#whitewine

Aug 22, 2018

Inspiring island wines: reds from Sicily and Sardinia

Update, September 4, 2018: the Etna Rosso and Barbazzale are now out of stock, so the mixed case is no longer available, but the rest of the wines are, as is the Etna Bianco that was my wine of the week. The offer runs until Sunday September 9. I've added a food note to the Frappato. This week's Wine of the Week is an Etna Bianco, made from indigenous grape varieties grown in the mineral-laden volcanic soils of Mount Etna at 700–750m. It's on The Wine Society's main list but

Aug 16, 2018

WINE OF THE WEEK: Nicosia Fondo Filara Etna Bianco 2017, Etna, Sicily, Italy

£12.50, The Wine Society This mouthwatering, mineral dry white combines two of my enthusiasms: wines from volcanic soils and island wines. They come together on the slopes of Etna as they do on the Greek island of Santorini, but Etna has its own grape varieties, red as well as white. The whites are steered by the high-quality, late-ripening Carricante, filled out here with Sicily’s most widely planted white, Catarratto, both planted at 700–750m. Aside from the mineral charact

Jun 7, 2018

WINE OF THE WEEK: Mount Horrocks Watervale Riesling 2017, Clare Valley, South Australia

£17.55–£21.99, Exel Wines, Noel Young WInes, No2 Pound Street, Loki Wine Why oh why are we so resistant to Riesling in the UK? On second thoughts, don't answer. We've been there before. Instead, just try this, or even a different Australian dry Riesling: I don't mind, but do try one. This, though, is a particular favourite that I've been waiting since April to recommend. It's made by Stephanie O'Toole on her organic estate in the heart of Australian Riesling country, the Clar

May 30, 2018

The white wine that thinks it's a red: Santorini Assyrtiko

No one knows quite how many indigenous grape varieties Greece has, because so many take different names in different regions and have developed different characteristics even when they share the same DNA. A conservative estimate would be about 180, perhaps 200. Either way it’s nothing like as many as there are in Italy, but Greece has a trump card: the white Assyrtiko grape. Archetypal Santorini: church and vineyard. The 30-square mile volcanic island has 600 churches, it hav

May 10, 2018

WINE OF THE WEEK: Te Awa Left Field Albariño 2017, Gisborne, New Zealand

£12.99, Cambridge Wine Merchants If you’re an Albariño fan, you’ll love this wine, as long as it’s not the saline mineral character that you treasure most. In New Zealand, Albariño tends to have less of the briny, ocean flavour of north west Spain and more of the aromatic, white-peach and apricot succulence – a bit like Viognier but with a generous lick of lemon sherbert to give it zing. Left Field is in effect unoaked, but 20% of the juice was fermented with wild yeast to ad

Apr 26, 2018

WINE OF THE WEEK: Domaine Cauhapé Geyser Jurançon Sec 2016, Jurançon, France

£13.95, The Wine Society Dry Jurançon has been one of my desert-island dry whites since I first tasted a Sec from Domaine Cauhapé, back in the day in south west France (which is where I am at the moment). Henri Ramonteu of Cauhapé was a pioneer of the dry style and is still a leading light, making fabulous wines, sweet as well as dry. This one has captivating aromas of dried flowers, wild herbs, honeysuckle and grapefruit, and on the palate it's full and textured but thrillin

Apr 12, 2018

WINE OF THE WEEK: Champ Divin Cuvée Castor Chardonnay Savagnin 2016, Côtes du Jura, France

£19.50, Tanners Wines From a region favoured by sommeliers looking for wines that are versatile with food, this white is a mouthwatering combination of toasty hazelnut richness and pristine lemon-zest and candied citrus intensity. There’s a strong streak of fine white Burgundy about it, but with more spring in its step. Chardonnay needs no explanation, but the other half of the blend may do. Savagnin is very much a variety of the Jura, where it’s used especially for Vin Jaune

Apr 11, 2018

Txakoli – a must-try wine (even if you don't want to pronounce it)

The first bodega I visited on a revelatory, perception-challenging first trip to the Spanish Basque country’s Txakoli regions last autumn was Bodegas Astobiza, a ten-hectare estate 300m up in a stunningly beautiful location in mountainous Arabako Txakolina (aka Chacolí de Álava). Arabako is the smallest and most recently recognized of the three Txakoli regions (DO since 2001). It’s also the highest and furthest from the sea, so it’s drier with greater extremes of temperature

Mar 23, 2018

12 of the best from Aldi

Aldi's wines are cheap, as you would expect, but they're bought with care. These are a dozen that stood out at a recent press tasting. Overall, the whites were better than the reds, or at least I preferred them. There's a tendency for the reds to be a bit sweet and/or oaky. Generally, I reckon it's harder to buy whites of any interest at the bottom end than it is to get reds, so buyers Mike James and David Elliott are bucking the trend. The two sparkling wines are both very g

Mar 14, 2018

WINE OF THE WEEK: Bouchard Père et Fils Bourgogne Chardonnay La Vignée 2014, Burgundy, France

£13.69–£14.50, Penistone Wine Cellars, Just in Cases, TheDrinkShop.com, Sandhams Wine, Hailsham Cellars This is just the kind of thing I want from a Bourgogne Blanc at this price – softly yielding texture, lemon-curd fruit, a suggestion of nutty, spicy oak and a refreshing swish of grapefruit and green-apple acidity. Not deep pools of intensity, but balance, energy, roundness and bucket-loads of charm. 2014 was a very good vintage for white Burgundy, but even so it needs a se

