So here’s a thing. The next night I went back to the Shiraz Mataro, and it was terrible. Horrible. Really nasty. Now, I don’t have any fancy wine-preservation devices, having found that so long as you polish them off in good order wines don’t deteriorate that badly. It was sealed overnight with nothing but its own screw cap, but I hadn’t expected it to go downhill that badly.

So instead of drinking any more than I had to I opened a bottle of Otra Vida Malbec. Now this isn’t a great wine – after a quick look online I can only find it at Corking Wines at £6.69 a bottle, and I’m sure I didn’t pay that much for it – but it was an interestingly contrary experience. When I opened it I was unimpressed – too sweet for me, a bit too much dried fruity pruny stuff going on – but when I came back to that a day later it was transformed, much more serious and infinitely more drinkable.

So what’s going on here then? Surely you can’t judge a wine on how it tastes a day after you open it, in other words when it’s not at its best. But do good wines go off slower than bad ones? I know wines often improve with a bit of oxygenisation, but can half a bottle of wine really get better if left overnight? I’ve got another bottle of the Malbec lurking in the cellar – should I open it a day before I want to drink it? Should I decant it? Or should I just carry on in a cloud of vaguely confused ignorance? Who’s to know?

I mentioned this wine in passing a few weeks ago when mourning the lack of the durif/petite sirah varietal in my local winemongers, and within days I found it again in Wine Rack. A few days ago its moment came when a couple of friends popped over for a drink, he very much a wannabe wine snob, and after he claimed to be a fan of “big” wines I opened it up.

What a fabulous beast of a wine this is. Firstly, it is an absolute bargain, and not only because it only costs a mere £8.66 if you buy three in Wine Rack’s perpetual three-for-two sale (£12.99 on its own). If you give someone who has drunk quite a lot of wine something they’re quite familiar with – a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Sauvignon Blanc, an Aussie Shiraz – they’ve got a vague understanding of what it should be like. They’ve probably had worse ones, better ones and quite similar ones. They can, in short, work out for themselves if it’s up to much. But give them something like this, which is clearly a well-made wine but is also (sadly) so unusual, it just blows their critical faculties away. It could be a £15 wine, or £20, or £40, because hardly anyone knows what a wine like this should cost. So they get their socks blown clean off by a meaty, tannic wilderbeast of a wine, you get to share it with them and as they gasp in gratitude you can chuckle silently at the £1.34 change from a tenner still rattling around your pocket.

You do need to be happy with a big wine to be able to sip this on the sofa, and it would probably be best saved to partner a similarly beastly dinner – the makers suggest lamb chops in cherry sauce, but I won’t because that sounds disgusting. “A classic pairing for our Petite Sirah,” they add, “is Peking Duck.” Now that I wouldn’t mind trying, but I don’t know why they’re so hung up on there being some fruit on your plate – I think it would be great with any kind of cow or deer.

I’m just amazed that you can get an American wine of this quality at this price. A complex blend – the Durif topped up with 2.5% Cabernet Sauvignon, 0.5% Zinfandel, 0.5% Merlot, 0.5% Cabernet Franc – 14 months in new French oak, and a dense, berry-packed flavour that lingers on the palate for upwards of a fortnight all adds up to incredibly good value. Perhaps it’s just as well that it’s such an unfashionable grape – for £8.66 you can just about sniff the underpants of a trendy Oregon Pinot Noir. Not that I’m complaining, you understand.

So, Christmas time. Or Channukah. Whatever. So I need to get a present for my Dad. He’s a wine-lover, a lot more knowledgeable then me, but I’m not a total idiot and it’s impossible to find anything to buy him so he ended up with a couple of bottles of Chilean wine. Not bad ones, either: Matetic EQ Syrah and Maycas del Limari Sauvignon Blanc, both from Oddbins. I’m quietly confident that when he opens them, he’ll enjoy them. The thing is, when we head to the dinner table he opens a Remoissenet Pere et Fils 1995 Beaune Marconnets. Now, apparently they’re better known for their white wines than their reds but it was a damn fine thing, the kind of bottle you buy at auction, not at Oddbins. The reserve bottle, in case we drank our way through that one and still wanted more (didn’t happen, sadly) was even more ridiculous. I’d like to think my father will still enjoy his wines when he drinks them, but is there any point buying wine at all for someone who’s got a cellar stocked with stuff like that? I guess the answer’s probably not, but I’ll keep doing it because I enjoy shopping for them and can’t think of anything better to get him. Though if anyone out there has any better ideas of gifts for wine lovers that aren’t actually wines, I’d love to hear them.

I’m trying to teach myself a bit more about Pinot Noir. It’s not always that easy, because it’s hard to try any decent ones at budget (by which I mean, sub-£5) prices. Most wines I buy cost between £4 and £7. Only rarely do I drink wine that normally retails at £10 or above. But that’s where you’ll find the vast majority of decent Burgundy, or PNs from New Zealand or Oregon. Only from Chile can you buy PNs at £5-£6, but on their own they don’t tell you much.

