’ We wanted a sweet, easy-drinking red wine without any of the punishment of tannin which characterised many French wines at the time. We chose an unorthodox method to achieve that aim. Our product ‘template’ was to use the Liebfraumilch Blue Nun liquid and colour it red using proprietary food colouring.’
If you are a student, you’ll try anything. Fortunately, I graduated just before this stuff. Don Cortez Spanish Burgundy (sic) was the equivalent affront to the senses of my day.
Ah… Piat D’or. Yes I was in my teens then (living near Stevenage actually) and Hertfordshire still had some genuinely original pubs and beers - so no reason to drink anything else. Wine was for special occasions - Liebfraumilch the peak in sophistication.
Red Piat d’Or I vaguely remember as being a Beaujolais style wine, bland, and to be honest rather expensive. Nothing wrong with it, but no reason to drink it.
I think so! It was one of the biggest brands of its day so most of us then would have had a glass or two at a party sometime. From memory it was fairly harmless whereas Stowells Hirondelle, a Spanish wine regardless of the French name, I recall as being rough, if not very rough.
Others from that era include Blue Nun, Lutomer Laski and others that I can’t bring to mind.
Turing from grapes to pears those were the days of “champagne perry” - Babycham. A great idea to use up excess Somerset pear production with considerable value-add.
Ah, I remember that - it was Lutomer Laski Riesling, from Slovenia though it is a different grape, not the Riesling of Germany, but Welschriesling.
An Independent story from 1993 says it was the biggest selling wine in the UK then, and a 2014 article in Drinks Business says its still available under the name Lutomer Laski Rizling but a search on WineSearcher didn’t get any hits so perhaps it is no more.
Blue Nun: my future in-laws had that, but on special occasions upgraded to the heights of Deinhard Green Label Riesling. That’s still available but no longer bears the classy label it did then.
We had a couple of ‘Liter’ carafes that Paul Masson’s California Red came in which we used as flower vases until recently. Wine was called Hearty Burgundy in the USA and of course had no connection to either France or Pinot
My ex-parents in law used to always bring it for dinners at our house, bless them. It reminded them of their honeymoon, apparently. I liked their genuine passion for something fairly awful. It was a tad surprising though, as they had been living in California for over 30 years, so you’d think something of the Sonoma County wines near them would leave its mark. Alas, no.
About a week ago, whilst boring my daughter with a wine detour in Waitrose, we spotted a few of them, including a half-bottle which my daughter had thought was a perfume stuck on the wine shelf by mistake, it was so dinky and pink.
Mateus Rose! Many years ago I went to a party and, knowing a Portuguese girl was going to be there, I took a bottle of Mateus Rose. She turned her nose up at it, naturally. Despite this setback we eventually got married.
Still available as Egri Bikaver - the Bulls Blood nick-name seems to have been dropped. Better quality now out of the shadow of the communist era, but still a bland based on Kekfrankos - and available from TWS
And if you want Bulls Blood then that’s what Sangre de Toro, the popular wine from the Torres stable, means. It used to come with a small black plastic bull hanging from a ribbon round its neck.
A blood I prefer drinking is that of the god Jupiter, i.e. Sangiovese
A couple of months ago, when TWS was offering a free bottle with cases, I recieved bulls blood as the free extra bottle. It was OK. It’s only about £6 so it would be unfair to expect it to be anything other than passable.
Served on ice it wasn’t to bad , and quite a favourite in our desert compound back in the day as pre dinner refresher on a warm humid evening…
I do remember more vividly dreadful hangovers the foundation of which were laid by Mateus.
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