GOOD NEWS - CHARDONNAY CONSUMPTION DROPS BY ABOUT 40% ..

...... at our house. Which means that there is more Chardonnay for me as Her Indoors has gone back to drinking Pinot Gris. She had previously gotten over that incomprehensible fad see:


HERE


but has rediscovered it.
The reason may lie in the crappy and cheap Chardonnay I have been buying of late. I shop around on web-sites and at supermarket 'wine fairs' but it is becoming increasingly hard to find good quality wine at bargain prices.
The reason is because the legitimate overstocks of very good wine that had to be specialed have all gone. Sure, some occasionally turn up but no wine company in their right minds now overproduce top-end wines that have required higher inputs (low cropping, good oak, expensive winemaking etc). What has happened aslo is that they are producing wine under same or similar labels that pretend to be of the same quality that they were before but have been engineered downwards (no use of barrels, higher cropping, cheaper inputs). I won't name them but beware the bright orange label, the boutique 'family' names that have now been taken over by big corporates and the fancy names that don't seem to have proper adresses or websites.

While every now and again I get lucky with a genuine great wine that has been specialed off I now have to spend more to get the good stuff.
This is a double-edged sword of course because if I do continue to buy the good stuff Her Indoors might switch again!

That other cliche