Award-winning wine writer, food journalist and magazine editor, specialising in matching food and wine. New Wine of the Week posted every Thursday.
This is French Mediterranean Viognier at its most appealing – radiant, airy, succulent and supple, with honeysuckle and peach on the nose, peach-cum-apricot and citrus fruit on the palate, sea-spray freshness, subtle marine minerality and a seamless, rounded texture. And it's a bargain
Red Rioja in summer? Sure. Sela is a summery Rioja, although that’s not to say it wouldn’t be just as welcome in the depths of winter. It would. But it’s not the traditional comfort-style of Rioja that depends on oak and age for its character. Sela is new-wave Rioja. Matured for 12 months in semi-new French oak barrels, the fruit really shines
When the then-mayor Jean Taittinger twinned the city of Reims with Canterbury in the 1950s, it presumably never crossed his mind that 60 years or so later his family would be embarking on an English sparkling wine venture in the Kent countryside nearby. But that's what happened when his son Pierre-Emmanuel joined with his UK importer and longtime friend Patrick McGrath to create Domaine Evremond
New Dawn is the creation of multi-award-winning Cape winemaker Rüdger van Wyk, whose vision is to make affordable wines that you can open without any faff or ceremony – wines that don’t need fancy food matches, but which don’t compromise an iota of quality for the sake of accessibility and price point.
Could the red wines of Cahors finally be having a moment in the UK? I hope so. It feels long overdue. I love the wines now, but I didn’t always. And it’s not because they’ve grown on me, but because they’ve changed greatly for the better in the last 15 or so years.
This is wonderfully vibrant and refreshing, but with subtle richness, too – and it's from a category that isn’t well known enough in the UK: dry white Bordeaux. If you like white Sancerre, you are sure to like this wine, which is 100% Sauvignon Blanc and unoaked.
This is Loire Valley Cabernet Franc just as it should be, so hats off to the Bougrier family and winemaker Franck Chatelain of Caves de la Tourangelle, the producer of this Saint Nicolas de Bourgueil. It's all the more of an achievement in a year like 2024 because growing seasons don’t come much more difficult.
Rosé may be a much less seasonal wine than it was, but we all need good rosés to drink in the summer. And what a summer this is turning out to be, not least for the weather, and the sport. Here, then, is round-up of rosés to enjoy whatever you are doing and whatever the weather.
Even if you think you don’t need another Chardonnay, trust me, you need Domaine Frédéric Lambert Côtes du Jura Chardonnay 2024. It’s different and it’s lovely. It comes from the Jura, the small, chilly, hilly region in the east of France between Burgundy and Switzerland, and it’s made and aged in a traditional way, spending nine months in oak barrels
You may be thinking anything but big reds in the current weather, but Shiraz doesn’t have to be a big beast. This isn’t. Medium-bodied, bright and polished, it’s a classic cool-climate Australian Shiraz and tastes brilliant lightly chilled. It also makes a great barbecue wine.
English still wines don’t get much better than this crystalline, polished dry white made in Norfolk from grapes grown in Essex and in Flint’s own vineyard in Earsham, Norfolk. It’s all the more of an achievement in a year as tricky, cool and wet as 2024. Try it during English Wine Week.
This red from the Douro is one of four Portuguese wines in the new Nós Somos (‘We Are’) regional range from Esporão, one of Portugal’s largest, most impressive producers and one of the world’s biggest organic growers. It's a true reflection of its region, very good value and versatile with meat and vegetable dishes
White Corbières is not something you see very often, but I didn’t pick Château Ollieux Romanis Racine Blanc 2025 for its novelty value. I chose it because it’s a wine that really sings – refreshingly, generously and expressively, with floral and white peach aromas.
If you didn’t know, you might be hard-pushed to say where this Pinot Noir comes from – the upper Aude Valley is not the best known of wine regions – but you would be having a bad day if you didn’t recognise the grape variety. It’s Pinot Noir to a T, with glistening cherry fruit and silky palate.
In line with global trends, wine drinkers in the UK have been switching from red wines to white – not to mention rosé. And we’ve been moving to lighter, crisper styles, away from white wines matured in oak. So why aren’t we drinking more German Rieslings, especially in the racy, lacy Kabinett style from the Mosel and especially in spring and summer when these diaphanous, fruity wines refresh parts…
Georgian wine is having a moment – as is the country’s food, conveniently. One of the main reasons is that however the wines are produced, especially the reds made from the indigenous Saperavi grape, they never lose their distinctive Georgian identity – their authenticity
White Rioja is still a bit of an unknown to many wine drinkers, which is not so surprising when you consider that white grape varieties account for less than 10 per cent of the region’s vineyards, but Rioja Blanco sales are rising as consumers around the world switch from red wines to white
I took a bottle of Wynns Coonawarra Estate John Riddoch Limited Release Cabernet Sauvignon out of the rack with a couple of other wines a few weeks ago, thinking that at 30 years old (the bottles not me) it was a good time to open them. If nothing else, I really couldn’t expect the corks to hold out any longer. On the cellar tag, I had written, long ago, 1996. It was only when I came to open the…
Chianti is a wine I can drink anytime. The best of times, the worst of times, high days, holidays and down days, count me in. This Vignamaggio Terre di Prenzano Chianti Classico 2022 is softly spicy and fragrant with open, sweet, cherry-ish fruit, a wisp of vanilla, and supple background tannins
The nose-tinglingly attractive aromatics of this single-estate Sauvignon Blanc make it a perfect dry white for the season – for lighter, brighter days and lighter, brighter food.