If you’ve ever read any of my posts, tweets or have spent five minutes in my company, you’ll know that my drink of choice is a massive gin. HECK my whole blog design is based around the stuff fa crying out loud (p.s still waiting for a gin company to offer to sponsor me. Just sayyyyying). I’m also massively partial to a beer, which is what my first ever blog post was about, way back when I was a pure and innocent (ha) blogging newcomer. However, a few years ago I also found a soft spot for a big delicious glass o’red. Mainly because the chap I was dating (n.b shagging) at the time was a massive red fan and because I wanted him to think I was like, really cool and stuff, I drank it until I liked it. DON’T GIVE UP ON YOUR GOALS GUYS.

So, I was a bit chuffed when the lovely folk over at Humble Grape asked if they could send me some wine to try. Let’s just imagine how that conversation went:

“Hi, we’d like to send you some free wine in the post.”

“UM LET ME THINK ABOUT IT YEAH OKAY COOL THAT WOULD BE FINE ACTUALLY.”

The two they sent over were a bottle of their Pico Cuadro Tempranillo (2011) which hails from a little village, Quintanilla de Onésimo in Spain and The Red (2010), created by wine guru and god Jacques Lurton.

Now listen, I’m not going to pretend to be a massive wine boff and tell you about all the subtle hints and flavours I found in each glass of this ruby goodness (I’m more of a ‘slosh it down and OH SHIT it’s empty, we’d better open another bottle’ kind of wine drinker) BUT I can tell you that both bottles were bloody delicious. The Pico was gutsy, chunky and had a great big pair of balls (so to speak). We poured it into a decanter as recommended and tried to hunt the flavours which are apparently “strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, and bramble fruit with hints of liquorice, pepper and vanilla.” YUMMERS.

For a house blend, The Red was excellent and served as a bloody good pal to the spag bol I knocked together on the night we drank these babies (it was all research of course, so I could write an effective and informative post….). Jacques Lurton, the creator is actually hosting a Winemaker Dinner for Humble Grape on February 11th, so if you’re a massive wine buff, get thyself along!

I was massively impressed by these offerings from Humble Grape. They’re a small, independent company who aim to offer boutique, organic wines sourced from small family-owned vineyards, and have something to offer everyone, from the experienced sommelier to those whose wine purchasing technique is just have a look at whatever’s on special offer in Sainsburys (i.e me.)

JOY! WINE! SLOSH! HOORAY!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Humble Grape kindly sent me these bottles to review, but as always, if I hadn’t loved it, I wouldn’t have written about it!