine as dense as this lively. It is by no means tired or dull. Certainly a bit weird, but certainly good.

It was still quite expensive, I am not sure it was worth the money, but it was really interesting to see how it had developed in the bottle.

On our trip to Calais we visited a huge hypermarket, of its ninety-odd aisles about five were filled with wine. The selection appeared to suffer from what I have seen in many other French super/hypermarkets, namely an excess of undrinkable dross.

It seems very important to the big supermarkets that they cover as many of France's innumerable appellations as possible. Even really obscure appellations are represented in the bigger shops. However, it only appears that having many wines is important, there is no quality bar that has to be cleared.

When in the shop yesterday there was in excess of twenty minor St. Emillion wines on offer in one area of the wine section. Most of these were from unheard-of producers and those that were recognisable were evil filth. The Burgundy section was over-flowing with vile rubbish that would probably only be suitable for putting on chips. It was actually depressing to see so much dross, and so much being purchased by people who were clearly going to have a rotten time when they popped the bottle. I am not sure it is true that people buying the stuff don't know any better, the wines were shockingly poor and anyone would be able to tell that when forced to drink them.

Strange as it may seem, I think British supermarkets do a bit better in their wine selection. Not that they lack dross, but they generally tend to have a smaller selection of well-made wines that will appeal to a wide selection of people. The French model of simply trying to cover all bases, even if it means retailing rubbish, seems a strange idea for a country that produces the best wines in the world. By selling so much swill they damage the name of French wine.

Yesterday I went on a day trip to France with a friend and my partner; the idea was to buy cheap Champagne. It was a successful trip.

The Champagne monger of choice in Calais is Perardel on rue Marcel Doret, a few minutes drive away from the ferry terminal. The prices were generally a third lower than in the UK. If you should visit I heartily recommend Billecart-Salmon Brut Reserve at €24 a bottle, their Blanc de Blanc non-vintage at €32.70 a bottle and Gosset Grande Reserve for €26.60. They also had some Pol Roger Brut Chardonnay 1996 for a bargain €40 and I do have a bit of a soft-spot for Gratien non-vintage at €22.50.

They also had a few Champagnes from smaller growers. I picked up a couple of bottles from Pierre Gimonnet and, perhaps foolishly, a bottle of Egly-Ouriet's basic Pinot Meunier. I've hated every other bottle of Egly-Ouriet I've tried, they are ridiculous beasts with no harmony or refinement, but this basic wine was recommended to me by a reliable person.

When priced so keenly Champagne does not seem quite such a luxury item so it can be opened and enjoyed more freely.

Australian wine makers often say, "I make my wine with ripe fruit". The insinuation is that European wine makers don't use ripe grapes and so make weedy wines. I call this 'crap' and it gets me very irritated because:

• Some of the best wines are made with perfectly ripe grapes yet are low alcohol and not lacking any concentration. Obviously German wines fit into this category, yet this is true of other wines too. The de Montille Burgundies I've had recently have all been 12% and have been full of ripe fruit with plenty of depth. Last night's Engel Vosne 1er cru was only 12.5%. Jean-Marc Roulot's village wines are all sub-13% and are models of stylish beauty. I've had good sub-13% Claret. Grapes for Champagne are only just ripe and they can be incredibly weighty and concentrated.
• 'Ripe' does not mean 'over-ripe'. Lots of these 14-17% monsters are bloody awful. They often reek of alcohol and have nasty, hot palates. The fruit is jammy, the tannins soupy. The real beasts are not good candidates for ageing.

As I've said on many occasions, I like loveliness, harmony, and beauty. I suppose this is why there is such a dearth of tasting notes for Australian wines here. No Recioto either. I have a soft-spot for many new world wines, but they tend to be those that are light in alcohol, balanced and harmonious; lovely wines, as they are also known.

I got this on release from Berry's, what a bargain it was. It doesn't suffer from 1996 syndrome.

Vosne-Romanée Les Brulees 1996, Rene Engel en magnum
A lovely, soft nose of mature fruit. It is very complex and harmonious. There is a good Vosne character to it, it is aristocratic and exotic. The palate is really soft and fruity, but it is kept from being soupy or flabby by a nice sappy-ness to the finish. This is really complex and earthy, and is drinking very well now. This is the best 1996 red Burgundy I've had in a while; most of them seem frighteningly acidic whereas this is well balanced. Lovely, slips down a treat.

This is from one of the more expensive producers of Burgundy. I have a bit of a soft-spot for their wines, but I can rarely afford them. This was nigh-on thirty pounds; pretty steep for a village wine.

Vosne-Romanée 1999, Domaine Méo-Camuzet
Initially the nose was a bit reduced and backward, but with vigorous swirling in the glass it opened up to display ripe, clean, black cherry fruit. The nose seems very concentrated for a village wine. It seems very concentrated on the palate too. It has a lot of ripe fruit, good acidity and nice ripe tannins, but at the moment it is just a bit lacking in charm. It may seem odd to say at seven years old a village wine needs more age, but I think this would be much better with five more years in the cellar. I can see that its components would be more integrated and less quaquaversal given a bit more age. It is certainly very good and I think it is worth the money; it is just not ready for drinking yet.

I'm around at the neighbours place and a bottle of Grosset Polish Hill 2004 has been cracked. This is really excellent Riesling: fresh, lively, balanced, complex, really lovely stuff. At fifteen quid a bottle from the Wine Soc it is a bargain. It'll age for ten or so years as well, if you have the facilities.

A more sedate dinner party last night.

Chablis Premier Cru le Forest 2004, R & V Dauvissat
This had good weight and roundness. It was quite acidic, but the balance was superb. Nice minerality and I think the creamy old oak character was very satisfying.

Gewurztraminer Grand Cru Hengst 2002, Domaine Zind-Humbrecht
Very ripe and powerful on the nose. It had a strong lychee and rose water scent. The high alcohol showed itself a bit on the nose. It tasted enormous, with loads of fruit, minerality and even some acid. I first thought this was just too intense to enjoy with food, but in the end I drank my glass with pleasure. It was quite good.

Bandol Cuvée Spéciale la Migoua 2001, Domaine Tempier
This was another heroic wine clocking in at a claimed 15% alcohol. It had the stuffing to be balanced at this ripeness. Lots of perfumed, fragrant fruit. It was really smooth and silky despite some big tannins. It was clean, too! Excellent Bandol.

Bandol Cuvée Spéciale la Tourtine 2001, Domaine Tempier
This was tougher and less fragrant, but the dense dark fruit it had was good. Tannins were a bit tough on the palate, but it had the balance to show this would be a fine Bandol when fully mature. This was also clean, hooray!

The Migoua struck me as being the best of the two.