2014 Vignerons d’Alignan du Vent Cinquante-Cinq Chardonnay IGP Pays d’Oc

Les Vignerons d’Alignan is a cooperative in the Cotes de Thongue, about 20 miles west of Montpelier. The wine is crisp and finely balanced with a creamy texture to the apple and peach fruit. Take the opportunity to rehabilitate Chardonnay as a really useful, delicious and refreshing summer wine – great as an aperitif, great with salads, and entirely oak-free.

 

Among wine enthusiasts, when talk turns to ‘terroir’  – the influence of place on style and quality – conversation typically revolves around the climate of the region, the geology of the soils and the slope of the vineyards. Little mention is made of the impact of the micro-organisms that will ferment the wine, turning the sweet fruit juice into dry and strong wine.

That’s a mistake.

For most of the last century Puglian wine had no separate existence of its own.  It was made and sold to be blended into the more famous red wines of the North, adding the fruit and alcoholic strength that they naturally lacked.  Better technology and viticulture changed all that.

Cantina Cantele Salice Salentino Riserva DOC 2010

The Salento peninsula is home to Salice Salentino.  This narrow peninsula, the heel of the boot, as it were, is close to the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea which cools the vineyards at night, keeping acidity in the fruit and refreshment in the wine.

Food: hard cheeses, chacuterie, roasted meats, 

In the morning this amphitheater of vineyards gets the sunshine first; the slope gives each vine a clear view of the sun. There is little or no topsoil on the slope and the bare rocks retain and reflect heat up towards the maturing, and soon-to-be wonderfully, uniformly ripe grapes.

Roberto Ferraris Barbera d’Asti DOC 2012  is a lively, beautifully ripe Barbera with a good balance between berry fruit and spice on t
he palate while remaining faultlessly refreshing and mouth-watering

Food: anything with a tomato-based sauce as well as roast chicken/pork.