Weekly Winedown #9 Vinas del Vero Crianza.

Welcome to the Weekly Winedown. Each week I selflessly drink wine for you offer a review.
Please don’t expect anything professional, I consume a lot of wine but I’m no pro.

The only real ‘rule’ I’m putting in place is that the wine is to be under £8 a bottle. #keepitclassy.

Given the roaring success of Australia and New Zealand, this week I once again opted for a wine from a country I’m not usually impressed with.

Spain, it’s your turn to impress me and you’ve got a LOT to live up to!

To be fair, I’ve only really tried Rioja from Spain (and sangria but that’s not REALLY wine is it? It’s more like 20:20, (those who get that cultural reference will be showing their age)) I rather dislike Rioja and so have since ruled out an entire country of wine based on that. I am willing, and hoping, to be proven wrong with my sweeping generalisation!

We’re onto week 9 and this week I will be chugging delicately sipping Vinas del Vero Crianza currently on offer at £5.99 but generally around the £9 mark.
The label is pretty, looking out over vineyards and olive(?) trees on a starry night, with a cat. Who doesn’t love a cat on a bottle of wine? Who doesn’t love starry nights in warm climates? It’s not a quirky label but it’s an image I’m buying into!

Let’s take a look at the blurb…

“Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Garnacha & Syrah – Red Spanish Wine…
Made from grapes harvested from our own vineyards, the wine is aged for of 8 months in American oak barrels, followed by a further 18 months in bottle before being released.
Deep cherry red in colour, with distinctive aromas of ripe berry fruits with hints of toast and vanilla and sweet oak spice. The palate is full and long, with mature fruit flavours and hints of violets.”

I have mixed feelings about this wine, on the one hand they look like they’re covering their backs with the list of grapes they use, ‘we just use all the grapes’.
On the other hand it takes them AGES to make it so maybe there’s something special in that….But if it takes 26 months to make is 2012 the year it was started or the year it was complete?

With aromas of “berry fruits…toast…vanilla and sweet oak spice” I confess to having no idea what to expect it to smell like. Ice cream on toast with strawberry sauce and a tree??? Why would a wine have a hint of toast smell when bread isn’t used to make it? Or does toast mean something entirely different in Spanish? It’s a complex description.

To counteract the VERY specific description of the smell, the description of the taste couldn’t be more vague. Essentially they’re saying it tastes of old fruit and flowers.

Is it going to smell better than it tastes? Let’s find out!

It’s the first cork I’ve had to contend with in a while, it was tricky..
It was a glorious red, red like Christmas trimmings. This was pretty much the highlight.
I could definitely smell the vanilla undertones (said like a pro) and the spicy. I still have no idea where the toast smell was meant to kick in. It didn’t. It smelt a bit preserve-y.
It doesn’t taste of old fruit and flowers. I’ll be honest, I don’t know what a violet tastes like but I don’t think it was in that palate! It was a bit bitter, it sucked all the moisture from my mouth. It was maybe a little sweet for my liking but not entirely awful.
I won’t be rushing to buy it again, I’d probably buy it as a gift for a friend. You know, that crap friend we all have.

Name – Vinas del Vero Crianza
Price – £5.99
Colour – Christmas red.
Smell – Sweet vanilla, no toast.
Taste – Bitter berries.
Goes well with – Life when it’s the only red you have in.
Overall score – a terribly average 3/5.