Rupenera Grillo Sicilia Apassimento, Sicily, Italy 2020 (£ 13.99, virginwines.co.uk) The wine business has spent much of the past couple of decades playing down the role of the winemaker. The idea is that the vigneron is effectively not much more than a chaperone, keeping a watchful eye on the grapes as they make their inevitable passage from juice to wine, but stepping in only when strictly necessary. Much as I applaud the way winemaking has become much more focused on vineyards, and winemakers have grown much less willing to use technical solutions and additives to cover up poor quality grapes, the reality is that winemaking remains a fearsomely complex business filled, like cooking, with thousands of moment-to-moment decisions and variables: from when and how to prune the vines right up to how to stabilise and clarify the wine before bottling. Some interventions are more influential than others, however. Winemaker Mimmo di Gregorio’s decision to leave his grillo grapes to become slightly raisined on the vine before picking, for example, clearly lends his dry white an alluring extra layer of flavour and mouthfilling texture.
Marqués de Cáceres Excellens Verdejo, Rueda, Spain 2020 (£11.99, finewinesdirectuk.com) A lot of the grillo planted in Sicily was once used to make the island’s great fortified wine, marsala. It’s only relatively recently that Sicilian winemakers have really begun to explore its potential for fragrant, juicy whites from a variety that is very good at keeping freshening acidity in the heat and sun. Something similar has happened in the Rueda region of Castilla y Leon, in northwestern Spain. Up until the 1970s, Rueda growers were also largely occupied with making sherry-esque fortified wines. It took the rediscovery of an obscure grape variety and the appliance of a particularly precise form of modern winemaking to transform the region into a producer of extravagantly aromatic dry white wines. That technique was based largely on keeping the grapes cool: harvesting at night and fermenting at very low temperatures in spotlessly clean stainless steel tanks, and it’s applied in textbook fashion by Rioja producer Marqúes de Cáceres in their pristine lime-and-tropical fruited, subtly fennel-bitter Excellens.
Bosman Adama Fairtrade White, Wellington, South Africa 2020 (£10, The Co-op) Some of the most engaging verdejo comes from winemakers who have looked to move away from the squeaky clean stainless-steel method. Some go in for extended contact between the juice and the lees (the dead yeast cells at the end of fermentation). Others might ferment or age some of the wine in oak barrels or use wild naturally occurring yeasts rather than adding cultivated yeasts. The results – in wines by the likes of Belondrade y Lurton and Barco del Corneta – can be thrilling, with extra density, complexity, creaminess, but retaining verdejo’s natural pungency and ebullience. The decisive effects of winemaking decisions are also very much in evidence in the best white wines of South Africa. Bosman Family Vineyards make some delightful bright, brisk, tangy dry whites from chenin blanc in the low-temperature, stainless steel mode (Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Chenin Blanc; £7.50). But they blend the chenin with grenache blanc and age some of it in new French oak barrels, for the multi-layered, peach and nougat richness of Adama.
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