Six winning Christmas wines

From a 2004 Château Potensac at the peak of its powers to a top-flight Chablis exuding class and finesse, MoneyWeek’s wine columnist Matthew Jukes rounds up his favourite tipples for your table.

Christmas wines
(Image credit: Christmas wines)

2004 Château Potensac, Médoc, Bordeaux, France

(£59.00, Magnum,bbr.com) There is no mystery here whatsoever as this is a well-known château and 2004 is a decent vintage. So why has it gained a place in this stellar line-up? The answer is that we are all so used to tasting young, vigorous wines that we sometimes forget just how beautiful mature wines can be. Potensac is owned by the Delon family and it shares a portfolio with none other than the mesmerising Saint-Julien Deuxième Cru, Léoville-Las Cases.There is pedigree here and at 16 years of age, this wine is at the peak of its powers. So £59 is the right price to pay for a fully mature, top-class claret and this is why it sits on this page. Oh, and £59 is for a magnum, not a bottle, so I am sure that you are already speed-dialling Berry’s before you have even finished reading this sentence.

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Matthew Jukes

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.  

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’.  He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner. 

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy.  His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.