Mar 6, 2018

Expanding wine drinkers' horizons: The Daily Drinker

As it was so hard choosing between the five Daily Drinker wines for my Wine of the Week, I'm writing up the other four here (and looking forward to tasting more). The Daily Drinker is an online wine shop and club with a mission to get wine drinkers to go off-piste and try some of the myriad affordable, but little-encountered wines from around the world. They (Caspar and Victoria Bowes who also own Bowes Wine – wine-portfolio management for private clients) introduce two new w

Mar 1, 2018

WINE OF THE WEEK: Venea Trebbiano d'Abruzzo 2015, Abruzzo, Italy

£9.50, or £8.55 club members' price, The Daily Drinker I’ve tasted only five of The Daily Drinker’s wines, so can hardly claim knowledge of the range, but I was excited by the five and hard pushed to pick just one for Wine of the Week. The idea behind the Daily Drinker is to introduce people to delicious but affordable wines that they wouldn’t otherwise encounter or which look dauntingly unfamiliar – wines from little known grape varieties and/or obscure regions. The one I’ve

Feb 15, 2018

WINE OF THE WEEK: Telmo Rodríguez Mountain Blanco 2013, Sierras de Málaga, Spain

£17.95, Ocado Here’s as fine a demonstration as you’ll get that there’s more to Málaga than sweet wine. Sierras de Málaga is the DO (denomination/appellation) for dry white Moscatel wine and this glorious example, from old, mountain vineyards, comes via Telmo Rodríguez, the pioneering producer who has brought Málaga’s forgotten vineyards and wines back to life (and those of other parts of Spain). It’s a wine of wonderful purity, succulence and intensity, with spicy, herby, fl

Jan 29, 2018

Sauvignon catch-up

My Festive White Wine Guide last month was light on Sauvignon Blanc, so I’m putting that right with 8 recommendations here, in a variety of styles and at a variety of prices, and with this week's Wine of the Week. Shaw & Smith Sauvignon Blanc 2017, Adelaide Hills, Australia Light and sprightly with lemon and pink-grapefruit flavours flecked with pear and white peach, delicate mid-palate texture and racy, refreshing acidity. Ideal for people who don’t like grassy green or pung

Jan 25, 2018

WINE OF THE WEEK: De Grendel Sauvignon Blanc 2017, Durbanville, South Africa

£8.99, on offer until 20 February, Waitrose and Ocado The weather in London is looking a bit more Sauvignon Blanc-friendly than it has been recently, but this isn't a bracingly sharp, cold-shower kind of Sauvignon anyway. It's certainly not short on zing and vibrancy, but ageing the newly fermented wine on its lees (yeasty residues) has added a delicate creaminess to the juicy white peach, apricot and grassy pea-shoot flavours. It's only then that the palate dives headlong in

Jan 15, 2018

The changing face of Txakoli

Hot-foot from a trip to Basque Spain at the end of October, I postponed the idea of a blog enthusing about Txakoli (aka Chacolí) on the grounds that only masochists would be looking for bracingly sharp, ultra-light white wines in those cold, dark, wintry days... Txakoli Álava, the highest, driest, smallest and newest of the three Txakoli regions So why am I revisiting the idea in the, er, cold, dark, wintry days of January? I’m so glad you asked: I have some pretty good reaso

Aug 10, 2017

WINE OF THE WEEK: Altano Douro Branco 2016, Douro, Portugal

£8.50, The Wine Society I’ve been following this delicious unoaked white from the outset and each vintage more than lives up to its predecessor, the 2016 combining candied citrus fruit and grapefruit zest with the Douro’s characteristic smoky, stony, mineral flavour. It's a blend of local varieties, including Malvasia Fina and Moscatel Galego, from vineyards high up in the Douro Valley belonging to the Symingtons, a remarkable family who own 26 individual wine estates and Gra

Aug 3, 2017

WINE OF THE WEEK: Château-Thébaud Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Granit 2010, Loire, France

£14, Tanners Muscadet growers have been having a tough time of it in the last few years, with devastating frosts this year and last making hard economic times even harder, but the wines, counterintuitively, have never been better. A generation of growers, going all out for quality, is demonstrating that good Muscadet trades the showiness of more popular wines for subtle complexity. And the best wines – witness this granite-grown 2010 – develop with age. It’s still mouthwateri

Jul 20, 2017

WINE OF THE WEEK: Kyperounda Winery Petritis 2016, Pitsilia, Troodos Mountains, Cyprus

£15.40, Wineman.co.uk This week’s wine comes from the highest vineyards in Europe – rocky terraces at 1,400 metres above sea level in the Pitsilia region in the Troodos Mountains. Kyperounda is also Europe’s highest winery at 1,140 metres. The views are said to be spectacular. I can’t wait to visit. In the meantime, I’m more than happy drinking the wine – excited, in fact, as I don’t come across Cyprus wines often and this is a gem: a dry white, full of citrus, pear and peach

Jul 11, 2017

Assyrtiko steps out of Greece and into Australia

I like classic wines made from so-called noble grape varieties as much as anyone, but there’s a thrill of a different kind in wines that push the frontiers. I wrote about a batch of these boundary-pushers last September in The next big thing… There was a wine from Kazakstan, Czech Pinot Noir, Azores wine from 100-year-old vines, orange wine from the Mosel, German Chardonnay, wine from an exceedingly rare Greek grape, mould-breaking Canadian wines, Turkish rosé – none, of cour