Lazio Spring

This was our first al fresco lunch of the year outside at Checchino Dal 1887, a restaurant set into the amphora-made hillside of Testaccio in Rome. It was the old slaughterhouse district and the main gate was opposite us as we tucked into various carnivorous dishes.

Normally you would go for red with meat but although this wine is from a Roscetto grape which has a tint of pink when grown, it is a golden, straw colour in the March sunshine. 

It is a fabulous wine made outside Rome in Lazio. It is crisp and mineral but without the body of a burgundy or the sharpness of a Chablis. But with a much better finish than a Frascati, for example. It is difficult to get outside Italy, although it's not expensive.

Atlantic Civilisation

I'd been reading in Barry Cunliffe's sweeping history of the European Atlantic seaboard how the Loire is one of the great arteries of the continent along with the Rhone and Rhine. It shifted all those good things from the Med like olive oil out to the 'Celtic fringes'. In turn tin, furs and Vikings made their way from Brittany back towards civilisation. Around Nantes at the western mouth of the Loire is the Muscadet wine region.

There are many signs of a good wine, but one rather crude one is to leave it open in the fridge overnight. Muscadets are usually 'bone-dry' but this one emerged from its chilly 20 hours with a range of flavours. Mainly apple but also a whiff of grass and not at all sharp in the mouth. Amazing value at £7.50 from the Wine Society.

Wild Wine

 

Orford is famous for the legend of the 'wild man', a kind of hybrid merman/green man legend. It feels entirely in keeping with the deep historic feel of the place, a strange corner of Suffolk hanging onto the edge of some very watery landscape right next to the north sea. This wine is also a bit of an odd mix, but no monster.

This five year old English white made of German grapes has, perhaps, too much going on. It is quite full-bodied, with all sorts of notes such as a sweet peach, a sharper lemon and when well-chilled, enough minerality to compliment the Butley oysters we were enjoying. Both the wine and seafood were local to within a few miles of Orford.

She's Forever Blowing Bubbles

This is not about the wine, it's about the moment. Champagne is for celebration and what more joy than a good friend who cheats serious illness?
And location and timing helps. In the middle of the Black Mountains near Hay On Wye, in the warm glow of a quite extraordinarily sunny early July weekend. Half way up Tympa.
This was a relatively inexpensive bubbly picked up from the very lovely Corks of Cotham independent wine merchants in Bristol en route to Wales. I am not a huge champagne fan, but this was dryish, with a nice biscuity flavour. Not too sharp or too fizzy.
Cheers to one of my oldest and dearest friends.

Pull Over

You are on the E21 about 100+ KM heading north of Lyons when on the left appears the ridge with signposts to some of the best wine villages of Burgundy. You have a car full of kids and unwashed holiday clothes. What you really need is a cool (but not chilled) glass of white.

I have always thought it paradoxical that one of the most reviled and misused grapes - Chardonnay - can reach such heights on those stony slopes just off the motorway.

This is not a particularly outstanding example. It was just a tenner en primeur. But it does have that minerally, slightly acidic quality (imagine sucking a pebble with a slice of lemon - on the other hand don't) but with the oleaginous body of the Chardonnay grape. This one was was slightly oaked with a lovely fresh apple taste (Bramley not Pippin).

This year, I will pull over.

Jugendstil Veltliner

This is a lovely Gruner Veltliner from Austria. It's not green at all. Instead it's a lovely thin golden colour.
Like most Veltliner it has a refreshing, sharp, dry but full taste. This one had a slight fizz to it as well.
I confess I chose it for the beautiful label. I adore that Jugendstil type-face and the charming folksy wood-cut illustration. Very Austrian.