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MacDonald's of wines Jacobs Creek, Blossom Hill, Harry's etc



sydney

sydney

tinky ****in winky
Jul 11, 2003
17,750
town full of eejits
very rarely drink white wine but when i do it's ssb .....chardonnay never , drink shed loads of red wine and the cheaper Aussie reds always seem to taste like crap on the other side of the world , don't know if it's down to the transport method......red wine that has been kept at over 25 degrees for any amount of time can be written off as cooked and therefore shite. Jacobs creek is 6-8 bucks a bottle here so you wouldn't expect much for that to be fair .....
 






C

crookie

Well-known member
Jun 14, 2013
3,310
Back in Sussex
Great thread. Jacobs Creek is an ordinary wine but their Single Vineyard wines are decent, and regardless are a step up from Echo Falls/Blossom Hill. With the duty and VAT, on a £5 wine you are getting maybe 20/30p of juice but trade up to a £7/8 wine and you'll be getting £2+ juice in the bottle. Ten times the quality for £2+ more. Generally you get what you pay for, but for a top drawer bottle you don't need to go crazy. £9-15 will buy you a v nice drop. TBH the difference between a £15 and £30 often is negligible

Sent from my SM-G928F using Tapatalk
 


GT49er

GT49er

Well-known member
Feb 1, 2009
46,717
Gloucester
Steve in Japan said:
When in Tokyo, my favourite Indian restaurant had both Mateus Rose and Black Tower on the list. Retro!
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I love Mateus Rose! Back in the day, if you managed to get invited back to her's 'for a coffee' there were signs to look for. If she put on a Leonard Cohen LP, that was pretty hopeful.........but if she then got out a bottle of Mateus Rose - that was Bonanza!!
Still occasionally buy a bottle - just to reflect on some very happy occasions! Mateus Rose - Woo-Hoo!
 


Rugrat

Rugrat

Well-known member
Mar 13, 2011
10,215
Seaford
I'll give a plug to this place

https://www.calaiswine.co.uk

Have been using it for several years and it's brilliant. I go over every 6 months or so and pick up 20 or so cases. They pay for the Chunnel and the Mrs gets a bit of time in Cite Europe followed by a decent lunch. Back home before tea time.

They have a huge selection including some decent NZ Sauvignons at less than a fiver.

Only 5 minutes from tunnel and a large tasting room too, where you can get merrily tanked up if that's your fancy ???
 




Dick Head

Dick Head

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Jan 3, 2010
13,632
Quaxxann
Blossom Hill tastes just fine out of a plastic cup at a mate's barbecue. With prawn sandwiches on the other hand...
 


dazzer6666

dazzer6666

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Mar 27, 2013
52,399
Burgess Hill
Machiavelli said:
I'm a wine snob, but Jacob's Creek make damn good wines. Blossom Hill and Echo Falls are just dreadful, cynical nonsense.
Aldi and Lidl have a fine selection.
FWIW, you'll get the best 'VFM' in the £7-15 price point. Because of fixed costs (duty, VAT, shipping, bottles, labels, stoppers, profit for retailers, producers, middle-men etc), the amount of money spent on a £4 wine is a few pence, but £5 you're probably getting 10p-20p spent on the bottle. By £7, you're getting to or even above £1 and then swiftly upwards of that. Beyond £15, you're paying for rarity, novelty and market pressure.
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Nailed it.
 






