Une bouteille de Cotes Du Rhone

I have only been writing these blogs for a couple of weeks now and for some reason I have ventured away from the Beer Blog that I was originally intending to write. Don't get me wrong I do enjoy drinking and trying out various different tipples, but I had only intended on writing about wine & spirts every now and again.....however I have recently stumbled on something amazing and thought I would share it with you.

As I have previously stated I am far from being a connoseuir, I am happy to try any tipple and purely judge them on whether I enjoy to drink them or not (9 times out of 10 I am happy for a second glass).

Every now and again in our house we do enjoy a glass (or two) of wine. We tend to open a bottle during inpromptu drinking evenings in certain family members dining rooms! If I were to have the choice I would always choose a red wine, for me white wine is better served cold on a warm day...and lets face it on those days I will stick to a beer. When choosing a red wine I enjoy drinking rich, spicy and full bodied red wine...if this sounds like you, then you need to try the tipple below.

At Christmas the in-laws gave us a mixed case of wine, we have made sure to savour these bottles as the in-laws have a very good taste in wine and we know these bottles are worth only drinking when in the mood for a quality glass. On opening the bottle of Saint-Esprit Cotes Du Rhone I was careful not to pour huge measures into our glass, as I already knew that I would want to make this bottle last. Whilst pouring it had a very deep colour to it and really stuck to the glass. The fruity flavours are what hit you first, followed by the spices which leave a really warm aftertaste in the back of your throat. Now I really surprised myself whilst drinking this because I had (without knowing it) paired this wine perfectly with our tea. The heat from the spices really go well with a lamb curry and would match any meal with a few chillis thrown in. 8/10

Cotes Du Rhone is definately a favoured red wine in our household. We first became hooked on it about two years ago whilst on a family holiday in France.
We spent alot of time in L'Epinoux drinking Kronenbourg on an afternoon due to the heat, but because of our location we naturally went towards the red wine as the day went on. The highlight of the whole trip for me was to relax outside of our Gite with the BBQ going and the whole family sat around the table enjoying a glass.

The trick if you are ever buying wine in a french supermarket is to look at the emptiest shelf and see what the locals are buying. Here we found this lovely bottle, one that even though we brought half a dozen bottles back with us to the UK I still to this day can not find it on any online wine shops. In the UK you would probably pay at least £7 for the quality of this bottle...however to the French, we managed to purchase these for €1.50 a bottle (looking back the empty shelf may have been down to our family).

If you ever see this in the UK let me know!!!!

The Saint-Esprit is approx £10 a bottle and can be found at the link below
https://www.majestic.co.uk/Cotes-du-Rhone-Saint-Esprit-zid06541