M&S Found Encruzado, Dão and Lafões, Portugal 2024 (£8.50, Marks & Spencer)
Wine has always been one of the frontlines in the battle for the bourgeois wallet waged by M&S and Waitrose. And, over the past few years, one of the weapons of choice wielded by both of Britain’s two bougiest national supermarkets is the category that I’m calling “esoteric own-label bargains”. Each has a dedicated, and confusingly similar label (I frequently muddle them up) for the purpose, with M&S going with “Found” and Waitrose “Loved & Found”. And each is home to a high proportion of that retailer’s most interesting wine buys. On the strength of recent press tastings, however, I’d say M&S currently has the edge in terms of the number of curiously engaging discoveries, starting with this excellent introduction to the chalky-textured, incisive yet mouthfilling delights of Central Portuguese white grape variety encruzado – which, in this pithy, mouthwatering Found example, works as a budget alternative to chablis.
M&S Found Pignolo, Fruli, Italy 2022 (£11, Marks & Spencer)
Another Found white I was rather taken with at the M&S tasting draws attention to one of the most intriguing and under-rated of French wine zones; M&S Found Len de l’El 2024 (£9) is a light-of-alcohol (12% abv) and completely charming summer’s orchard combination of fluent apple, pear and peach juiciness with a squeeze of grapefruity citrus made from the titular (sometimes rendered loin de l’oeil) grape grown along the Tarn River in the Gaillac region. On the red side, meanwhile, Italy, with its 100s of locally particular grape varieties, is a rich source of Found wines, with a typically, refreshingly high-acid trio from the northeast all worthy of summer-red chilling. In ascending order of weight and price, the range starts with a pair from Veneto: the bright, crunchy black cherry of M&S Found Marzemino 2024 (£8; 11.5%abv) and the plum-and-raspberry tang of M&S Found Refosco 2024 (£8.50; 12.5% abv). It finishes with M&S Found Pignolo 2024 (£11; 13%) a wine that is no less fruity in a blackcurrant way, but which has a bit more grit and an attractively savoury, almost bloody character.
Waitrose Loved & Found Bourboulenc, Languedoc-Roussillon, France 2024 (£9, Waitrose)
Over at Waitrose, the buyers have also come up trumps in the south of France with a great dry white find in Lézignan-Corbières in the Languedoc-Roussillon. Waitrose Loved & Found Bourboulenc 2024 (£9) is made from the Bourboulenc variety, a word whose bouncingly repeating vowel sounds echo the graceful soft, roundness of its blossomy tones and peachy fruitiness, which is all complemented by a freshening trickle of lemony acidity. It’s a wine that fulfils the discovery brief as well as punching considerably over its price-tag. On the red side, meanwhile, Waitrose shows that not all the esoteric action is in Europe. There’s plenty of unusual stuff to discover in New World countries such as Australia, too, even if, of course, the varieties are all ultimately European (or Eurasian) in origin. In the case of Waitrose Loved & Found Mataro 2024, the variety in question is mataro, known back in Europe as monastrell (Spanish) and mourvèdre (French) and yielding, in Australia’s Riverland, a boldly black-fruited, Rhône-ishly pepper-spicy red.