Dick Head

Dick Head

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Jan 3, 2010
13,632
Quaxxann
Machiavelli said:
I'm a wine snob, but Jacob's Creek make damn good wines. Blossom Hill and Echo Falls are just dreadful, cynical nonsense.
Aldi and Lidl have a fine selection.
FWIW, you'll get the best 'VFM' in the £7-15 price point. Because of fixed costs (duty, VAT, shipping, bottles, labels, stoppers, profit for retailers, producers, middle-men etc), the amount of money spent on a £4 wine is a few pence, but £5 you're probably getting 10p-20p spent on the bottle. By £7, you're getting to or even above £1 and then swiftly upwards of that. Beyond £15, you're paying for rarity, novelty and market pressure.
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dazzer6666 said:
Nailed it.
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I think that the OP's claim that they are the 'MacDonald's [sic] of wines' is not such a terrible thing as they are always of a consistent quality and therefore you always know what you are getting. Supermarkets have tasters and testers and if they were unfit for human consumption they wouldn't sell them and hardly anybody would buy them in any case. A bottle of fine wine is lovely but some people can't afford Mouton-Rothschild every day.
 


dazzer6666

dazzer6666

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Mar 27, 2013
52,399
Burgess Hill
Dick Head said:
I think that the OP's claim that they are the 'MacDonald's [sic] of wines' is not such a terrible thing as they are always of a consistent quality and therefore you always know what you are getting. Supermarkets have tasters and testers and if they were unfit for human consumption they wouldn't sell them and hardly anybody would buy them in any case. A bottle of fine wine is lovely but some people can't afford Mouton-Rothschild every day.
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Fair comment.....Echo Falls wines though are probably the McDonalds to Jacob's Creek being Byron or GBK using that analogy perhaps (although all down to personal taste - there are several wines in that price range I'm very happy to drink).

I know f-all about wine really, for me I either like the taste of it or not......the label isn't important.
 


Horses Arse

Horses Arse

Well-known member
Jun 25, 2004
4,571
here and there
Dick Head said:
I think that the OP's claim that they are the 'MacDonald's [sic] of wines' is not such a terrible thing as they are always of a consistent quality and therefore you always know what you are getting. Supermarkets have tasters and testers and if they were unfit for human consumption they wouldn't sell them and hardly anybody would buy them in any case. A bottle of fine wine is lovely but some people can't afford Mouton-Rothschild every day.
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MacDonalds is consistent too. I don't think its about what is affordable either, there's much better quality out there for the same price as your Blossom Hill. I'm certainly no wine buff, much more interested in ales than wine, but do drink red wine and there's lots of drinkable stuff out there for under £8 that doesn't make you squint.
 




maltaseagull

maltaseagull

Well-known member
Feb 25, 2009
12,991
Zabbar- Malta
edna krabappel said:
I don't consider myself a wine snob. I'd probably struggle to differentiate between various wines across the spectrum. But I do know Blossom Hill tastes like cat piss. That's not snobbery, it's just the fact that it's truly disgusting.
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Well, having never drunk cat's piss I will have to accept you are correct :)

But when I used to work in supermarkets, it was quite a popular brand so someone liked it.
 




Live by the sea

Live by the sea

Well-known member
Oct 21, 2016
4,718
For what's it's worth, you can buy a bottle of maison village, or Viognier ( think that's the right spelling) for £2 more than Jacobs creek etc and I'm no wine snob but tastes infinitely nicer.
 




Goldstone1976

Goldstone1976

We Got Calde in!!
Helpful Moderator
NSC Patron
Apr 30, 2013
13,783
Herts
dazzer6666 said:
... for me I either like the taste of it or not......the label isn't important.
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That's exactly my approach to wine too...I either like it or I don't. Remembering the label (particularly the winemaker) is a pretty good idea though, since you're more likely to like the wine made by the same label than simply picking a random wine off the shelf...

General stuff - not in relation to your post:

I say particularly the winemaker, since that is, in my experience, the single thing most likely to mean that you'll enjoy the wine in a bottle that you haven't tried before. A great winemaker will make a good wine in a crap vintage, and a spectacular wine in a great vintage; a bad winemaker is perfectly capable of making a shite wine in even a legendary vintage. Some great winemakers are not tied to a particular grower. Helen Turley, for example, is the owner of Marcassin, but also "consults" (read "makes the wine") at several other CA wineries.

