Category — Still Wines

Easy Wine/Wine Of Course probably have the largest range of Bulgarian wine in the UK. A total of 18 different wines at the last count, ranging in price from £4.99 up to one at £14.99!

But there is a lot more available from the company than just Bulgarian wines. The nicely designed website holds vinous treasures from across the globe.

Strengths are in Australia (look out for Vasse Felix, Innocent Bystander and a Sangiovese from Uleybury), California (expensive but Ceago, Hirsch and Shafer are listed), Italy, New Zealand (Dog Point, Akarua and Isobel), The Rhone and Spain. Chile is a little light at just four and there are no listings for Austria or Germany.

We’re an independent wine specialists with shops in leafy north London and beautiful Ongar, Essex. Our goal is to source top quality wines from around the world from producers who are individualistic, small (but perfectly formed), and who represent the best that their respective regions have to offer. We deliver across the mainland UK at no additional delivery charge* and offer monthly wine courses and additional events to suit the casual enthusiast to the hardened connoisseur.

Free delivery across the UK.

Wine of Course (London)
216 Archway Rd
London N6 5AX
T: + 44 (0) 20 8347 9006

Wine of Course (Essex)
135 High Street
Ongar, Essex CM5 9JD
T: + 44 (0) 1277 365116

From their Eastbourne base the Sussex Wine Company are rather active on the tasting/gourmet dinner front. Their calendar brims with delights, that quickly sell out by all accounts.

We’re an Independent Wine Merchant based in Eastbourne supplying quality wines from boutique producers around the world. We have a comprehensive selection of whisky, spirits, Champagne, organic wines, and luxury goods such as caviar, foie gras and handmade East Sussex organic chocolates. We deliver to the UK and now the EU, offer free (UK) delivery over £100 and feature many discounted mixed cases. We also produce a monthly newsletter with further subscriber offers.

The range is strong on France, Italy and Australia. Other areas are a bit light but offer ’selected quality’ - Millton Opu Riesling an organic wine from New Zealand or Quinta da Boavista Espiga Tinto from Portugal for example.

For the gourmet the deli section holds many, mostly French, delicacies plus a wide range of caviar for those with deep pockets. Glasses, gift packs and gift certificates complete a good, broad range. Nothing wrong with the website either - easily navigable, clear and with just the right level of details on the products.

Delivery for orders under £100 is charged at £6.95.

The Sussex Wine Company
47 South Street
Little Chelsea
Eastbourne BN21 4UT
Tel/Fax: 01323 431143

Not just 15o wines on the list but a fine looking range of deli items too - pasta sauces, olive oils, balsamic vinegars and the like. Italy Abroad is a member of the ASDW (Association of Small Direct Wine Merchants) about which you can read in the Telegraph.

The plethora of unusual grape varieties alone makes Italy a fascinating and exciting country to explore wine wise. One way to sample the delights of Italy and the range of wines Italy Abroad offers would be via one of their pre-mixed cases. These range in price from £70 up to £150 or so. There are five different cases to select from.

Red, white and sparkling wines are all listed and available to order by the bottle if the pre-mixed cases do not appeal. A range of organic wines is also available. For a regular two bottle shipment over a year (?) the wine club will be of interest. Cost is £185.

… “Il giro d’Italia con il vino”- was formed, in order to bring to a wider public some of the outstanding small and medium-sized Italian wine makers who, in our opinion, make Italy one of the most interesting wine producing country in the world.”

Every shipment also includes detailed information about the wine’s producers, tasting notes, and food pairing suggestions from Italyabroad.com online recipes. In addition, you’ll receive special offers for more Italian wines at discounted prices, available exclusively to Club members.”

My only complaint is the lack of delivery charge details in the small print. Oh and the fact that the online newsletter hasn’t been updated since December 2005!

The Nicolas chain, is a French company owned by Casel, the same parent company of Oddbins. They have only recently broken out from their London heartland and now list 51 stores in the UK.

