Panevino Is de fundu 'e muru '09

c. €25

As a foodstuff bread is fairly consistently overrated.

I'll admit that there exists a pretty wide choice of breads, and that, of course, not all bread is created equal. You can get posh breads; with bits of stuff in it or on it, bread made using funny flour or yeast, crafted into odd shapes, or cooked in special ovens. And this diversity means that it is one of few foods that can happily play its part in all three of the days meals.

But it's never really the star of the show. Its role is one of deliverance. It is a pusher of peanut butter, an enabler of escargots.

Strange I always think then that there are entire shops dedicated to it, people whose whole profession is 'baker', and that it is frequently mentioned by restaurant reviewers.

Our man at Panevino started out life as a 'baker' before moving on to winemaking, and it's clearly left a bit of a chip on his shoulder. If I was being kind I would describe him as "rude". At the end of a rather Socratic 30-minuite questioning session I finally managed to extract the following information:

Hail hit the crop in 2009 and so, rather than using grapes from different plots to make a number of cuvees in different styles as he normally would, he instead put all the grapes for his red wines together and vinified them in very slightly different ways. Six wines were made, each named afer the place in the cellar where the barrel was. They all mean things like 'the one in the middle' or 'the one at the front'.

Recourse to an online translation service suggests Is de Fundu e Muru was at the base of a wall. The grapes are field blend, mostly Cannonau (aka Grenache), and load of others that he's never bothered zetting.

Thin-skinned grenache gives a light colour, violets and oranges on the nose on a light leather and spice base. In the mouth concentration hits. Sweet berries, more leather, sappy fruit, brighter cherries and very light, fine tannins. There's lots here, and it demands attention.

Better than all bread, and most wine.

La Bastide Blanche 2008

£12.30, Waitrose

Last week I bought a smartphone. And not just any smartphone, the smartest and smuggest of all: an iPhone 4.

I became dribbingly obsessed with it pretty much instantly. I love it all; its tactile ergonomics, the near-constant buzzing and beeping, the million downloadable apps to solve problems that no one has.

This is not to say, of course, that it hasn’t made me profoundly depressed. Not for the most obvious reason, that I now have a small box in my pocket that is quite evidently much cleverer than me, but because I am now the same as everyone else.

The incorrigible plurality of life is what gives people vim. Difference is refreshing and exciting and cuts through the formulaic flabbiness of our working lives. I was close to letting a door shut, something needed to be done…

Grenache is probably the most widely planted red wine grape in the world, with over half a million acres of the earth’s surface given over to it. Its thin skins and long ripening period produce high alcohol and lively red fruit in difficult hot, dry areas. Its nobility can stand up to varietal wines, but mostly it’s blended; with the dozens of other grapes allowed in Rioja or Chateauneuf-du-Pape, or, all over the world, with Syrah and Mouvedre to produce the only blend to seriously challenge Bordeaux-style wines in the global popularity stakes.

This blend is widely produced in the south of France, in the Rhone and Languedoc-Roussillon, in California by the wankily self-styled “Rhone Rangers” and in Australia where it’s so popular that they’ve initialised it to simply GSM.

But always in that order. Proportions vary greatly of course, from vineyard to vineyard and from year to year, but generally you're looking at around 70% Grenache for alcohol and fruit, 25% Syrah for smoke and spice and 5% Mouvedre for a heady farmyard nose and acid structure. The wine is big, fruity, fleshy, food-friendly, easy-drinking, complex, clever and fun… everything really.

Thank god then for the small French appellation of Bandol striking a blow against this homogeneity. The bottle I held in my hands listed those same familiar grapes but in a thrillingly different order: Mouvedre, Grenache, Syrah.

This is immediately apparent on a pleasingly austere nose dominated by animals and herbs. The palate is heavy on the acid, but there’s just enough summer fruit to give the wine life and grippy tannins for a balanced structure, some smokiness but no pepper. Rarely has the drunkeness of things being various felt so good. Almost savoury itself, this is real food wine and could be no happier than next to lamb roast with rosemary. Good stuff.

Unfortunately I had no lamb to realise the wine’s full potential, but perhaps that wasn’t the problem at all. Maybe what I really needed to know was: can I pull a Dom Perignon style trick and Warhol-ise it using a clever app on my lovely new shiny thing?

Yes, I can.

Papa Luna 2007

Majestic, £7.50

New Year's resolutions have always struck me as a bit rigid.

I don't much like the lack of leeway they provide, the implicit pass or fail mentality doesn't sit well with the fuzzy grey-area in which I exist. Things never seem to get resolved anyway, quite why every year a large proportion of the population pretends they're going to is beyond me.

I'm not averse however, to the odd improbable-sounding lofty aspiration.

Which is why this year I'm going to give up smoking, alcoholism, drugs and gambling, before quitting my job, taking a wife and moving to live in the hills of Andalusia among the gypsy folk where we will eat only the local peasant fare and drink rough wine from unmarked flagons.

First up I obviously needed to learn Spanish. Having decided on this I cracked open a bottle of an old Calatayud favourite Papa Luna to celebrate.

The 2007 which was once stocked by Majestic at around £7-8 per bottle, but is no longer listed on their website, 'though I bought up as much as I could from two local branches a couple of months ago, since when they've not had any more.

In a move clearly designed to confuse the lay-drinker, it lists a composition of 70% old-vine Garnacha, 25% Syrah, 5% Mazuelo and Monastrell. Translating to non-obscure names that's Grenache, Syrah/Shiraz, Carignan and Mouvedre.

Mind you, this is the kind of thing you would expect from Norrell Robertson MW, a winemaker who with the curious affectation of referring to himself as 'The Flying Scotsman'. The copy on the back of the bottle is mysteriously silent on the origin of this, and I have neither the time nor inclination to investigate but it's probably a pointless flying winemaker / train pun I imagine.

On the nose there's some lovely deep dark fruit, not overripe, lots of earth, leather and tobacco and little kick of the Mouvedre coming through with slight animal meatiness. Complex stuff with layers and layers of aroma.

This is nicely backed up on the palate with good cherry and blackberry, some smokiness, nice acidity and a fine tannic backbone. Again, a lot going on, deep and thought-provoking.

Damn silly name, really good winemaker.