I note that some people have said they can't taste the difference between one wine and another. Unless your taste buds are defective, I call BS. Three times now, I have done the following test; I have opened four bottles of wine: a random supermarket wine costing £10, and then three wines that I rate, a £10 bottle, a £20 bottle, and a £40-£50 bottle. I have then done a blind tasting and asked the participant to do nothing other than order the wines according to how much they liked them. In all three cases, they ranked them: random, decent £10, £20, £50. What this has shown me is that people who think they can't tell the difference actually can, and that there is some similarity in taste preference between drinkers, hence the utility of wine critics.

If you have little knowledge of wine, my advice would be to find a critic who seems to have a similar palate to yours and then buy the wines s/he recommends.

Someone said that above £100/bottle, you're not really paying for the juice; instead you're paying for scarcity/reputation. I largely agree, with one caveat: the very reason the wines now have both the scarcity and reputation is because of the quality of the juice. Take the wine in my avatar: 1947 Cheval Blanc. It is a legendary wine (some will say the best wine made in the 20th Century). It is ludicrously expensive (a bottle with decent provenance will cost upwards of £20k), but that is because such an item is incredibly rare (they've mostly been drunk by now, or are sitting in some Chinese billonaire's collection, never to be drunk - shame on them), and it is still reputed to be glorious to drink (I don't know, I've never had it).

Most of the wines I drink I bought for between £20 and £30, and kept for a while. If I want to try an already legendary wine, then that will cost a lot more, but I do that rarely. Mostly, what I try to do is find wines that I like on release and think will love in few years and buy a load. Reasonably often (50%), the wines I buy, thinking they will mature in to something exceptional, become highly rated and thus become valuable. Hence this offer: [MENTION=249]edna krabappel[/MENTION] - happy to oblige.
 
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TWOCHOICEStom

TWOCHOICEStom

Well-known member
Sep 22, 2007
10,565
Brighton
I must confess, that before I was far above the likes of many SCUMBAGS who drink those cheap, readily available wines. I once associated myself with somebody who was friends with a girl who had actually drunk all three of the brands mentioned by the OP.

I feel terribly ashamed to admit it, but I have also HEARD of McDonalds.
 


Stat Brother

Stat Brother

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Jul 11, 2003
73,667
West west west Sussex
edna krabappel said:
I'd genuinely love to try a (say) £500 bottle of wine, just to see how it compares, taste wise, to something considerably less expensive.

Well, I say that: I've love to try a £25,000 bottle of wine for the same reason, but for research purposes, I'm willing to stick to something ever so slightly more realistic :)
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But will the rest of the mods be prepared to slum it, for a night?
 


M

Machiavelli

Well-known member
Oct 11, 2013
16,647
Fiveways
Dick Head said:
I think that the OP's claim that they are the 'MacDonald's [sic] of wines' is not such a terrible thing as they are always of a consistent quality and therefore you always know what you are getting. Supermarkets have tasters and testers and if they were unfit for human consumption they wouldn't sell them and hardly anybody would buy them in any case. A bottle of fine wine is lovely but some people can't afford Mouton-Rothschild every day.
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Yup, good point. I hadn't read it that way.
 




Publius Ovidius

Publius Ovidius

Well-known member
Jul 5, 2003
46,019
at home
The point above about costs and standards, on a cruise we met up with a couple of Americans who were somewhat minted.

We went to dinner with them a couple of times and the first night I bought the wine and went for a reasonable New Zealand wine costing around $30 and it was a very quaffable little number and we ended up with a few bottles being drunk. The next time we had a meal together, the two ladies chose the wine and it was really tanniny and sharp....although they liked it. It was a Californian wine and I sneaked a look at the wine menu after the meal, and it cost $450.

We tend to not spend more than £15 on a bottle of wine in M&S going for the English wine mainly or New Zealand Sauvignon blanc, but if we just wanted quaffable wine we tend to go for the two for £12 wine which normally is Italian pinot or Aussie Chardonnay. M&S and Waitrose certainly have good selection and the English wine is getting better and better( as they take over more golf courses and turn them into vineyards :ffsparr:)
 




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