Several branches of Oddbins have or are in the process of being converted to the Nicolas brand (Henley-on-Thames, Beaconsfield for example); a shame in my opinion as the range is vastly smaller and, apart from a smattering of New World wines, is nearly exclusively France focused.

The website, has an English language version, (I dread to think what they mean by “Caution ! We do not go up the goods in the floors !” though) with prices listed in Euros.

All the French regions are covered - Champagne, Rhone, Alsace, Bordeaux etc - with good ranges across the board, although nothing from Pic St Loup is listed. Several pages of fine wines and Armagnac’s are available if you are feeling flush, while at the other end of the scale there are many special offers.

Each wine has basic details attached - a brief suggested food match, grape composition and perfunctory tasting notes (simply full bodied and the like). One indication of a wines popularity are the user votes. A pop-up box allows a grading of 1-5 grapes. I do wonder how many people can be bothered to go back and vote on a wine once consumed mind.

Many of the cheaper wines are listed with a six bottles minimum purchase, more expensive products are not restricted. Delivery to the UK costs 1 to 6 bottles : 19 EUROS TTC which I assume means multiples of 6 bottles attract the charge. No mention of free delivery with large orders.

The on-line wine list appears broader and more in-depth than the UK based stores. While not familiar with the wines listed the new store opening near me will be an excellent opportunity for exploration. Keep an eye on Spittoon for specific wine tasting notes.

They certainly caught my eye with free delivery in the UK for all cases of wine. But there is more to Hellion Wines than a generous delivery policy. The company is a specialist in wine from New Zealand.

While the range isn’t huge the quality is unsurpassed offering the delights of Berridge Vineyards, Lowburn Ferry, Ra Nui, Redmetal Vineyard amongst others. Prices are not cheap, but then quality from New Zealand never is; looks like the average is about £12 a bottle.

With an easy to use website, that free delivery and a passionate proprietor all lovers of New Zealand wines should drop by once in a while to see the latest discoveries.

Hellion Wines
193 Wigan Road
Standish
Wigan
Lancs WN6 0AE

I came across the Museum Wines website while searching for stockists of the delightful Domaine du Tariquet Rosé.

Museum Wines proudly displays the wine on their front page and on their promotions page. But can I find a price or how to order it? No is the answer. The promotion deal looks good - buy 10 Case’s of 6 Bottles and get one free - if you require a large quantity of decent rosé to take you through the spring and summer. No indication of price though.

Outside of France the listings are a little small - just one wine from South Africa, 6 from Spain, 2 from New Zealand, 5 from Australia and so on. But most of these wines are very interesting sporting labels I’ve not heard of or seen elsewhere. Easy then to fill the minimum 12 bottle ordering requirement.

France is better represented with about 50 wines with such delights as Mas de Daumas Gassac Blanc and Rouge and other wines form the Tariquet range.

Museum Wines is based in Moles, Farnham in Dorset but until they provide better details on their website (delivery charges, credit card assurances) and look at how people use their website it may be better to visit in person - they have a retail outlet - rather than use the website.

Artisan Wines has a simple approach: authentic French wines produced by small passionate producers, delivered to your door complete with informative tasting notes. My fellow internet wine writer Chris The Wine Doctor has crowned them ‘the best retailer of 2006′.

Artisan Wines concentrates on supplying wines in the £6 to £10 bracket, where the price to quality ratio is particularly strong. Only the Sparkling wine category (listing just one wine) and the rose selection (two wines) seem a little lacking.

The Rhone fills the red wine (virtual) shelves with whites from the Loire and the Rhone. Not a huge/daunting selection by any means.

You might be more tempted by the mixed case selections (ranging from £70 to £105) or the ‘first-come, first served offers‘ of hard to get wines. Special offers - clearance lines - are also featured. Currently a special Spring sale is under way with various price reductions.

Delivery is free of charge for orders over £150 on the UK mainland. For orders under £150 an additional charge of £5 will be added for postage & packaging. Which is very reasonable.

Following our last visit the Vineking website has been given a bit of a spruce up (well done Eric!). We can only conclude that the Vineking is an independent not to ignore.

