Royal New World whites

As I hinted when describing this week's wine of the week, I spent much of Monday morning in the delightfully cool cellars of Buckingham Palace tasting with other members of the Royal Household Wine Committee, mainly representatives of wine merchants with the Royal Warrant. The most interesting tasting in a way was a blind tasting of non-European whites submitted by various merchants as suitable for the the royal dining table.

It was perhaps inevitable that the great majority of the submissions were of Chardonnay, nine out of 15, and it was interesting to note that overall the standard of...