The trouble with having been a specialist writer for nearly 30 years is that I tend to overlook the most obvious subjects for articles. We ancient wine writers tend to search irritatingly for the new rather than revisiting familiar territory which is chiefly familiar because it is so useful to our readers.

 

With that in mind I offer you, as I take off for a four week summer break from The Financial Times, some suggestions for white wines suitable for entertaining. I shall assume that Weekend FT readers are generous but not boundlessly extravagant hosts, so will ignore the cheapest wines available.  

 

 

For the wine fanatic

 

 

Ch Thieuley 2002 Bordeaux £6.75 Waitrose

This well-made, well-priced, refreshing and many-layered wine from one of Bordeaux’s most reliable properties may be served with head held high on account of the third grape variety incorporated into the blend – 15 per cent fashionably perfumed Sauvignon Gris, along with the more traditional 50 per cent Sémillon with the rest being, predictably, Sauvignon Blanc.

 

Biblia Chora 2003 £8.49 Booths or Zefiros £9.99 Marks & Spencer

Both these truly zesty, mineral-flavoured blends of Sauvignon Blanc with Greece’s indisputably aristocratic Assyrtiko grape come from the same talented winemaker in northern Greece. Great with shellfish.

 

Verdicchio di Matelica, Mirum 2001 La Monacesca £11-15 Winetraders of Witney 01993 848 777; Oxford Wine Company of Standlake 01865 301144; Bowland Forest Vintners of Clitheroe 01200 448688; Berry Bros £14.75

Top wine of three made by this enterprising producer on Italy’s Adriatic coast. I have never come across a Verdicchio with anything like this intensity. Firm, dense, not oaked but a special selection late picked fruit from his finest vines, well worth the premium. It slightly reminded me of the miraculous Le Soula Blanc 2001 (a previous wine of the week here) offered at £22.95 by Berry Bros - and by AB Vintners, whose detailed profile of the wine I have now added at the bottom of this article) made from low yielding vines in Roussillon by the talented Gérard Gauby. Both wines should knock the socks off any real wine lover for being so unusual and so particularly good. These wines are notably high in both extract and acidity and would be good with poached salmon or white fish.

 

Riesling Herrenweg 2002 Zind Humbrecht £22 Berry Bros

Extremely ripe fruit yet with great tension. A lovely drink already with great length. Intensely fruity but not sweet. Great with smoked fish or food with Thai spices.

 

Chardonnay Tiglat 2000 Velich £23.50 Berry Bros

It takes a lot to make me enthuse over yet another barrel fermented Chardonnay for Velich in Austria’s Burgenland (more famous for its sweet whites and reds) have consistently impressed me with what the old vines in their Tiglat vineyard can achieve: lovely satin texture, great finesse, good acidity but also rich and creamy. Serve with richer foods such as crab, lobster or chicken livers.

 

 

 

 

For the traditionalist

 

Mâcon Villages, Les Sertaux  2002 Domaine Saumaize-Michelin £8.95  Stone Vine and Sun 0845 061 4604

This producer, whose wines can also be found chez Four Walls, Halifax Wine Company and Haynes Hanson & Clark is streets ahead of many and this particular wine from a great white burgundy vintage is excellent value.

 

Rully Blanc Premier Cru, Margotes 2000 Vincent Dureuil-Janthial £13.50 Stone Vine and Sun

From the same enterprising retailer comes this more mature, evolved white burgundy that tastes like a Côte d’Or classic. Rich and ready.

 

Sancerre Chavignol Cuvée Maxime 2003 Vincent Delaporte £13.95 Lea & Sandeman around London

Many Sancerre and Pouilly Fumé from the last, super-hot vintage lacks the crispness and aroma that defini Sauvignon Blanc in its French stronghold but this is truly exciting with a strong mineral streak.

 

Pouilly Fuissé, Terroirs Rares 2003 Christophe Cordier £17.99 Majestic

Full and creamy. A very big wine that could take strongly flavoured (Mediterranean?) food flavours. The fruit is intense enough to overcome the not inconsiderable oak. The Viré Clessé 2003 from the same producer at £15.99 is a crowd-pleaser but is dominated by oak.

 

Condrieu 2001 Christophe Pichon £18.95 Vine Trail 0117 921 1770

Very fine, minerally Viognier from its birthplace in the northern Rhône. Pichon is making increasingly successful wines in this very small appellation. A perfumed but dry talking point.

 

Mâcon Villages, Séléction EJ Thévenet 2000 Domaine de la Bon Gran £18.95 Lea & Sandeman

Thevenet’s vines may not be in classic location but he is a master winemaker making wines reliably finer yet denser, more opulent and easier-to-appreciate than many a Côte d’Or producer. They age beautifully.

 

Meursault Vieilles Vignes 2002 Domaine Bourgeot £23.49 Oddbins

Not cheap but delightfully open – rich yet savoury. The wine is not in every single Oddbins store but is fairly widely available. It could transform the simplest of roast chickens into a feast.

 

 

 

 

 

For the New World devotee

 

Hermit Crab Marsanne Viognier 2003 D’Arenberg, McLaren Vale £7.99 Booths

A good mouthful of full bodied, scented fruit yet with sufficient acidity to refresh from one of McLaren Vale’s most prolific yet reliable producers. Excellent value, as usual from D’Arenberg.

 

Rustenberg Chardonnay 2002 Stellenbosch £9.99 Great Grog of Edinburgh, Waitrose, Wine on Tap of St Albans, Noel Young of Trumpington

Classic New World Chardonnay from one of South Africa’s nost respected estates. This wine has a beginning, a middle and and an end.

