As usual, this collection of 70 summer wines from one of London's first new-wave independent wine merchants was an interesting, carefully chosen selection. I was particularly struck by the bottle labelled very prominently 'Vin Non Chaptalisé'. This seemed a clever sales pitch by the vigneron in question, Englishman Simon Hawkins, although when I showed the picture here to a top winemaker in Pessac-Léognan, she snorted 'we haven't chaptalised for years'.
The Verdelho, by far the best, I thought, of a new series of varietals from Peter Bright in Portugal's Alentejo, was a recent wine of the week here. I...