I have been following the developments of Eric Lann, The Vineking himself, from hesitant start-up through to fully fledged wine shop. The wine list, fully searchable online, has plenty to explore. The list has been updated with those gaps in the range - New Zealand, South Africa and America - now filled. The Australian range and France are well represented with a smattering from across the various regions and, more importantly, interesting producers.

Tasting events are an important way of discovering a merchants range. The Vineking has regular tastings with Vergelegen, the Loire, California and Champagne/Sparkling planned through the Summer. These cost £30 per person and are held in Reigate.

On all orders up to £300 delivery is charged at £10. Orders of £300 or more attract free delivery for UK mainland.

The Vineking
4 West Road
Reigate
Surrey
RH2 7JT

Retail: 01737 248 833
Wholesale: 0870 850 8997

A beautifully designed website - just a touch of animation/flash to keep things interesting. Did I see somewhere that there are 800 wines on their list? All the boxes are ticked with good representation from Chile, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Australia etc etc. Impossible to pull out just a few recommendations, especially when you take into account the 45 strong range of spirits, various special offers, mixed cases and 40 odd ports!

Prices begin at £5.99. You can down load the price list in a PDF file for printing and off-line perusing. There is also a very entertaining PDF magazine that combines staff recommendations, producer profiles and loads more. All very professionally produced.

Next working day delivery is fixed at a rate of £8.50 per delivery address for all quantities from 1 bottle upwards for those who cant make it to the store. Oh, and don’t neglect the series of wine tastings over the coming months.

Overall a great looking company and worth investigating.

The Secret Cellar
43-45 Church Road,
Tunbridge Wells,
Kent TN1 1JT.
ENGLAND.

Discovered via a recommendation on fellow UK wine blog Grapefan.

What marks out The Winery is the individual wines listed. Each is personally sourced and imported with almost all being exclusive to the company. The wine list is packed with ‘unknowns’ - Mittnacht-Klack from Alsace, Tarlant Champagne, Wild Hog from California and Cheveau from Burgundy.

Strengths are in France - each region well represented by wines worthy of exploration, plus Spain, California and Italy. There is a superb list of dessert wines, mostly from Germany. New Zealand and South America are absent and Australia is poorly represented by just one producer though.

Unlike many London independents the wines are more than affordable with most coming in at under £20 a bottle. Delivery, if you can’t make it to either of the stores, costs £10 per case of 12, or free with 3 or more cases. Sadly no online ordering.

(pull)The Winery At Liberty 2nd Floor Liberty
Regent Street
London(/pull)

From the moment the site pops up in your browser you can feel the class and quality of WineDirect. The site is the on-line arm of Hailsham Cellars, an UK Wine Merchant based in Hailsham, East Sussex.

We’re passionate about wine and believe that knowing more about where the wines come from, the grape varieties and wine styles, can enhance your wine drinking experience and embolden you to experiment with the wide selection of wine styles and grape varieties on our list. That’s why we’ve added a lot of information about wine on the site in the Wine & Food and Wine Companion sections and why we are selling great wine books in our Books section.

The wine range is wide reaching - they list 35 wines from often overlooked Argentina, 100 wines from ever-popular Australia and 69 from New Zealand. But it is not just the New World at WineDirect - Spain with a list of 54 wines, Italy (187) and the regions of France (258) hold many interesting wines.

Prices are generally in the £7-£14 range although more expensive wines are of course listed. Minimum purchase is 6 bottles.

Pre-mixed cases, with prices ranging from £65 and upwards, and various regular wine club offerings complete the picture.

One thing I noticed is the embracing of customer feed-back they ask that their customers send in wine reviews and recipes for great dishes to accompany wine for publication on the site. Very Web 2.0!

As the name suggests an independent merchant that specialises in offering wines from across South Africa.

A few years ago, when I had a hand in organising small wine fairs, SA Wines Online often attended; their wines being highly popular. They operate out of South West London with sales through the functional website. Delivery is just £5.99 per order with a delivery aim of 2-3 working days from the time of order. A case of 12 wines is the minimum order.

