CityLife

Wine round-up

COMTE Lafon of Meursault ranks high among Burgundy winemakers and the prices of his premium wines attain similar dizzying heights.

The good news is that the company offers a cheaper Lafon option, producing good value whites out of a 35-acre property in Macon under the Heritiers de Lafon label.

But be warned, the wines produced are still more serious than cheap and cheerful with hand-harvesting and and some organic viticulture. I tasted one of their 'Village Macons' on the terrace at new city centre wine merchants Hanging Ditch last week.

The draw was a sunny evening to sit out and the minimal mark-up that co-owners Ben Stephenson and Mark Dent place on their wines to encourage folk to sample them in situ.

This is an across-the-range £6 on each bottle. Try a £6 in the shop bottle then and it will cost you £12.

Try a £60 one and it will be only £66, encouraging you to 'trade up' and taste more interesteing wines affordably.

We spent £23.50 on Lafon's Macon Milly-Lamartine 2007 (£17.50 to carry out) and didn't regret it. It had oodles of that lovely Burgundian hazel nuttiness, a touch of sweetness balanced by some refreshing acidity that makes it beguiling summer drinking ( hangingditch.com ).

Changing drinking tack completely, the same rewarding day also contained a further encounter with an alcoholic ginger beer (regular readers will be aware of this summer's ongoing motif in the column).

Zingibeer was sampled, at the expense of a tempting array of other real ales, at Tim Flinn's brilliant New Oxford 'ale café' in Salford's Bexley Square conservation area.

It's a four per cent discreetly ginger (zingiber is the botanical moniker for root ginger), refreshing wheaty tipple from Blackwater, the 'susbidiary label' of Shrewsbury craft brewers Salopian. Its boss Wilf Nelson told me they had toned down the gingeriness of the product because of the effect 'full strength' has on one's bowels!

The distinctiveness of Zingibeer comes from its quality hopping and the addition of three and a half lemons per 36-gallon barrel.

Returning to the grape, the distinctiveness of Retro Fitou 2006 comes not just from its label made of brown recycled paper featuring a vintage peasant - one of the first ever growers with Southern French co-op Mont Tauch. It is also a stonkingly good chunky red (Tesco, £5.99).

It has all the characteristics you would expect from Fitou in its classic blend of 45 per cent carignan/ grenache bar spiced up with 10 per cent syrah to give a rich fruity red scented with the herbs of the Languedoc.

Finally, two sparklers from Heidsieck, a traditional champagne house that saw off aspirant English bubbly rivals in a BBC Radio Four Good Programme blind tasting last week.

Their winning wine was the Heritage non-vintage brut, but the consistency of the range was shown in a couple of other Heidsiecks I broached for a family gathering. Heisiecks is apparently the official champagne suppliers to and a sponsor of the UK athletic team.

I'd be happy to toast a Bejing athletics medalist in Heidsieck & Monopole Blue Top NV, which is nearly two-thirds pinot noir, resulting in a full spiciness (Tesco, Sainsbury's, ASDA, Morrisons and Somerfield, £22.99). But only a gold medal would do for the up-a-notch Silver Top 2002 (left) which scooped its own gold at this year's Decanter World Wine Awards. It is priced at between £31.99 and £34.99 at Sainsbury's, Booths and selected independents, but it is worth splashing the cash.

Delicate floral hints on the nose give way to soemthing more fruit-laden and complex, yet it is lively and citrussy on the palate with a hint of almonds.