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May/June 2001 – Huey's Wine Column: Chile

Let's start with some background stuff on Chile. A lot of the vine stems are from French vineyards and the climate in certain regions mirrors the French climate. The Chileans also like their plastic stoppers. Plastic prevents contaminants from getting into the wine. I like cork, though. If I threw a plastic stopper at you it would hurt; if I threw a cork at you it would bounce right off. You have to think of things like that.

Cono Sur Pinot Noir Rapel Valley 2000 (£4.99)
All the ladies out there who like the blush wine, or the fruit wine cooler, you might as well have a shot of vodka and put some soda in it. A Pinot Noir will put you back on track. What's great about Pinot Noir is the colour, it always makes you feel like something different's going on. You'll notice the bottle here – they want to show the colour of the wine rather than protect it with green glass. This is very good. If you think you have high cholesterol, they say drink a glass of red wine a day. But red can sometimes be too heavy, and a white wine won't do it, but a Pinot Noir is nice and light.

Cono Sur Gewürtztraminer Bio-bio Valley 1999 (£4.99)
This is a German-style wine. The gewürtztraminer grape comes from Alsace, on the French-German border. These wines are very good, they come in long-necked bottles and tend to be a little expensive, but they're really crisp and great served slightly chilled. Not too cold, though, or you lose the flavour. Let's give this bad boy a shot. Hmm… It has a flavour I can't really place. Maybe I'm going back to when I was a child and I drank a bottle of my mother's perfume by accident. There's something going on here that I'm not too happy with. Then again, it's not cold like it should be.

Cono Sur Merlot Rapel Valley 1999 (£4.99)
I like this one. It's really good. This is my pick. I just drank it straight outta the bottle. Sometimes, that's what you gotta do. It's a bit like making love – there can be preamble, but sometimes you've only got a minute or two, so no foreplay. This is wonderful. You could drink it anytime.

Cono Sur Chardonnay Rapel Valley 2000 (£4.99)
Chardonnays in general, I don't like 'em. They're often a little sweet and you can start getting into the whole wood and oak flavour thing – and you know me, I'm not one for shit like that. If you want a nice white wine, get a Pinot Grigio, put it in the freezer, get it really cold and let is sit for, like, 20 minutes. But a lot of people like Chardonnay – especially girls. Not that it's a girl's drink, but if you give them a bottle of that stuff their legs are flying in the air. I mean, like they're legless, not… Oh, you know.

Sometimes when you're drinking a bottle of wine with your girl, she might like it and you don't. Hey, that's how fights can start. Always have alternatives at the ready. You gotta be prepared, right? The packaging's cool on this bottle, though. You end up liking it because you've read all about it. These days they give you the whole life story – 'Joey was born in 1955, he liked wine, he got a job at the thing, he used to do the grapes with his feet…' Yadda, yadda, yadda. Anyway, this isn't bad.

March/April 2001 – Huey's Wine Tequila Column:

Tequila is made from the blue agave plant, which grows in Mexico. It looks kinda like a cactus but it's actually a lily. They pick it and then distil it, like you would if you were making gin or vodka.

If you're drinking tequila you're down to have fun – you're down with waking up in the gutter, or you wouldn't be drinking it. It has those kind of connotations – if you're doing tequila shots, you're trying to have a great night out, or you're trying to drown your sorrows, get in a fight, try anal sex for the first time or whatever. People don't say, 'Hey! Let's go crazy and do shots of gin', do they? Tequila has a special kind of romanticism.

So you need to be prepared, right?

1. You have to eat way before you start drinking. You don't want to be eating and drinking tequila. It has a tendency to curdle pretty much anything that you put in your body – kinda like battery acid.
2. Also, you have to be able to drink it without lime and salt and all that shit. You have to be able to sip it, and not have it kill you – you know what I'm saying? If you're doing shooters, God help you. I'll talk to you guys when you've finished you're A-levels. I mean, there is the adolescent in all of us – I've been known to slam tequila every once in a while, but I try not to.
3. Check out the label. A label that has a whole bunch of pictures of people on it, doing stuff? That's bad. There's a tequila Fun Lovin' Criminals get when we play in Germany, for example, which has a Mexican hat as a bottle top. You don't wanna be drinking that shit. I mean, who knows if it's even tequila?
4. Ask the guys in the store. Speciality stores are great. You can go in there and they're proud of the fact that they have all these tequilas that no one knows about. And, you know, nine out of 10 times they have a bottle open out back – they might even give you a little knock.
5. You wanna put it in a lo-ball glass, with rocks, and a splash of lime juice if the tequila isn't all that great.
6. Some people who smoke a lot of dope can smoke and drink, but if you smoke and you've never drunk tequila, take it easy on the puffing. Train yourself, get into a good regimen where you can do both. It could takes weeks but it's worth the effort. At the end of the day, if it doesn't kill you it will make you stronger.

