£13.74–£20.50, Drinks & Co, Cellar Selected, Mr & Mrs Fine Wine, Noble Green Wines, Kwoff, Hedonism A jewel not just of Corbières but of all Languedoc red wines, Boutenac was officially recognised as the premier cru of Corbières in 2005 and remains its only stand-alone appellation. The 220 hectares of vineyards fan out from the Aleppo pine and Mediterranean scrub-clad hills of the Pinada range at the heart of the huge Corbières appellation. Pretty? Is the Pope Catholic? Carig

£15.49–£18, Roberts & Speight, drinkfinder.co.uk, TheDrinkShop.com, winedirect.co.uk, Noble Green Wines The South African wine industry needs and deserves our support, but I don't need an excuse to recommend Vergelegen estate's Chardonnay. It's got everything going for it, with appeal for both Chardonnay camps: followers of contemporary, lean and elegant styles and fans of fuller, riper wines who want to taste a bit of oak. Fermented in French barrels (35% new) and aged on it

Another summer, another round-up of delicious dry rosés, plus a featherweight, lightly sparkling sweet wine from Italy and a pink Champagne that I wasn't familiar with and which hugely impressed me recently. There are lots of different styles, shades, flavours and grape varieties, but it has turned out to be an almost all-European selection this year, reflecting the limitations the pandemic has imposed on tastings, travel and trade. The one exception (perhaps ironically) is f

£14.50–£16.25, The Daily Drinker, Maltby & Greek, Strictly Wine Let's start by unpacking the name. This is a dry red wine made from the Liatiko grape by Nikos Douloufakis, the leading light in the Dafnes region, a PDO in the middle of Crete, in the Heraklio prefecture. What's interesting about it? Tell me what isn't. It's quite a pale ruby red, medium-bodied and has distinctly fresh acidity and fine, sandy tannins. That's the basic shape that wraps around one beguiling flavou

£9.74, Majestic I shall be posting this summer’s rosé round-up soon, but another pink as Wine of the Week is well overdue, so here it is: a delightful, copper-tinged salmon pink organic wine from southeast Sicily – and a timely reminder that rosés don’t have to be off-the-scale-pale to be sophisticated. Some of the most interesting and authentic are anything but. Sporting a pretty name and label as well as a pretty colour, Rosa di Santa Tresa is made from half and half Nero d

The first four vintages of Plaimont's single vintage Cirque Nord Saint Mont – 2014, 2016, 2017 and the yet to be bottled 2019 I was planning to write more on what’s been happening at the Plaimont co-operative group in southwest France, having caught up with some of the latest developments and new wines over a virtual tasting with MD and former technical director Olivier Bourdet-Pees. But instead I made Les Vignes Retrouvées my Wine of the Week and am highlighting another whit

£8.95, The Wine Society I haven’t featured the 2017 vintage before, but Les Vignes Retrouvées is no stranger to this slot. Year in, year out, it’s one of the best value dry whites on the market, not least because it’s a wine with such a vivid personality. Bristling with energy, passion fruit, pineapple, aromatic green fruit and laser-cut lime-juice acidity, it’s just the job if you want to break out of Sauvignon Blanc. But Saint Mont Blanc is much more than a stand-in for fam

The imposing medieval Castello Poggio alle Mura with just below (on the right of the picture) part of the luxury Castello Banfi Il Borgo hotel When John Mariani bought the Poggio alle Mura estate just south of Montalcino in 1978, it had had only two previous owners, the Sicilian family living in Venezuela that he bought it from and a Sienese family. In itself, it’s not necessarily remarkable, but the Castello dates from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, so it was a big c

£8.49, Majestic Maybe it's auto suggestion, but there's a lovely off-the-beaten-track mountain wildness (salvaje means wild) to this old-vine Garnacha (aka Grenache), one of six under the the creative Vintae's Proyecto Garnachas banner that showcase the grape variety from old vineyards in different areas of the Ebro Valley in northeast Spain. The Salvaje vineyards lie on rocky soils at 820m asl on the north face of the Moncayo massif, where Navarra and Aragón meet and the Atl

Ready for the off – sample bottles of New Zealand and Oregon Pinot Noir lined up in order for the tasting This tasting, which replaced what was going to be a full-day event in London, was described as a deep dive into Pinot Noir from around the 45th parallels. I’d say it was more of a brief but brilliant plunge: a one-hour 20-minute Zoom tasting of six wines presented by Bree Boskov, an Australian Master of Wine who lives in Oregon and is education manager for the Oregon Wine

