Virgin Wines’ best-selling Wine Advent Calendar is available in a mixed, all-red or all-white option. Only bottles of the highest quality make it behind those little doors of joy, because life’s too short for boring booze, especially at Christmas! Since then, the popularity of a ‘grown-up’ Christmas countdown has soared, but Virgin Wines are still leading the way.
All red wine advent calendar 2021 plus#
However, we still felt this calendar nudged slightly ahead of the all-red offering, as we liked the fact it also included a mini-bottle of bright, elegant Les Arbousiers syrah grenace rosé, plus two 20cl bottles of prosecco (one white, one rosé) to add an extra dose of Christmas sparkle.Back in 2016, Virgin Wines released the first wine advent calendar onto the UK market.
Both are wonderful wines you won’t be sorry to sip, but we would have loved the chance to try something new rather than repeat a wine we’d already tried. Two bottles were repeated in this calendar – a punchy apple and pear packed chardonnay from Australia’s The Anvil and Astro Costera’s freshly acidic sauvignon gris. We were also intrigued to discover Zeferino’s Falanghina, a fragrant, tropical white from coastal Puglia that we’d never tried before. A zesty, lip-smacking Anaru Marlborough sauvignon blanc was one of our favourite finds, chock-full of green pepper and lime flavours that would work perfectly alongside fish or chicken dishes.
There are wines from France, Australia, Italy and Chile amongst others tucked behind the cardboard doors, but the bottles from New Zealand were the real highlight for us. White wine drinkers will be thrilled by the selection in this all-white calendar. But otherwise, this is a great value fast-track to a suitably decadent December. Our one complaint? We were a little disappointed to receive two identical bottles of Three Gables shiraz behind our doors and would have preferred every single bottle to have been different. There’s even a 20cl bottle of port hiding within to devour with a hunk of stilton in front of a Christmas film. We particularly liked the cute festive bottle of La Jamais Contente, a juicy French red that would make steak sing and comes with a special-edition Santa label. Stand-out bottles included a plummy Les Trois Calices French malbec, a rich, fruity zinfandel from California’s The Intrepid Bear and an intriguing spicy cinsault from South Africa’s Billy Bosch. We were thrilled with the variety of wine on offer, which went far beyond the average bottle of supermarket vino and featured some of the world’s most esteemed red producers. The calendar includes a wide range of reds, mainly from Chile, Australia, Argentina and South Africa. There’s no lurking pinot grigios to dampen your festive spirit but a huge collection of mini-bottles of excellent red wine, plus a full-size bottle of prosecco for the big day itself. If you’d always choose a shiraz over a chablis, this is the perfect way to count down to Christmas.
With this to look forward to every day, you won’t want December to end. We loved never quite knowing what we would discover behind each door and felt this calendar offered a great variety of wine to intrigue even the fussiest drinker, without repeating any bottles. There are three different offerings from Virgin Wine’s hugely popular Black Pig label but also some less well-known treats including a silky smooth carmenere/malbec blend and a stonking example of bonarda, Argentina’s second most planted grape variety after the more famous malbec. We also received a 20cl bottle of prosecco and one of prosecco rosé, a mini rosé wine and even an unexpected bottle of the world’s best-selling port, Fonseca Bin 27. We were really pleased with the range of wine we discovered hiding behind our dinky doors too, which went way beyond the expected reds and whites. If you like a range of wine, you can’t go far wrong with this mixed calendar as you’re never quite sure what to expect each day, and can enjoy an added element of surprise. As each contains a full-size bottle of prosecco, it’s quite large and heavy so you’ll need to work out where you plan to store it through December, but it certainly won’t look out of place under the tree. All three of these calendars come in the same red box decorated with festive details including corks dressed as Santa, Rudolph and an elf.
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