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The best under-the-radar wines to try this summer
For good-value bottles, don’t overlook styles from the twentieth century
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Reader! The 20th century is calling. It wants to know if you’ve given its white and pink wines a try recently. Some of its greatest hits are languishing, overlooked, behind fridges full of English bacchus, Marlborough sauvignon, Provence rosé, Greek grapes like malagousia and assyrtiko, and rosorange.
If you don’t know rosorange, you will soon. It’s a cross between rosé and orange wine, and a good example is Specially Selected Rosorange Rosé 2023, France (13%, Aldi, £9.99), which tastes of dried oranges, crystallised lemons and strawberries, and makes an excellent, more textured alternative to pale rosé.
But back to the 20th century. One of the best cheap whites I’ve tried so far this year is an Orvieto Classico sold at the Co-op for £6.85 (see Wines of the Week in Telegraph Magazine). Orvieto is an ancient hilltop city in south-west Umbria with a magnificent 14th-century cathedral, but for a while its name here was associated mainly with cheap supermarket white.
I can’t remember the last time I was offered a glass of Orvieto but the Co-op’s is a winner. At least, the contents of the bottle are. The packaging looks apologetic, dated and droopy. If it had a bright, beautiful label and a different name, I reckon it could sit alongside some of the fashionable aromatic Greek whites in terms of flavour profile and they could easily charge double.
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Specially Selected Rosorange Rosé 2023, Aldi, £9.99; Orvieto Classico, Co-op for £6.85; Trimbach Riesling 2019 Asda, £17.50
Alsace next. This French region is still appreciated by wine nerds and sommeliers but treated with suspicion by a great many others. I recommended the beautiful, dry Trimbach Riesling 2019 (13%, Asda, £17.50) among my recent summer drinking picks. Its bright acidity and spry citrus notes ought to go down well with Marlborough sauvignon drinkers.
I also enjoyed two aromatic white blends, both from The Wine Society. The first is The Society’s Vin d’Alsace 2022 (13.5%, The Wine Society, £9.95), which is based on gewürztraminer and sylvaner, with pinot blanc, riesling, pinot gris and muscat, and offers a nosegay of meadow flower and grass notes with some richer lychee flavours.
But The Wine Society also has an even better example (see Wines of the Week), blended as part of its 150th celebrations, for which it has released special versions of some wines that have been important through the Society’s history. I’ve found many of the ‘Generation Series’ releases a little surplus to requirements – the acronym TTH (trying too hard) has often cropped up in my notes – but I loved this and it’s worth the extra fiver on the standard version.
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The Society’s Vin d’Alsace 2022, The Wine Society, £9.95; Finest Mosel Steep Slopes Riesling 2023, Tesco, £7.25; G de Guiraud 2022, Co-op, £17.50
I could talk about a lot of other 20th-century classics, including sherry (another time), muscadet, soave and German riesling. In the case of the last, try the Finest Mosel Steep Slopes Riesling 2023 (11%, Tesco, £7.25), which is off-dry and gleams with notes of apple and nectarine sorbet. There’s also vinho verde, from northern Portugal, which is already experiencing a resurgence as it meets the contemporary desire for slightly aromatic, slightly fizzy light wines.
But let’s not forget Bordeaux and the surrounding area, whose red wines are well-known but whose dry whites are overlooked. A bottle of G de Guiraud 2022 (13%, Co-op, £17.50) with a buttery roast chicken would be my idea of a Sunday afternoon treat. Made from sauvignon blanc and semillon, it’s oaked, with lovely notes of smoky baked grapefruit and pine forests. Heaven.