2 bottles of each of the following wines:

Garnacha de la Madre, Mas Que Vinos, Vino de la Tierra de Castilla, Spain 2018
“Fabulous” - JancisRobinson.com
As it says ‘Garnacha’ in great big letters on the front label, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this wine would be made from Spain’s third most widely-planted grape variety, Garnacha, but you should know better than that. As soon as you think you understand wine, it will nutmeg you and laugh mockingly as it runs away with the ball. This wine is actually made from Alicante Bouschet, one of the very few Vitis Vinifera grapes with red flesh and more commonly seen in Portugal and the Languedoc, but here in Toledo, south of Madrid, it is known as Garnacha Tintorera, so they put Garnacha on the label. The aforementioned red-flesh of the Garnacha Tintorera grape gives the wine its crimson colour, without the need for a heavy extraction, so everything, from the aromas to the tannins, feel soft and flowing. There’s something slightly floral on the nose, I’m thinking oleander, even though I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but there’s definitely a lot of black cherry and white pepper, together with cool graphite (remember chewing your pencil at school?) and bay leaf. It was aged for 12 months in clay amphorae and that imparts a certain earthenware quality to the flavour as well as the texture. It’s all very well listing aromas and flavours, but a wine needs a reason to be on our list and in your shopping basket, so how does this wine earn its place? Well, apart from the grape variety being a delicious curiosity, we think it’s a wine that brilliantly represents modern Spanish winemaking with its relatively light alcohol of 12.5% abv as well as a beautiful sleek, glossy freshness to the fruit that makes it a hugely versatile companion for classic or modern Spanish gastronomy favouring, as it does, cool elegance over old-fashioned heft and power. Drink now-2030.

Xinomavro, Noema Cellars, Amyndeon, Greece 2019
“Charming and delicious and so elegantly structured. Masses of delicate pleasure.” - Julia Harding MW for JancisRobinson.com
Xinomavro is our favourite Greek variety, which is probably because it tastes like a cross between Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo, which are two of our favourite grape varieties. This brilliant value example stopped us in our tracks at a wonderful Greek wine tasting where it stood out for its haunting aromas. The winemaker told us that low yields and a gentle extraction are key to the wine’s soft and mellow character, as the low yields confer intensity of flavour while the gentle maceration teases those flavour-packed molecules out of their shell. The result is a wine with the bodyweight of a Pinot Noir and the aromatic lift of a Nebbiolo, simultaneously supple and juicy, showing morello cherry, strawberry, tobacco and dried orange with a wisp of gunpowder smoke, like a November field at sunrise on the day after Guy Fawke’s Night. 12% alc. 6 months in French oak. Drink now-2028.

Crozes-Hermitage 'La Certitude', Francois Villard, Rhone, France 2021
Drinking this Crozes-Hermitage reminded me that wine is made from grapes. Quite a “Eureka!” moment, I’m sure you would agree, but in the daily ebb and flow of the wine trade, you tend to forget that wine is made from something that has a primary purpose over and above that of being fermented for the pleasure of human beings. In nature, fruit is a lure. It’s made to attract birds and insects for the vital business of pollination. So, it needs to look, smell and taste good. Birds don’t read reviews or choose grapes with gold medals, they don’t do vertical tastings or keep cellar plans, they just want to eat tasty, ripe fruit and when I tried this wine, made from the Syrah grape, all of the extraneous noise that surrounds wine just fell away and I imagined how delicious the grapes on the vine must have been to produce such a heaven-scented, fabulously delicious wine, redolent of violets, black cherry, cassis, black pepper and loose tea. 12.5% alc. Drink now-2030.

