This article is taken from the October 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £25.
I hope all Critic readers are feeling suitably refreshed after a summer at their villas in Umbria or cottages in Southwold. We had a week in Normandy, as we’ve done for the past couple of years. Where we live in Kent, it’s quicker to get to France than visit my parents around the M25.
There are many things I love about Northern France: the empty, well-maintained roads, the way the architecture feels at once familiar and strange, the omnipresence of the Second World War. But perhaps the thing I look forward to most is going to the supermarket.
I know I should be haggling over moules just landed by Gauloises-smoking fishermen like Rick Stein or Keith Floyd would do, but my French isn’t up to it. So instead we go to the biggest Intermarché we can find. Avoid the small Carrefour Contact stores in touristy towns; the prices are outrageous.
Visiting a good French supermarket is a treat for the senses. Those ridged red tomatoes that actually smell of something, the mist that sprays sporadically on the lettuces, the seafood bounty, the freshly baked bread, and the wine! Mon dieu, the wine! I still can’t quite get over seeing classed growth claret sitting on the shelves next to the rosé.
I was seriously tempted by some Château Langoa-Barton for €50, alongside cheaper options like Château Poujeaux and some Côte-du-Rhône from top Cornas producer Franck Balthazar. It really is a wonderland.
But then I thought of my burgeoning credit card bill and moved over to the more affordable aisles. There are ludicrously cheap wines, litre bottles for one euro, though these are often Spanish or non-specific Euro wines, and are best avoided.
Spend a bit more and you can find some things worth drinking. We had a very tasty Muscadet sur lie for under five euros and a Saumur red for six. One of the best things about visiting a non-wine-producing region such as Normandy is that you get wines from all over France, whereas a supermarket in the Languedoc, for example, largely stocks local wines.
One bored child in the vines is manageable; two is asking for trouble
I wasn’t always so unadventurous. When we only had one child, I often used to combine work — meaning vineyard visits — with holidays, but with two it’s harder. One bored child in the vines is manageable; two is asking for trouble.
Though on this last trip to keep my accountant happy we did manage to visit one cider-maker, so part of the holiday is at least tax deductible. Norman cider is excellent and you can buy bottle-fermented farmhouse examples for five euros. One for another column, I think.
As someone whose job it is to search out the finest wines available to humanity, it’s quite nice to have a break where I can shop like a normal human being rather than a wine bore.
Holiday wines are not for scoring or pontificating about but are simply good to drink cold out of a Duralex tumbler whilst sitting on the terrace with a book, like that Muscadet. I recall a holiday to Marbella a few years ago, finding a €4 Godello at Lidl that served a similar purpose.
Such wines are not exactly bland but they’re not overtly fruity or full of character. They’re simple, unpretentious bottles of the sort that are increasingly hard to get hold of in England.
Wines that fit into this category include Muscadet, Picpoul de Pinet, Beaujolais, Portuguese Vinho Verde, or Italian whites such as Gavi or Soave. Probably the ultimate understated wine is rosé but only if you’re not paying too much for it.
Andrew Jefford, the greatest of all wine writers, wrote: “A blockbuster red can be great; a blockbuster rosé would be a comprehensive failure. The reason being that sippability, drinkability, is even more important for rosé than for most wines.”
These are largely Old World wines because I suspect that New World producers, with their emphasis on big, crowd-pleasing flavours, find them hard to make.
The Californian Zinfandel brand Ravenswood had the slogan “no wimpy wines”. Holiday wines aren’t exactly wimpy, they’re more affable, like a good travelling companion. New Zealand Sauvignon or Australian Shiraz just have too much going on, though South African whites sometimes hit the spot.
You can find good ordinary wines in some unlikely places. Stephen Harris runs The Sportsman at Seasalter, about five miles down the road from us. Despite having a Michelin star, he offers the standard Shepherd Neame wine list (the brewery that owns the pub).
With your £85 tasting menu, you can have Picpoul at £7.95 a glass or a Provence pink for £8.50. Most wine trade people bring their own, but I find that with exquisite food (and the food at The Sportsman is certainly that), simple wine is best.
The problem in Britain is that decent, cheap wines are increasingly hard to find. On top of your 13 per cent alcohol Beaujolais, you will have to pay £2.88 in duty plus 20 per cent VAT. Then, if you’re eating out, the extra National Insurance and higher minimum wage will bump it up further.
But you can still find them in France, and with Normandy only a half-hour train ride away, next year I’m going to stock up. I might even hire a van. Vive le booze cruise!
