Blue Nun, the fruity German white that was the wine of choice in the 1960s and 1970s, is back near the top. The latest sales figures for the fruit-driven blend show that nearly 5m bottles were sold in the UK last year, an all-time high and far outstripping its popularity during its glory days. During the 1980s, when Blue Nun was heavily criticised as being too sweet and bland, it sold as few as 800,000 bottles a year. Comparing the 75-year-old German brand’s recovery to that of 1970s staples such as the VW Beetle and Brylcreem, UK distributors Ehrmanns attribute Blue Nun’s steady rise over the last five years to its 1997 relaunch, which introduced a new, dryer taste and distinctive blue bottle. Although Blue Nun is one of the UK’s top 20 best-selling wines, it still trails Australian brands such as Jacob’s Creek, which sells around 30 million bottles per annum. Ehrmanns marketing director Keith Lay believes the recovery is ‘down to a combination of factors.

Recently there’s been more investment in advertising and for two years now we’ve been investing in sampling. best italian wines ukEven though the wine changed quite a while ago, it takes a while to get that across and to get people to re-try it.’best cheap red dry wine He adds: ‘If you look at the NOP wine survey, Blue Nun has by far the highest recall, but it also has a certain stigma attached to it.’st james wine review The Blue Nun range has also been expanded to include new varietals and non-German wines. time to buy wine in vaA Riesling and a Merlot have been launched in the last two years, being joined in June by Blue Nun Slinky, ‘a crisp, sparkling, white wine-crush’, aimed at 18-30-year-old women in bars and clubs.best chicago wine stores

Written by Charles Williams30 April 2003best wine travel bag Sadat X & Will Tell’s True Wine Connoisseurs: "Blue Nun" (VIDEO). Posted by egotrip on 07/25/2013. It may sound like a '60s sexploitation film, but Blue Nun is actually a wine recommended by Sadat X for its hint of grapefruit taste, its compatibility with spicy foods, and affordable price (under 10 bucks). Sadat also finds time to give his TWC guest, a silver haired gentleman named William Otterson who lists Rob Base, Wu-Tang, and, er, "Naughty But Nice" as some of his favorite rappers, the chance to re-invent himself as a rapper. You might wanna peep... Eddie Palmieri: A Revolution On Harlem River Drive (VIDEO). Martin Lawrence in Game of Thrones (VIDEO). Kanye West — Beat Tape (Circa 1997) (AUDIO). Madlib RBMA Lecture (VIDEO). The Making of J Dilla's 'The Diary' (VIDEO).Stock Photo - Close view of glass relief label on neck of German Blue Nun Rivaner Riesling white wine bottle

/ Alamy Stock Photo , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Please enter your passwordCoenobium – a hard to pronounce wine made by nuns “Pass some more of the nun wine.” I overheard someone say that at the other end of my table recently. Not Blue Nun, mind you. But a wine actually made by nuns! Since the Trappist monks in Belgium still make (and market) Chimay beer, I was pleased to discover that Trappist (Cistercian) nuns still make wine in Lazio, a little to the north of Rome. The wine in question, Coenobium from the Monastero Suore Cistercensi, is a blend of Trebbiano, Malvasia, and Verdicchio. If you’re looking for a fresh, breezy, fruity, summer quaffer, look to other wines. This white has an oxidative quality that blankets layers of minerals, faint nuttiness, and acidity. The reason these grapes produce such complexity is in large part because the consultant winemaker, the acclaimed naturalista Giampiero Bea, has left the wine in contact with the skins, unusual for a white.

They actually make another wine with even longer skin contact called “Rusticum.” It’s a wine of contemplation that I happened to serve on my deck on a cool summer evening, a context that I think made it more appealing than on a searing hot day. To finish off our unofficial women and wine week, here’s a picture of the nuns in the vineyards with Giampiero Bea. This entry was posted on Saturday, July 24th, 2010 at 8:55 am and is filed under Italian wine, wine picks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.While it may have come as something of a shock to many people when Bob Dylan was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, it certainly wasn’t a surprise to those of us who have followed Dylan’s brilliant wine writing over the years. At least it wasn’t as much of a surprise as the announcement that Pete Rose had won the Nobel Peace Prize, or that Julian Assange won Miss Teen USA.

