Three white wines to like – and like again (From York Press)
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Three white wines to like – and like again
11:07am Saturday 7th April 2012 in Tipping's Tipples
By Mike Tipping
Three Choirs Annum 2011, £7.19 at Waitrose
There are just a few wines that have featured more than once or twice in Tipping’s Tipples. Or put more accurately, their different vintages have.
Dr L Riesling, an off-dry number from the Mosel, is one of those. A wine that is more reliable than the name of that German car in the advert.
Another Tipping’s Tipples regular is Errazuriz Wild Ferment Chardonnay but not because it’s reliable, it isn’t. There have been past vintages where I thought the oak influence was too much; wooded whites need to be subtle in my book.
I did a mini-vertical tasting of the wine at home last week, tasting the 2009 and then the 2010. The 2009 was good but I much preferred the 2010 and conveniently it’s on offer at the Cooperative until Tuesday.
The 2010, made with fruit from the Casablanca Valley in Chile, delivers butter rich flavours of pineapple, satsuma, grapefruit zest and honey. It’s perfectly balanced with an impressively long finish.
The next two whites have not featured in this column before. That’s not to say they won’t!
Firstly to Gloucestershire and the Three Choirs winery. Three Choirs Annum 2011 is a blend of, wait for it, madeleine angevine, schönberger, reichensteiner, phoenix and siegerrebe.
Not names that trip off the tongue but the sum of their parts slips down easily.
It’s bone dry, with taut acidity and flavours of granny smith apple, green pea, lime and mineral. Pair it with seafood, the first of this season’s asparagus or even with one of each from the chippy.
For lunchtime drinking, in the garden on a sunny, hot, summer’s day, try Elio Perrone, Moscato d’Asti 2011, from the Piedmont region of Italy. Light, sweet and effervescent, it’s like liquid fairy dust, with delicate flavours of peach, pear and lemon sherbet, held in check by fresh acidity.
It has a low alcohol level of five per cent, so you will be able to have a glass without getting a headache.
• Errazuriz Wild Ferment Chardonnay 2010, £7.99 at the Cooperative (until April 10) 19/20
• Three Choirs Annum 2011, £7.19 at Waitrose (April 10 – May 8) 17/20
• Elio Perrone Moscato d’Asti 2011, £6.75 from the Wine Society 18/20
