Why corner shop wines are not to be sniffed at

5 hours ago 14

There was a time in my life when Campo Viejo Tempranillo was as essential as milk or bread; my flatmates and I designated it our “house wine”’. The year was 2011, we wore a lot of elasticated statement belts and lived opposite a corner shop by Brixton prison. Like us, the wine was young, fruity and there for a good time.

Campo Viejo remains one of the more obvious choices for a last-minute bottle of red. Even better is Muriel Tempranillo Rioja at the Co-op, which has all the dark red fruit and vanilla you might expect from young rioja. These days, I’d freshen up either of them with a blast in the fridge, or mix with lemonade for that emblematic Spanish summer cocktail, tinto de verano.

“Corner shops” can be variously defined. For me, the term includes mini supermarkets, or anywhere that might have a blown-up picture of a glass of deep red wine on the shopfront and whose wine selection is as commercial as it is limited. I’ve trotted around several of these places in recent weeks, and deployed friends across the UK to take photos of the wine selection in their own local corner shops.

If it’s fizz that you’re after, you know as well as I do that there will be prosecco. And if you struggle with the sherbetiness of commercial prosecco, amaros are your friend: glowing bitters such as Aperol are widely available in corner shops, and do a delicious dance with the melony, moussey notes of prosecco. Job done. Champagne is thornier territory, meanwhile, and is usually kept safe on a shelf behind the till – that is, in warm, light and unideal conditions – which is a risky way to spend big money. If you’re dead set on champers, try an affordable, own-label one; all the mini supermarkets have a classic non-vintage blend at £25-ish.

Unless you’re in a mini supermarket with own-label wines, corner shops tend to be dominated by big brands. This is tricky, because the likes of Chile’s Casillero del Diablo, say, are much stronger on reds than whites. I tend to avoid white wines in brightly labelled, clear glass bottles like the plague. Pale French rosés are a different matter, however, and you could do a lot worse than the “chicken wine” southern French rosé (made with a classic blend of cinsault, grenache and syrah) or Studio by Miraval’s “Mediterranean rosé” in today’s pick. Both offer what I hope for from a corner shop wine: good, inoffensive fun, and wine’s answer to Kylie Minogue. Oh, wait …

When it comes to whites, France seems the safest bet. Picpoul de Pinet is always good value and rarely offends, and most corner shops have a line in Burgundian giant Louis Jadot’s wines. Its Mâcon Villages offers good bang for your buck at about £13 at Tesco (the same brand’s Beaujolais Villages is an equivalent price and great served a little chilled). You could also look to lesser-known grapes: crowd-pleasing, smoky-mineral carricante from Sicily or Romania’s aromatic fetească regală, for example, which are both food-friendly and having a moment in mini supermarket selections. Who knows – you might even designate it your own house wine …