Magnum Season, Jane MacQuitty
"Magnums of wine look magnificent on the festive table..." says Jane MacQuitty in the Times (4th December 2010)...
"...but if you want to give big bottles this year, get cracking. With the exception of champagne, few high street shops stock them.
Fortunately, fine wine merchants make a speciality of these big bottles for the Christmas season. The wine in magnums matures much more slowly and evenly than that in standard-sized bottles, and often tastes rather better as a result. How slowly, wine scientists are still hazy about, but it would seem logical that a magnum containing 150cl of wine matures at a rate roughly half of that in a standard 75cl bottle. In both, there is not much more than an inch or so of air trapped in the neck of the bottle between the bottom of the cork and the top of the wine, so the ratio of wine to oxygen in a magnum is twice that in an ordinary bottle. This lack of air accounts for the slower ageing.Private Cellar (01353 721999) offers keenly-priced festive magnums, so take your pick from its fine, toasty and hazlenutty 2008 Bourgogne Chardonnay, Domaine Matrot, or its delicious, smoky, plummy 2005 Bordeaux Supérieur, J. P. Moueix.
Jane MacQuitty, The Times, Saturday 4th December 2010
