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Yves Cuilleron La Petite Côte, Condrieu, Rhône, France 2019 (£44, greatwine.co.uk) Condrieu is the fashion that comes closest to how I imagined superb French wine can be once I was an impressionable teenager first discovering Rimbaud and Baudelaire. The polar reverse of the chilly, quicksilver, considerably austere delights of chablis, it’s a dry white wine that has one thing of the decadent about it. Condrieu may be heady, perfumed, flamboyantly full-bodied, with the scent of heat evenings in late-summer gardens: honeysuckle, jasmine, verbena; ripe peach and apricot. It’s additionally fairly uncommon: it comes from a brief stretch of vineyards planted on the banks of the Rhône 30 miles or so south of Lyon, most of which need to be labored completely by hand (a advantage of necessity on these very steep, tractor-repelling slopes, however a advantage nonetheless). The decadence continues into the pricing: the very best condrieu (all condrieu) isn’t low-cost. However when it’s good, totally ripe and but balanced with a trickle of cool-stream freshness comparable to Yves Cuilleron La Petite Côte, it’s near irresistible.
Laurent Miquel, Vendanges Nocturnes Viognier, IGP Pays d’Oc, 2020 (Waitrose) One distinguishing function of condrieu that’s now not fairly so uncommon is the grape selection from which it’s made, viognier. Simply half a century in the past, the world’s viognier plantings had dwindled to a mere 35 acres, in Condrieu and neighbouring, single-producer appellation, Château Grillet. Like a lot else in fashionable wine, it was producers within the so-called New World that introduced concerning the selection’s renaissance, probably the most notable being Australian producer Yalumba, which discovered the range best for the nice and cozy sunny circumstances of South Australia’s Eden Valley. The corporate has devoted quite a lot of time and sources to understanding viognier, and makes a number of the finest and best-value viogniers round (such because the Y Collection Viognier for £8.50 at Sainsbury’s). Different good-value choices embrace one other long-term grasp of the artwork, Laurent Miquel within the Languedoc, and the more energizing, breezier however nonetheless charmingly fragrant fashion of the Vendanges Nocturnes, which is £6.99 (down from £9.99) till 24 August.
Tabalí Barranco Río Hurtado Viognier, Limarí, Chile 2018 (£14.50, thewinesociety.com) The trick with viognier is timing: relatively like harvesting a peach, there’s a very small window of alternative between unripe and over-ripe. Viognier wants solar and heat, and the grapes should be ripe, with loads of sugar (and due to this fact potential alcohol) earlier than they start to show all of the full-bloom aromas and textures that make it so appealingly completely different. However in the event you depart it too late, you find yourself with a wine that has an excessive amount of of all the things, besides the freshness that makes any wine drinkable. In Chile, there’s been an inclination over time to err an excessive amount of on the facet of early choosing with viognier, which has produced some completely drinkable however not particularly distinctive or thrilling wines. A number of the nation’s newer, extra distant winery areas appear to supply circumstances the place discovering that choosing candy spot is much less of a problem. Definitely, Viña Tabalí’s very excessive altitude (1,600m above sea degree) Barranco winery in northerly Limarí has yielded a ravishing and extremely authentic expression of this finicky grape: luminous, swish, it performs up viognier’s floral facet with downy peach and a pulse of coolness.
Comply with David Williams on Twitter @Daveydaibach
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