ASDA Organics La Mancha Blanco 2006 Full Review
Posted: 25 April 2008 by Rikke Bruntse-Dahl
The procedure of tasting this organic wine from ASDA started out pretty well. Our wine expert, Chris Stroud, looked at it and told us in a positive tone that it had a nice lemony colour and looked like it had had a bit of oak influence. Then he smelled and tasted it and his tone changed a little. In Stroud's words: "It smells like it's on its way to oxidation and I'm not getting much acidity. It's very dry, fairly bland and has a short finish." He described the tasting notes as "citrussy with a hint of pineapple".
We do not disagree with Stroud and would consider this wine the epitome of 'cheap plonk', but we rather liked its freshness and think it would do perfectly well as a picnic wine or mixed with cassis or elderflower cordial. Say what you will, wine snobs, but these things are quite popular in the summertime.
It only costs just over £4 and we actually wouldn't expect anything more, taste-wise, than what we got from this one.
The grapes this wine is made from are certified organic according to The Organic Food Federation (UK4), whose standards are based on the EU legal organic standards. The only other information we can find about this wine is that it comes from an organic co-operative in Manzanares in Spain, which is a good thing.
But -- and yes, we know we sound like a broken record -- we really, really would have liked to find out more about the green and ethical aspects of the vineyard, the workers, the bottle, the cork and the mode of transport from Spain to the UK.
Sometimes lack of this kind of information for a specific product can be made up for by general detailed green and ethical information about the company behind the product. In ASDA's case, however, that's unfortunately not an advantage. It's part of the biggest supermarket chain in the world, Wal-Mart, and has been heavily criticised for achieving its notoriously low prices through exploitation of suppliers and violation of workers' rights.
ASDA does assure its customers that it's constantly improving its environmental performance by cutting down on energy use, investing in recycling facilities and pledging to recycle, reuse and compost everything by 2010 so that no waste will go to landfill. On the ethical front, ASDA supports a variety of children's charities and has been a member of Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) since 1998. This in itself is not an assurance that ASDA trades ethically, but it does mean the retailer has committed to continuously improving labour and supplier conditions.
We must admit the price and the thought of a cold, organic kir tempts us very much. But the thought of low-paid suppliers and supermarket staff doesn't.
Quality
Value
Ethics
Green
