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- Published: 28 June 2013 28 June 2013
California produces some of the best wines in the world and yet in the UK these branded wines are everywhere. They tend to unimpress. In this clip Christopher Burr, Master of Wine, gives his view of Blossom Hill (transcript below):
Transcript of Review
Okay, so this is Blossom Hill Vineyard Collection. It's a blend, it's five quid from California. I mean it looks sort of fairly pale and crisp, but it's clean enough. It has little nose. A hint of sort of fruit, but not very powerful, nothing discernible. Smells fresh enough, there's no bad smells.
In the mouth, it's watery. You can taste the component parts. You can taste acidity. You can taste perhaps just a taste manufactured. You can taste, it doesn't taste like natural. But it's fine, it's just rather watery, thin, no length. All you're left with is a lot of sort of tartaric acid, which has probably been added to make the wine crisp. And you can taste that tartaric acid on the finish. So all in all, it's pretty ordinary and is it worth a fiver? No, it's worth the tax and the VAT and the duty probably and that's about it. A few pence, a few pence for the wine, say 3.99.
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I'm sorry, but I mean the point is this is a simple wine and tastes simple and it's not great.
The boring thing is it has no character, does it?

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