£18.29–£18.95, NY Wines (Cambridge), The Great Wine Co A chilled glass of Galician Albariño is the wine to have when you long to feel the sea spray on your face and the waves lapping round your feet – and you’ll know when this one is properly chilled because a small blue ship appears on the label just above the ‘de’ in the name (see photo below). It’s a wonderfully exhilarating Albariño with a textured palate, citrus zest, peach and grapefruit flavours, Atlantic salinity, oys

These two singular and rare dry white wines, one from France and one from Italy, could hardly be more different in style – a textbook compare-and-contrast study. Domaine Jones On The QT Bin 23 Carignan Gris 2019 is very pale, delicately perfumed, lively and medium-light with a fine, faintly chalky texture, fresh pear and apple, hints of apricot and ginger root, and herb (including fennel) and mineral flavours. It's a Vin de France from a vineyard in Languedoc close to the Rou

The 2012 vintage in Champagne was expected to be a disaster – as bad as 1984, and that's saying something. There was winter frost, spring frost, torrential downpours, a poor flowering, hail and cool, cloudy summer days. Inevitably, growers battled against mildew and the threat of botrytis. Then in mid-August the skies cleared, the sun came out, temperatures rose and it stayed like that with scarcely a break until the harvest in mid-September – late by today's standards. By th

£15.95, Yapp Brothers I wasn't planning to do another Provence red as Wine of the Week so soon, but I can't resist this and it's altogether different. Despite not being all that far geographically from Château Vignelaure – around 60km to the northwest – it's a different region. This is Luberon, where Provence meets the southern Rhône and the grape varieties reflect the southern Rhône. Château la Canorgue's red, a blend of Syrah, Grenache and old-vine Carignan, is dark, powerf

£8.58, Jascots Pinot Grigio has to work hard to earn itself a place as Wine of the Week. It's not that I don't like the grape variety. I do – very much – but not the neutral, light style that northern Italy has made its own. This single-vineyard, organic wine is miles away from that: not remotely powerful but with delicious liveliness and intensity and a creamy, lees-enriched texture, plus leafy, lime and delicate bread-crust notes on the nose and a mouthwatering, saline, min

I was going to call this A Taste of Dom Pérignon Rosé 2006 and Moët Grand Vintage Collection 2002 but, reader, I drank them, not by myself and not all at once, but these were not samples I tasted and then passed on to neighbours/friends/family. You wouldn't have done either. They were sent for Moët Hennessy's inspired 'Hidden Gems' Zoom tasting of five Champagnes: Veuve Clicquot Grande Dame 2008, Dom Ruinart Blanc de Blancs 2007, Krug Rosé 24ème édition and the two above. The

Caroline Fiot at Ruinart HQ in Reims, one of Ruinart's team of three winemakers The text of this article was first published in The World of Fine Wine issue 63 It was Caroline Fiot, one of Champagne’s brightest young winemakers, who was dispatched to London recently to introduce the latest release of Dom Ruinart Blanc de Blancs alongside its predecessor: thus 2007, the 25th vintage since the debut 1959, and 2006. Neither year is regarded as anywhere near a five-star vintage f

£15, The Daily Drinker, Fintry Wines, Noble Green Wines, North and South Wines I recommended a red from the ArmAs winery in my Festive Red Wine Guide 2019 and am delighted to be highlighting another wine from this Armenian winery now. It's an unoaked dry white, but there's also a very good barrel-fermented version. Exciting as it is simply to be able to drink wines from a region that was making wine more than 6000 years ago, I stress that I'm recommending this on merit – on q

£12–£14.99, Tesco, The Wine Society, Great Western Wine, ND John, Winepig Unashamedly full-throated Aussie Shiraz from a family-owned and run winery that never seems to put a foot wrong. D'Arenberg produces a whole range of wines – white, red, traditional, innovative – and offers great value too. Hats off to the inimitable fourth-generation boss and winemaker Chester Osborn. The Footbolt is made artisan-style in open-top vats with foot-treading, basket-pressing and a mix of o

The genie in the pit: Pedro Parra in one of thousands of soil pits (calicatas) he has dug, but this one is special: it's amid vines in Itata that produce his own wines “Chile is a great terroir used in a very boring way.” You always know where you are with Pedro Parra, soil scientist extraordinaire. They weren’t quite his opening words when I met up with him in Chile for the first time in a while, but they weren’t far off. He had already summarily dismissed Carmenère and a fe