 

Catena Chardonnay 2002 Mendoza £9.99 Majestic, Oddbins, Waitrose, Noel Young

If anything this particular wine from Argentina’s most ambitious producer is finer than the Rustenberg described above. Catena, which also makes the Argento brand at half the price, seems to have an extraordinary facility with Chardonnay, turning the produce of vineyards high in the Andes into wines that are utterly correct yet have very immediate appeal. In a blind tasting of scores of South American whites it shone out.

 

Sauvignon Blanc 2003 Shaw & Smith, Adelaide Hills local stockists from Liberty Wines 020 7720 5350

South Australia’s cool Adelaide Hills are yielding increasingly sophisticated Sauvignon Blanc. In the right hands, such as those of cousins Martin Shaw and Michael Hill Smith, it is transformed into a wine with more depth of flavour than standard issue Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.

 

Section 94 2002 Dog Point, Marlborough £16.50 local stockists from Morris & Verdin 020 77921 5300

Now this fascinating new wine is the one to serve to potentially taciturn guests for it comes with quite a story attached. Behind Dog Point are James Healy and Ivan Sutherland, who managed and supplied Cloudy Bay for years and years. This is their bid to do something completely different: Sauvignon Blanc pressed straight into used top quality barrels from Burgundy. No softening malolactic fermentation (unlike Cloudy Bay’s oaked Sauvignon Te Koko).  The result is a very dry, tense, concentrated wine quite unlike anything else from New Zealand.

 

 

 

 

For visitors to Britain

 

Curious Grape Schönburger 2002 England £6.99 Booths

The Curious Grape range from English Wines plc is admirable. This very refreshing but genuinely fruity, focussed wine won a silver medal in this year’s English & Welsh Wine of the Year Competition, while the Curious Grape Pinot Noir 2002, which really does taste of Pinot, won a gold. This price is very fair for such a respectable English wine.

 

 

I have included British stockists here. For availability in other countries, please see www.winesearcher.com

 

 

Late extra - AB Vintners on Le Soula:

 

 

 

 

Gerard Gauby...The 'King' of the Roussillon & France's greatest winemaker ?

 

A rash statement you might think, but when you consider that Gerard Gauby

does a lot of consulting work for some of Burgundy's top winemakers you begin to realise in just what regard he is held in France. Finesse and elegance are the

hallmarks of great Burgundies, yet it is the search for even greater refinement of these elements that has led these Burgundians to Gerard's door as he is

considered the master. It is this quest for finesse and elegance that has led Gerard to establish his new estate, Domaine Le Soula. He has vines and viticulture in his blood; from a very early age he spent all his holidays with his grandfather in the family vineyards and left school the day he was eligible so that he could join his grandfather full-time. He then set about creating his existing estate, Domaine Gauby, producing his first wine in 1985 in Calce not far from Perpignan inthe south of France. Since then he has gained an intimate and detailed knowledge of the region, its soils and its climate. This expertise and local knowledge enabled him to find specific vineyards in the commune of St Martin de Fenouillet that are now the foundation of Domaine Le Soula. There are two very important points as to why these vineyards are special. Firstly, they lie at significant altitude (two of them are the highest vineyards in the Roussillon) and secondly, the type of soil which is decomposed granite with limestone washed down off the mountains, very similar to that of the hill of Hermitage.

The altitude of between 450 and 600m above sea level is paramount to the

quality of the fruit. It is just as hot during the day but considerably cooler at night. This slows down the maturity process; it can take up to a month longer

than lower down, and what this allows is an extra month for the all important

phenolic elements (where all the flavour comes from) in the grape's skin to develop much more complexity and completeness which considerably enhances the finished wine.

 

The soil of decomposed granite and the limestone in particular play a crucial role in retaining acidity. The torrid temperatures of the Roussillon mean that the level of acidity can start to drop before the grapes are fully ripe and acidity is vital to the overall balance of a wine. So with the altitude allowing a longer ripening period, the soils help to retain the acidity over this time as well and it is these two elements that Gerard has been searching for.

 

The vineyards are farmed organically and the soils worked to encourage the

roots to go ever deeper; in fact, some of the vineyards are so inaccessible

and steep that the soils can only be ploughed with the help of a horse as no

machine can cope !

 

The result of this viticultural practice combined with the altitude and the

soil type is low yields of very concentrated, fully ripe grapes. When you add in the human touch of Gerard's mastery in the cellar you have what we believe

to be the finest wines that have come out of the south of France. 2001 is the

first vintage here and judging by this and the elements of the 2002 and 2003

still in cask we are convinced that Domaine Soula's wines will become some of

the most sought-after in France.

 

They have already received great critical acclaim as well as having been taken up by some of France's top Michelin restaurants. They have also been well received here with both the white and the red being available at Le Gavroche, and the Waterside Inn at Bray has adopted the 2001 red as its house red wine!

 

 

2002 Le Soula blanc, Vin de Pays Coteaux des Fenouilledes

A blend of Grenache gris and blanc, Marsanne, Roussanne, Sauvignon and Chenin

blanc in similar proportions, fermented in a purpose-built new oak foudres.

Yield is 10 hl/ha and 8000 bottles were produced in 2002. Marvellously rich and concentrated, full of fresh fruit flavours, quite unique and super long on the palate. Those who like white Rhones will just adore this. Equally those that fancy something a little different in the cellar. Drink now and for at least the next ten years.

 

AB Vintners (see the directory) were offering the 2002 red and whigte, and such stocks of the 2001s as remained, at just £185 a dozen in bond last April.