AIrving

Last updated 00:00, Thursday, 15 November 2007

THE Rulebreaker is a red wine that breaks the rules: not only that, but it declares itself to be “best wine in the universe”.

It’s made in Australia by someone simply called Joe and Tesco sells it, normally at £6.99. But at the moment it’s on special offer – £2 off – and it’s good stuff, if not the best in the universe: I don’t believe any wine can call itself that.

The likes of Petrus (Bordeaux) and Romanee Conti (Burgundy) would be among the front-runners. They could cost you £500 a bottle but price isn’t always the yardstick. That’s because some of the world’s most prestigious wines are produced in such comparatively small quantities that demand outstrips supply and all those rich Japanese and Americans can’t wait to snap it up and lay it down in cellars for years on end. Then it can either be drunk or sold on for even more money, and may never be drunk!

But wine is made for drinking, and regardless of whether it’s a fine claret, burgundy, chateauneuf de pape or rioja it shouldn’t be kept too long.

The Rulebreaker is only a year old but this 2006 vintage is ready and juicy ripe to be drunk right now.

One curiosity is that it combines no fewer than four grape varieties, only one of which could be called a household name – merlot. The other are petit verdot, ruby carbernet, durif and sangivose, which is the main Tuscany grape for chianti.

Joe calls it a massive blend; I agree with him. Clearly, he has no time for wine snobbery but I detect that this is a kind of inverse snobbery.

He says: “This wine has been made in protest to all those boring, bland, commercial, shoddy, tasteless pointless, over-rated and homogenised wines on the market.

“I’m not going to bore you with talk about vines, barrels, what time we picked the grapes, how hard we crushed them, what my wife looks like or how many dogs I’ve got because frankly who cares? I’m more interested in making great wine.

“I recently awarded myself ‘The Best Damn Wine In The Universe’ medal, because it is. And because I rock.”

Well, I don’t mind Mr Joe beating his own barrels, because without a shadow of a doubt The Rulebreaker is pretty damn good.

It’s rich, full, smooth with lip-smackingly good flavours.

As this funky winemakers says of his funky South Eastern Australian gem....”if you don’t love it after trying it, then go back to beer.”