Won her in a 'Trump-for-President' raffle.Long a wine aficionado, Dylan has written several books about wine, including the seminal Bordeaux ’61 Revisited. In his writing, he brings a unique sensibility to wine, blending the sensibility of a poet with the palate of a Master of Wine. Or, more accurately, vice-versa. Dylan manages in his work to do what all the great wine writers of the past have done, that is, make wine approachable to the everyday wine drinker by using language to make it utterly incomprehensible. Or as Dylan so perfectly puts it, “When you got no wine, you got no wine to lose.” Indeed.Dylan fell in love with wine in the turbulent 1960s. There wasn’t much great wine imported into his home state of Minnesota, but what he could get his hands on inspired him. One of his greatest hits was a paean to his favorite white wine of the era, “Tangled up in Blue Nun.” Wine had captured his soul, or, as Dylan writes, “Wine had captured my soul, not that I was using it much, I was mostly just drunk.

That’s when you meet your soul, reflected in porcelain.” Oh, he is truly a great poet.Many, if not all of you, are unfamiliar with Dylan’s brilliant, often mystical, often whimsical, wine writing. I’ve sifted through most of his work, much of it published recently in World of Fine Wine under the pseudonym “Blind-Tasting Willie McTell.” It can be argued that just his wine writing alone qualifies him to win a Nobel Prize, though it’s probably not good enough to win a Roederer Wine Writing Award. I mean, let’s be real.Dylan on Châteauneuf-du-Pape (1985)“How many Rhônes must a man chug down before you call him a cab? Yes, and how many grapes will it take in the blend before you flip off the lab? Yes, and how many stones can there be in the row before you’re just full of schist? The answer, my friend, is Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The answer is Châteauneuf-du-Pape.”When Dylan published this scathing review of the Grenache-based wines of the Southern Rhône, it was seen as too harsh.

Producers in the region objected to Dylan’s criticism, but Dylan replied to their complaints with the simple phrase, “Yes, and how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?” “Two,” responded the literal French, and that was that. Dylan on Natural Wines (2002)“Come gather ‘round people wherever you’re born and admit that your soils are sadly forlorn, and accept that you need some cow shit in cow horn. If your wine to you is worth savin’ then you better stop sprayin’ or you may as well be shooting porn. For the wines, they are a’changin. Start reading your Steiner to clean up your land, and don’t criticize what you don’t understand. It’s non-intervention that the critics command. For the wines, they are a’changin’”Many wine writers claim to be the champion of Natural Wine, but it was this impassioned plea from Bob Dylan that brought biodynamics to the forefront of winemaking. Dylan was the first to promote the wines of Nicolas Joly, saying, “he put the ‘cool’ in Coulée de Serrant.”

He was also a fan of Rudolf Steiner, saying, “‘Pretty Woman’ is just an amazing piece of work.” Dylan may have confused Steiner with Roy Orbison, which was common in those days, as both appeared regularly at the Grand Ole Opry. Steiner, for a short time, was married to Minnie Pearl, believing she was a small nacreous substance that promoted root growth. Dylan may have been on something at the time, not just Columbia records, but something definitely Columbian.Dylan on White Burgundy (2004)“Le Montrachet, le across my big brass bed. Le Montrachet, le across my big brass bed. Stay Montrachet, stay with your man awhile. Why wait any longer for the one you love, when it’s standing in front of you. Bâtard Montrachet, lay across my big brass bed. Bâtard Montrachet, let me see you make him smile. Why wait any longer for the world to begin? You can have Grand Cru and eat it, too. Clos de Lambrays, bray across my brig brass bread.”Many wine authorities believe that with this passage, Dylan revived interest in Chardonnay singlehandedly.

A tribute to the great white wines from Burgundy, Dylan ends the paragraph with a swipe at overrated Pinot Noir in the guise of Clos de Lambrays, making nonsense of the final sentence, and in the process, elevating the status of Chardonnay. This is the sort of inspired wine writing that brings poetry and insight to an otherwise dull subject. I think it was Clive Coates MW who said of Dylan, “Everything I know about Burgundy, I learned from Dylan.” Which explains a lot. And it was Dylan who said of Clive Coates MW, “I have porkpie hats that old, but no coats.”Bob Dylan has influenced generations of winemakers and wine writers. His timeless and often senseless prose can be seen today in the works of Terry Theise and David Schildknecht, both of whom, like Dylan, also play the mouth organ—though both say those videos were doctored. And it was Dylan who predicted the catastrophe of climate change and how it would affect the great vineyards of France in his classic essay about hail, “Oh, it’s a hard.