It’s become one of New Zealand’s signature grapes. The other one’s Sauvignon Blanc. Now, I’ve drunk a lot of that. I can normally tell the difference between one from New Zealand and one from France, and tell you why I’ve made my decision. Not so with Pinot Noir.

Anyway, here’s one from the Wairapa region of New Zealand, available at Oddbins for £9.99. What I can tell you is that it’s got all the advertised cherry aromas, a light body but with lovely, high acidity and a long finish for what isn’t a total blockbuster of a wine. Would be excellent with Moroccan food, I’d have thought. A very nice wine, which is probably quite well priced – it’s better than my average purchase, certainly very pleasant, but it’s not mindblowing.

The second Mont Tauch Fitou I’ve tried, and about as different as it is possible to be. If the last was the bottom of the barrel effort made of the ugliest, most gnarled grapes of the area’s least attractive vines, this is closer to the top of the range. It says something about the nature of the range that even this is only £6.99 at Majestic. It’s actually a really fascinating comparison. It’s not a particularly famous name but there are a lot of Fitous on the market here, and a decent percentage of those come from this cooperative. I could spend an entertaining evening tasting my way through their range.

Apparently competition is fierce among the area’s winemakers to see which will have theirs accepted to make each year’s blend of this wine, which takes the best efforts of the best 12 local viniculturalists to make a superior blend of Carignan, Grenache and Syrah. It is a full-bodied, tensely-structured mouthful of wintry-evening joy. It doesn’t astonish in any way, it just tastes like a very good example of what you’re expecting. I got it from Carrefour in France at about £5.30, though the way the pound’s going it would be a bit more than that now (and a bit more still tomorrow)

The other day my father served a varietally-labelled Durif from Australia, which in itself is unusual enough to make me sit up and take notice. It was a lovely wine, and confirmed for me the greatness of this grape. I’d previously had a big, bold, brassy and brilliant EOS Reserve Petite Sirah from the Wine Society (no longer on its list, sadly) – Petite Sirah and Durif are one and the same. Apparently it’s a bit of a bugger to grow in hot areas, because the berries are so big they all squash together on the vine, creating moist dark little grapey hotspots that mould just loves getting into. But it’s certainly worth your while if you can manage it. It’s a shame it’s such an obscure wine: the Wine Society now has no Durif on its list at all, neither does Majestic or Berry Bros, while Oddbins has one Petit Sirah. Surely there’s got to be space on our shelves for a bit more of this stuff?

Well, this is a mystery. I picked this up from Tesco’s in Calais a couple of weeks ago for very little money, and the entire internet appears to know nothing about it. Tesco’s online grocery store, and their wine arm, deny all knowledge. The label provides almost no information, short of mentioning that it was bottled at M44 6BD – A postcode in Manchester, home of Kingsland Wines and Spirits – “the premier independent supplier of wines and spirits in the UK”. The grapes, it says, were grown in the Mendoza region. The reverse label boasts, puzzlingly, that “prime shiraz grapes are selected from the Mendoza region at the foot of the Andes”, so not malbec at all, and says that “the wines are aged on oak” – note the “on”, not an “in” – no expensive French bariques here.

So, is it any good? Acceptable, I’d say. Just drink it and it goes down in a vaguely pleasant, full-bodied, deep dark red way. Swish it about a bit and it reveals aromas of pencil shavings and flavours of dank, mouldy flannels. One to take to a friend’s.

I’ve been a bit quiet of late, which I would be more sorry about if I were writing for anyone but myself, but it’s still not very good. So I’m going to post twice tonight. This isn’t because I’m getting totally bladdered on the sofa – this is another night’s wine. I was quite excited about it at the time, having read a lot about Oregon pinots without experiencing any of them. I got this at Costco, of all places, where it came in a little over £9 – not a cheap wine by any means, but less than most Oregon pinots and worth, I felt, a bit of a punt.

I don’t think it lived up to my expectations. It was certainly pleasant, nicely rounded, with good, mouth-watering acidity, but it didn’t have any spiciness to it. It was extremely easy to drink, but perhaps a little too much so for my tastes. A bit of research revealed that Firesteed are a relatively high-volume producer, having been created with the express purpose of creating cheaper versionsof America’s more expensive styles. When they started making wines they didn’t even have a vineyard, sourcing their grapes from various producers in the area. They now grow some of their own grapes, but this wine comes from the Willamette, Umpqua, Rogue and Walla Walla Valleys of Oregon. A very professional operation, and a very professional product, but I reckon that £9 can be better invested.

I got this from the Wine Society a while ago. It’s no longer on their list, and I’ve no idea who Howard is, but this is anything but a folly. A very fine, full-bodied, jammy evening of wine-based fun very much guaranteed. Portuguese table wines can be rather good – worth a lot more exploration, I think.