Nicolas

I like Nicolas. They employ real French people who really know about wine and are happy to help you find something appropriate to the occasion, and they have a really good range of own brand, affordable red and white wines.
So when I stopped off recently planning a little wine tasting evening with some ladyfriends I had high hopes for some really tasty drinks. I had a bit of a budget for once, and the girl who helped me was lovely, happily talking me through the options in my price range and helping me choose a couple of bottles to take home.
I don’t think £8-£9 is too shabby for a bottle of wine, especially considering my years of buying 2 bottles for a fiver aren’t very far behind meso later on when my friends and I settled down to savour the posh wine I’d bought us we were all pretty surprised to discover they tasted of not much at all, and were the same or worse than other, cheaper, wine we’d drunk the weekend previously. Bah!
There was a weird moment when I felt like I was at Tate Modern, my eyes flitting repeatedly over the description on the bottle as I sipped carefully, trying to get my tastebuds to agree with the «oaky, fruity» flavour I was supposed to be registering. Nada. Both tasted likewine. No more no less.
Back to the drawing board then, and so much for expanding my horizons and trying to learn more about what wine I like — I still forgot to write down the names of the two wines we thought sucked, but I’ll always remember I wasted £17 on the experiment.