Schmoozing with booze this Valentine's Day is a sure-fire way of turning your loved one's knees to jelly. Start by whipping out a bottle of vintage Dom Perignon chilled to 38 degrees Fahrenheit from the fridge, open it (without taking your eye out with the flying cork) before pouring it into elegant champagne flutes.
Unfortunately Dom Perignon is pretty expensive (Majestic's price for a 2012 bottling is £180 but there is a rosé version at just £290), so a better choice is a much younger champagne or a champagne blend made from several years production. These are labelled Non-Vintage or NV and are half the price of a vintage champagne made from one particular year's crop, with supermarket own-label bottles starting at around £18.
But if you're looking for an under-a-tenner romantic sparkler then your best bet is a bottle of Australian fizz. It'll taste a whole lot fruitier (more pear and tinned peach flavours rather than champagne's lemon and biscuit) but it may not make your loved one swoon if they're expecting the more traditional French stuff. Don't worry, just pop a whole vanilla pod into the opened bottle. Not only will this make the wine taste more creamy but the scent from the pod will increase levels of lust, so I'm told.
Wine is one way of winning over the heart of a British man or woman, but there is a simpler and even cheaper way. Serve a cup of British Rail tea. It worked for Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson. Only Briefly though, in 1945.
wineuncorked.co.uk recommends
Asda Extra Special Vintage Champagne Brut 2012
£17.33 Asda
Light and inviting aromas of white bread and apple are mixed with a touch of melon and banana. The flavours is Granny Smith’s apple mixed with honey and lemon. Gently fizzy.
Specially Selected Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore Millesmato 2020
£8.99 Aldi
Attractive aromas of spring flowers and apple pie, then slightly sharper apple flavours along with cooked pastry.
£23 Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Majestic, direct Chapel Down
This English sparkling wine is made in Kent by Chapel Down winery and is a stonker. Fruity and floral with that baked bread flavour that is expected in sparkling wines but often doesn’t taste quite like the real thing. Well this one does.
Woolundry Road Sparkling Shiraz NV
£11.99 Virgin Wines
This sparkling red made with Shiraz grapes is a throw back to the 1990s when we last saw slightly sweet red fizz from Australia in the UK. But now its back. The flavours of blackberry and liquorice with a dark chocolate edge are a good match to hot curries.
£11.99 Ocado
The aroma from the Grillo grapes is similar to champagne with nutty white bread plus apple and lemon fruitiness. But the flavour has some smokiness mixed in with its acidity. Interesting.
£8 SPAR
A bright pink fizz that wafts out aromas of almond macaroons and apple and tastes of apple charlotte dessert. Spumante rating means it is lightly fizzy.
