Le Canon Rosé 2010, Domaine de la Grande Colline

It's scary to think how much someone's view of natural wine must be moulded by the first wine they drink. If it was Le Canon Rosé I'm not sure they'd persist.

I was given it to try by one of the staff at the Kensington-based wine merchant Roberson who - all credit to them - have added a number of natural wines to their upmarket range. It's made by Hirotake Ooka, a Japanese winemaker in Saint Peray in the northern Rhone valley who Roberson's rather nicely describe as 'devoutly natural' and is made from Muscat d'Hambourg. It has no additions of sulphur whatever including at bottling.

We followed the site's advice to decant the wine but it was still pretty challenging on Day 1 with that cidery edge that just isn't that appealing - to me at any rate. My husband is much more tolerant of it. By Day 2 it was much improved with a delicate rose petal floweriness coming through and by Day 3 bordering on charming. But would most customers persist that long? I don't think so. They want a bottle, of rosé at least, they can open and drink immediately. (My husband thinks I'm a philistine.)

A 'red' wine*, definitely. I must get this traffic lights symbol system going.

* I have this idea you shouldn't score natural wines but flag up how challenging they are. Green = indistinguishable from a conventional wine, amber = might make you pause for thought if you've never tried natural wines before and red, only for hard-core enthusiasts. Like my OH.

Paxton Shiraz Rosé

The trouble with writing a book is that you have to put the rest of your life on hold - family, friends and, these days, blogging. So I've actually been tasting some good wines and meeting some interesting organic and biodynamic winemakers without having a chance to write about them.

Anyway, a quick one about this Paxton Shiraz Rosé 2009 which is currently on offer at Oddbins* for £8.39 instead of £11.99 but probably won't be for much longer. It's made in McLaren Vale by the biodynamic producer Paxton Wines and is quite a curiosity - dark coloured with vivid cherry and raspberry flavours but surprisingly low in alcohol at 11.5%. What might throw you is that it has 12g of residual sugar but I reckon if you drank it with something hot, spicy and sweet (Sichuan Chinese, for example, or maybe a prawn curry) it would be perfect.

I got the chance to taste some of their other wines at the Australian Wine annual trade tasting on Wednesday and particularly liked the 2009 Quandong Shiraz which comes from the first vineyard they converted to biodynamic viticulture. It's made in open top fermenters and put mainly into old oak barrels - no fining or filtering - and it's lovely. Not jammy or over-extracted, just really well balanced. However it's the 2008, which I haven't tasted, that seems to be the current vintage in the UK. You can buy it from Wine Etcetera (£16.45), Barrels and Bottles £18.17 and Noel Young Wines (£18.49) among others.

Paxton is also a member of 1% For the Planet, a group of companies that donates one per cent of their profits to environmental organisations

* I've just learnt that Reserve Wines of West Didsbury near Manchester have it for £11.50. They also carry some of the other Paxton wines.