The range is as good as I remember from the wine fair days - with wines representing all the major producers (Nederburg, Boschendal, Glen Carlou, Pongrácz, Graham Beck, Veenwouden, Jordan and many more). The front page of the website promotes new listings. Here lies the interest - wines from producers you probably haven’t encountered before. Temptingly described wines from Pierre Jourdan & Haute Cabriére, Raats, Seidelberg, Slowine, Theuniskraal and Tassenberg for example.

While the half the fun is in constructing your own mixed case of wine, not all have the time or inclination to do so; handy then that SA Wines Online offers a range of pre-mixed cases. These range from an Everyday White collection at £60 through to a Five Star Rated case at £175.

SA Wines Online also offers £10 off your first order.

For two weeks he will be appearing at various Tesco stores [map] where the Pinotage Rose has an exclusive listing signing Stormhoek lithographs - larger versions of the newly designed cartoon labels. The tour takes in the following locations -

February 2nd: Inverness, Corstorphine [Edinburgh].
3rd: Newcastle, Durham, Tadcaster.
4th: Blackpool, Bidston Moss [Merseyside], Horwich, Warrington.
5th: Stockport [Manchester], Altrichham [Manchester], Redditch [Worcestershire], Cardiff [Wales].
6th: Yeovil [Somerset], Bournemouth.
7th: Purley, Gatwick, Chichester.
8th: Sandhurst, Bursledon, Cirencester.
9th: Reading, Newbury, Abingdon.
10th: Barr Hill, Royston, Watford.
11th: Aylesbury, Ipswitch.
12th: Cheshunt [Herts.], Colchester.
13th: Pitsea [Essex], Twickenham.
14th: Brooklands [Surrey], New Malden [Surrey]

Majestic man Johnstone launches new wine site Majestic founder and former Chateau de Sours director Esme Johnstone has joined forces with David Campbell of the Everyman Library to launch a new wine website - From Vineyards Direct.

From Vineyards Direct offers a limited range of high quality and very affordable wines delivered from Europe’s best vineyards to your door. A simple, efficient, low-overhead service with prices significantly lower than other merchants. From Bordeaux and Burgundy to the Rhône, Champagne and Tuscany, we offer a hand-picked selection of exceptional finds.

Fifteen wines are currently listed. The solitary champagne is from Serge Mathieu (£14.75 bottle) described as “a single grower Champagne made from Serge Mathieu’s own grapes, and not bought in from scores of growers as the bigger brands are. The new edition of Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book lists it as “an outstanding eco-friendly” Champagne to watch in 2007. The price is unbeatable-highly recommended.”

From Burgundy the team have selected a Chablis from Montmain (£11.75), a Meursault Flamoise (£16.75) and a Saint-Veran (£7.95) (wines from Saint Veran are often my pick for the best value Burgundian whites). There is one wine from outside of France, Ananda di Toscana (£17.95) and five Clarets ranging from £6.45 to £19.95 a bottle.

The minimum order quantity of 2 cases is way over the established norm but prices do include delivery.

Minimum total order is 2 cases (24 bottles of 75cl equivalent) for the UK and 5 cases (60 bottles of 75cl equivalent) for Ireland. We also offer a collection service from just outside Calais, France, at a per-bottle saving of £1.50 for wines and £2.00 for Champagne, and a per-case saving of £18 for wine, £24 per 12-case/£12 per 6-case for Champagne.

The range might be small, which is not a bad thing as several other merchants operate the same way, but the minimum order is likely to put off many potential customers.

UPDATE: see article covering From Vineyards Direct in the Scotsman.

The Chiltern Valley Brewery and Vineyard, almost the closest vineyard to my home town of Henley, has been awarded a Royal Warrant of Appointment to the Queen - the first for an English vineyard.

The Warrant is given to only a few dozen businesses each year. Each has to have supplied the goods or services to the Royal Household for at least five consecutive years. The wines and beers of Chiltern are available in the Royal Farm shop in Windsor in addition to direct from the vineyard.

The company, based in Hambleden, was founded in 1980 on the site of an old pig farm.