There are good Burgundies and there are overpriced and very ordinary Burgundies.

Better value is found along the Rhone, IMHO.

Too many good wines to mention but Argentinian Malbec is great to drink, full bodied but not too much tannin.

Margaux and St Emillion are good wines.



Never a great white wine lover but Spatlese is nice ( might be a bit sweet for some).





Castillo Peralada from Near Barcelona is a great white

Spätlese is not a variety, it's a German sub-classification within QmP and relates to when the grapes are picked.

Whilst less common than whites, there are red Spätlese wines too.

Sweetness is often a characteristic as the grape juice is more intense but many Spätlese are fermented through to dryness (look for the word Trocken (dry) or Halbtrocken (half-dry) on the neck label).

German wines (I'm speaking very generally here) went through a few decades of being known for their sweetness, Trocken and Halbtrocken wines were available but the legend goes that, after 1945, US GI's who were used to glugging Coca Cola wanted a sweeter wine and so that's what the market got, hence the god-awful Liebfraumilchs and tooth-rotting Rieslings that filtered through to the British market in the suxties and seventies.

Things are way, way better now and have been for a long time now ... but many older people still avoid German wine because of the memories of Berni Inns and sweet generic blends such as Blue Nun and Black Tower, which were unrepresentative of German wine as a whole.



Choosing a wine purely because it is a Spätlese is not a great idea, it does guarantee a riper grape but is, nonetheless, only one of the many factors to take into account.

George and Weedon Grossmith couldn't have put it better.

The best red I ever tasted was a [url=http://www.airliewinery.com/wines/?c=marechal-fochMarechal Foch from the Airlie Vineyard in Oregon[/url

There are also some great Burgundy's - wines of which are comparable with any top Bordeaux, Northern Rhone, Barolo, Southern Australian Shiraz etc.



Nowhere is Pinot Noir produced at the quality it is in Burgundy - unless you are talking Champagne. As for Chardonnay again it is without equal.



Yes you pay but if you get the correct grower - say Jobard or Barthod then their basic wines offer excellent value for money.



As for the Rhone the wines in the North especial the better growers such as Chave, Guigal are equally as expensive as the counterparts in Burgundy La Mouline is the price of Grand Cru Burgundy. Even Beaucastel in the south is now serious cash.



If you want a Ferrari then you have to pay. If you want a mini drink Kiwi pinot noir or Aussie Chardonnay.

My local Frenchman, as it were, runs a French deli around the corner from where I live. He educated me about Chardonnay, in terms of how it can be decent.



Great fun seeing people's faces now, though, if I ask if a bottle is unoaked.

I'm not a big fan of Pinot Noir in general, as so many are too thin for me.

But, if and when I do, Burgundian is the tops.

My overall preference in red wine is more for a herby Mourvedre or a big Grenache (wine with shoulders) ... hence I'm a fan of the Southern Rhone and also, over in Spain, Rioja (providing it's not too oaky).

A lot of people are sniffy about Chardonnay, completely ignoring (or ignorant of) the great wines that it goes into... Champagne, Chablis, White Burgundy etc.

Chablis[i is [/ia white burgundy. Made in the Yonne department in Burgundy.

Duh, sorry, of course it is.