We were one of the first to list the ABV (or alcohol by volume) of each of our wines on our list.
This is not because we disapprove of high alcohol wines necessarily - some grapes simply don't make good wine at under 14% or so, and even the great Chateau Haut-Brion came in at over 15% in 2010, though most of our clarets - including the Chateau Larrivet-Haut-Brion 1999 and the delectable Montrose 2004 - are a more modest, and more traditional, 13%. We do, however, stock and sell the 2002 Stonewall Shiraz at 14.5% and the Bertani Amarone Classico 2003 at 15%.
But, at the opposite end of the scale, the lunchtime-with-work-still-to-do end of the scale, we have many which offer merely 12% alcohol by volume - our best-selling old vine Carignan, for example. And we have just managed to acquire another parcel of the Kenton Vineyard Bacchus 2010 at 11%.
The point is, we should know what we're drinking. That's why we list the ABV. And Kate Spicer, in The Sunday Times, has also cottoned onto this trend:
"Alcohol by volume (ABV) is something that, like anxious calorie counters, more and more people are alert to. It has certainly changed my drinking habits ... An English wine, Bacchus, made from a cold-weather grape, has less-than-ideal residual sugar, but at 10.5% ABV, two people can split a bottle and remain completely civilised" she wrote in yesterday's paper.
Apart from the fact that we rather like the residual sugar, and that the 2009 inched up to 11%, we agree.
I suspect many of you will too.
This is not because we disapprove of high alcohol wines necessarily - some grapes simply don't make good wine at under 14% or so, and even the great Chateau Haut-Brion came in at over 15% in 2010, though most of our clarets - including the Chateau Larrivet-Haut-Brion 1999 and the delectable Montrose 2004 - are a more modest, and more traditional, 13%. We do, however, stock and sell the 2002 Stonewall Shiraz at 14.5% and the Bertani Amarone Classico 2003 at 15%.
But, at the opposite end of the scale, the lunchtime-with-work-still-to-do end of the scale, we have many which offer merely 12% alcohol by volume - our best-selling old vine Carignan, for example. And we have just managed to acquire another parcel of the Kenton Vineyard Bacchus 2010 at 11%.
The point is, we should know what we're drinking. That's why we list the ABV. And Kate Spicer, in The Sunday Times, has also cottoned onto this trend:
"Alcohol by volume (ABV) is something that, like anxious calorie counters, more and more people are alert to. It has certainly changed my drinking habits ... An English wine, Bacchus, made from a cold-weather grape, has less-than-ideal residual sugar, but at 10.5% ABV, two people can split a bottle and remain completely civilised" she wrote in yesterday's paper.
Apart from the fact that we rather like the residual sugar, and that the 2009 inched up to 11%, we agree.
I suspect many of you will too.
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