• Patron Silver (around £35 www.internetwines.com) This is my fav brand. Patron Saint is pretty much the best tequila you can get.
• Porfidio (Silver, £26.50; Plato £29.50; both Gerry's 020 7734 44215) Another favourite. It's a little tricky to find. It's got a cool little bottle with a tiny neck and a cactus blown into the bottom of it. Super-duper stuff.
• Cabo Wabo (£34 www.internetwines.com) Really, really great tequila made by Sammy Hagar, the guy who used to be in Van Halen. If I ever meet him, I'll give him respect for his tequila.
• Sauza Tres Generaciones (£28 www.internetwines.com) Sauza Commemorativo (£19.75 Gerry's) Easier to find and cheaper than Patron. Not all Sauza tequilas are great, but these two are really good.
• Tenoch (£39.50 Gerry's) You never know when you're going to come across Tenoch. It's very good and comes in a crazy pottery bottle.

Feb 2001 - Huey's Wine Column: South Africa

Fairview Goats Do Roam 1999 Paarl (£4.99)
I can tell I'm going to like this. There's a wine called Cotes Du Rhone, which I'm a very big fan of, and this is the South Africans' funny way of doing that shit. It's light, it's dry, it's red. And it's pretty good. It stays around a little longer than it should, but the taste, the flavour, the bouquet are all good enough. There's a touch of woodiness, but you always get what you pay for. This is very nice – I'd take it with me to a party just to freak somebody out. You can kick back, drink this and watch some footie.

Stellenzight Revserve Semillon 1998 Stellenbosch (£9.99)
My goodess, this smells like an Alsatian kinda thing. I might have to light a cigerette before I try this one. Spliff is good for tasting a wine. It opens up the palate, so you're able to taste a lot of the things you normally wouldn't – cos you're stoned. Muddy Waters said it many years ago, and I don't think I can contradict the man. He said Champagne and reefer – there's something special to it. This wine is very strong. Wow, lots of flavour and a bit like riding a roller coaster. If it was really cold, this would be something. You can see why you're paying £9.99 a bottle.

Fair Valley Bush Vine Chenin Blanc 1999 Paarl (around £4.99 a bottle)
This smells very different from the rest. Chenin Blancs are notoriously sweet. If it's very, very cold it can be refreshing – it's almost an apertif type thing. I could see how somebody would really like this wine. At £4.99 it's about the same price as a lot of the Chenin Blancs from France. There's a little disturbance at the top of the wine, which means that it's a new winery. It's sediment – and it could be fucking sand for all I know. Sediment is more prevalent in red wine, but don't let it bother you. If it starts moving around, though, avoid that shit. That'll be something alive, man. Don't drink wine with shit swimming around in it.

Fairview Shiraz Mourvedre 1998 Paarl (£6.99)
Shiraz is the darkest of the wines. It's a very heavy wine. They put Shiraz in these kinds of bottles, which  are like the Burgundy bottles, cos it helps to sell them. It suggests a provincial French wine. Let's check this out. It's not bad. It come and goes. I'll try it again – yeah, it's good flavour. I'm sure that's donw to the fact that South Africa has had to diversify its GNP – there's a lot more wine coming out of there now. There are more individuals over there bringing in wine techniques from Europe, which is cool. As long as they're not fucking with the black folk no more.

Dec/Jan 2001 – Huey's Wine Column: France

Ah, France. The French so some things good, but they got that fucking attitude. Mind you, I'm only talking about the old guard – the young kids, they're fantastic. But they're stuck next to Germany, so how are you gonna feel? You Brits get a nice bottle of wine over here because France is right around the corner. I guess when the soldiers where there, they got a taste for it. In America you get different kinds of regional wines. Chilean wines, they're good. And Lebanese wine, you'd be surprised – hey you can always spit the shrapnel out! This is layman's wine tasting here, I'm a regular guy – but if you drink wine, you may as well have good stuff, right?

