Very happy to score a hat-trick in The Times in Jane MacQuitty’s 50 best white wines for summer on Saturday. Marcel Couturier’s excellent Macon Loché 2011 and Domaine de l’Arjolle Rosé made the cut, while Mud House’s 2011 Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough was picked as the “top Kiwi white”.
Here are Jane’s full notes on the wines:
2012 Domaine de l’Arjolle Syrah-Grenache, Côtes de Thongue, France (£94.00 per 12 inc VAT)
One of the big disappointments of my wine-drinking life was discovering that the syrah-grenache pink I had drunk buckets of on holiday in France was insipid rubbish back home in Blighty. Arjolle’s canny mix of seductive, peppery syrah, topped up with warm, spicy grenache and enhanced with a dollop of redcurranty cabernet franc, is a sizzling, summer pink that, happily, passes the on and off-holiday wine test.
2011 Mâcon-Loché, Les Longues Terres, Marcel Couturier, France (£144.00 per 12 inc VAT)
One of the joys of the new golden era of burgundy is the revival of lesser regions such as the Mâconnais and Côte Chalonnaise. Couturier rates this delicate and very fine floral, smoky violet and glacé fruit-charged white burgundy as 18/20 and so do I.
2011 Mud House Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough, New Zealand (£132.00 per 12 inc VAT)
Many Marlborough sauvignon producers can tip into oily, over-sweet territory. Mud House’s gutsy, peapod, green bean and gooseberry flavour has a finesse and passion fruit elegance all of its own. There is also less alcohol and residual sugar. If you can afford just one high-class Kiwi sauvignon, make it Mud House.