Tempranillo 'La Pintora', Bodega La Legua, Cigales, Spain 2013
In case you didn’t clock the vintage, this is a wine with a decade under its belt, but it hasn’t been sitting in our cellar gathering dust. We’ve only just shipped it from the bodega, because they don’t release it until it’s in its perfect ‘sweet spot’ for drinking and boy is it just that! I took a bottle to my parents’ house for Sunday dinner and my dad took one sip and ‘cornered’ the bottle in a politely proprietorial way. “You can’t go wrong with this one, son” he said, pouring himself another glass and setting the bottle down beside him. For those of you who haven’t met my dad, that equates to a score of 96 points. Never mind my dad, what I love about this wine is its sense of calm composure. Having spent 2 years maturing in oak barrels and a further 7 years in bottle, time has smoothed its wrinkled front, and now, instead of something rough around the edges, it pours soft and mellow, a hint of brick to its colour, with the texture of an unassuming gentleman’s claret, yet with the depth conferred by a warmer climate, as this comes from Central Spain. The flavours say damson and cassis, but smudged a little into indistinctness, by time. A hint of forest floor, the mulch of autumn, tobacco and orange peel. You will find your own. Drink it with roast beef, but be prepared to share. 13.5% alc. Drink now-2025.

NB Some of the corks can be a little dry and crumbly. Age isn’t kind to corks or people. Ideally, use a 'butler's thief' corkscrew or, if you are using a regular corkscrew, insert it as far as possible and pull it out gently.

Bodegas Copaboca 'Juan Galindo', Ribera Del Duero, Spain 2019
“So damn delicious.” - JancisRobinson.com, 17 points
This is the Bodega Copaboca’s top wine, named after the owner’s grandfather, Juan Galindo, who planted the first vines (Tempranillo) on the estate. It has an attractive enough outside, but the interior decoration is stunning! Every surface is covered in flavour. What we love about it is the way it combines treble and bass, offering aromatic high tones of oolong tea, kola nut, hibiscus petals, vanilla pod and blackcurrant pastilles, as well as deeper notes on the palate, as you would expect from a Ribera del Duero, showing black cherry and red-fleshed plums. Words like ‘hedonistic’ and ‘decadent’ come to mind. It's a bold, exuberant, powerful wine, but it has so much energy and panache that you don't feel its weight in a cumbersome way. Its ripe, sweetly succulent tannins coat the mouth in a layer of velvety luxury, and it has the body to stand toe to toe with a variety of bold-flavoured foods, from a rich vegetable stew to roast lamb to rib-eye steak or a brisket of beef. 14.5% alc. 14 months in new French and American oak barrels. Drink now-2030.

Patritti 'Merchant Series' Shiraz, McLaren Vale Australia 2017
When this deep, inky liquid was poured into our glass, it felt like that moment on a roller-coaster when the safety bar is lowered, the train jerks forwards and you feel that mild sense of panic. Australian Shiraz can be a bone-shaking experience that knocks you from pillar to post, so we braced ourselves, but this wasn’t a rattling assault on the senses, they had cushioned the seats and oiled the wheels, so it glided over the rails and we were able to enjoy the ride and appreciate all the twists and turns. I have now run out of rollercoaster analogies, and I’m quite proud of myself for not using any of the obvious ones. This white-knuckle ride of thrilling loop the loops [You’re fired! - Ed.] is the best value Shiraz we have tasted since Mad Dog Munzberg’s ‘Mad Dog’ Shiraz 2013 and anyone lucky enough to have bought a few bottles of that before Mad Dog hung up his secateurs, will know that’s a mighty fine compliment. It’s deep and dark, with aromas and flavours evoking blackcurrant cordial, blueberry jam (but it’s not jammy), vanilla and chocolate nibs. The texture is glossy and silky, not dark or tannic, proving that bigger isn’t always better. Patritti’s JPB ‘Limited Release’ Shiraz is a much more ‘impressive’ wine with a higher score (96 points), but it’s cumbersome and unwieldy and weighs in at over 15% alc. There’s a reason why tennis rackets aren’t 6 feet wide. There’s a point at which something reaches perfect form and balance and it applies to wine as much as it does to tennis rackets. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I would write. 14.5% alc. Drink now-2035.