Iona Elgin Highlands Sauvignon Blanc, Elgin, South Africa 2024 (£17.99, virginwines.co.uk) From ‘oak-aged’ and ‘wild-ferment’ to ‘single-vineyard’ and ‘hand-picked’, wine producers and sellers have a behavior of dressing up descriptive phrases as implied shorthand for high quality. They’re not alone in that, after all, and even the worst offenders: no wine time period is as insidiously irritating as ‘pan-fried’ or ‘handcooked’. Nonetheless, it may be grating when one thing unexceptional, even a little bit banal concerning the the place and the way of a wine’s manufacturing is offered as the important thing to its distinctive brilliance. I’ve grown wearily sceptical lately, for instance, of the incessant use of ‘cool local weather’ as a time period of reward, not least when it’s used to explain wines from locations that aren’t, within the international context, very cool in any respect. Nonetheless, there are moments when its use is each factually justified and useful in making ready potential consumers for a specific set of stylistic cues – and Virgin Wine’s new, pristine, scintillatingly recent and pure-fruited sauvignon blanc made by Iona in South Africa’s coolest area, Elgin, is undeniably a kind of moments.
M&S Lyme Bay Bacchus, Devon, England 2023 (£15, Marks & Spencer) English wine – to borrow from the title of drinks writr Henry Jeffreys’ witty, gossipy 2023 e-book on its latter-day transformation from amateurish hobbyist’s playground to critical, venture-capital-infused enterprise – is all about making the most effective of Vines in a Chilly Local weather. And for all that our home summers could, on common, have grown considerably hotter over the previous few many years (and, within the course of, made it a lot simpler to ripen grapes far more constantly from 12 months to 12 months), wine manufacturing even in southern England continues to be very a lot on the northern margins. Essentially, then, the wines made there are nonetheless marked by the excessive acidity and low alcohol which are the important thing character traits related to cool-climate winemaking – traits which are very a lot attributes within the two types with which England has to date had most success: tongue-tinglingly energetic glowing wines (such because the dependable, well-priced Coates & Seely Brut Reseve NV; £36.95, coatesandseely.com); and crisp, dry, spring-meadow fragrant whites (reminiscent of M&S’s leafy, grassy bacchus).
Tapanappa Foggy Hill Winery Pinot Noir, Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia, Australia 2022 (from £36.22, spiritly.com; simplywinesdirect.co.uk) The place English winemakers have struggled is getting purple grapes to ripen sufficiently to make interesting purple wines. Even in heat, sunny years, English purple wines will all the time be on the paler, lighter, crunchier, extra evidently acidic finish of the spectrum. However there are occasions when that gentle model comes with sufficient red-fruited finesse to make some delightfully refreshing ingesting – each the tremendous pale, hibiscus and rosehip-tangy 9% abv Don’t Feed The Ponies Vol 7 – Billy 2023 and the marginally darker, barely fuller, barely softer however nonetheless crisp, red-berry and redcurrant-filled Pinot Noir 2022 from South Devon’s Sandridge Barton (£21.99 and £35, respectively, sandridgebarton.com) being prime examples. The cussed cliché of Australian winegrowing, against this, is that it’s all about wealthy shiraz grown in energy-sapping warmth, however the nation has pockets of cool which are proving preferrred for excessive-heat-hating pinot noir: not least the Foggy Hill Winery on South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula, dwelling to Tapanappa’s fantastically slinky, complicated, Burgundy-like purple.
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