Mas St Vincent 1999 Coteaux de Languedoc (around £3.49 a bottle)
You can tell a lot from the shape of the bottle. A wide neck usually means a Bordeaux-style wine; less dry than you might be used to. If you get a good table wine, it's probably Italian. People like that stuff – it tastes good and it don't stick with you. When you burp, it's not there. This smells all gooey man, like someone didn't wash their hands at the factory. It's a little sharp, I don't like it much.

Chateau Du Combelle 1997 Saint Chinian (£4.49)
Another wide-necked bottle. A darker bottle, too. A dark bottle shows the wine doesn't have a lot of preservatives in it and they don't want the light disturbing the flavour. People say the even-numbered years are better than the odd-numbered years in vintages. This is a 1997, that's an odd number, but this is a good wine, so it proves that theory wrong. Sure, if you buy a 1932 it might be better than a 1933, but you're down £2,000 on the deal, man.

Mosaique Chardonnay Vin De Pays D'Oc (£3.69)
The only fault I can find with this is that the aftertaste hangs around a little too long. You know, like that friend of yours from school who visited, said he was going to come for the weekend – three or four days later he's still there? But this is a nice wine. The label's weird. Is this a new wine with a funky label, or an old one they're screwing up a bit for the kids? It was probably put together by some French designer. Hey, maybe Jean-Paul Gaultier should do a wine bottle in some shape of a big cock: 'Here's my wine, drink it – drink it!'

Domaine Begude Chardonnay 1998 Limoux (£8.99)
Just from the way it smells, I'm telling you now: put the cork in this one, take it home, you're gonna like it. It's here, it comes and it leaves. This is a nice one, and you can see why it's £8.99. Yeah, I'm getting down with this shit.

Nov 2000 – Hueys Wine Column: Greece

The reason I like wine is because I like getting drunk. If I can't drink tequila, I'm gonna drink some wine, you know? When it comes to vino, my advice is live your life, these things are there to help you enjoy yourself. If you like something, stick with it; if it's not for you, keep going until you find something else.

You want some tips about selecting bottles? Well, without sounding like I'm passing the buck, ask the guy who works in the store. Tell him what you want, why you want it, what you're looking to get out of it, and he'll probably be able to hook you up. He's in business there, and if you like what he gives you, you'll probably go back to his store. So, really, trust the people in the store, they probably know more than everybody else. And don't go to a store where they're going to be snobby to you – fuck 'em.

Just remember, what you like is what's good. And if you like some of the stuff I didn't like, God bless, so be it. Now, let's smoke up and kick things off with three Greek wines.

Strofilia Red 1995/6 Attica (around £6.49 a bottle)
You know, normally I wouldn't eat or drink anything that came out of Greece, because food preparation hygiene takes second place out there, right? This is nice and light, though. There's a lot involved in here, but I'm not going to get too deep into that. Nice, dry, stays with you a little longer than it should – yeah, this is pretty good. It's something I would buy if I couldn't find a decent Chilean. It's a bit in the Bordaeux style and it's probably the grapes. Let me take a look at the label. Yeah, they're on France's dick – French grapes. It would be cool if you were going out with a girl, and she was Greek, and you were foing to the fucking family's house – bring this and you're in there. A good wine.

Tselepos Cabinet Sauvignon 1996/7 Peloponnese (£6.99)
The thing about wine: make it easy to remember, easy to say, then non one can fuck it up; if it's good they'll like it. This is a little heavy on the nose. Oh God, I just jumped into some kinda vanilla factory. There's a lot of stuff in here that shouldn't be. And for seven pounds, that's crazy man. The bouquet is very overwhelming. Pretty label, though.

Domaine Gerovassiliou White 1998 Macedonia (£4.99)
This should be served a little colder than it is, so I'll try to bear that in mind. Right off that bat, it doesn't smell right. It smells funky dory, it's got a wood-floral thing. Right now I'm looking for bacteria – you might get a tapeworm, bro'. Now don't get me wrong about this Greek thing. We have fun in Athens. We went there to one place and it was firebombed the next day. You know the Mediterranean temperament. I can understand that, I'm Latino. And if I'm going Greek, I'd prefer the first of these three bottles. As for this one… I'd rather drink Sprite.