​White wine has a property of being able to express the wine-makers skill in high definition, more so than red wine. With all that skin-contact (for colour) and barrel maturation (for oakiness), red wines have an unfair advantage when it comes to the number of categories with which to judge quality. The simple process of fermenting pressed grape juice containing sugars into alcohol rarely fails. But to develop a balance between catching the right aromas, developing flavours that are pleasing and maintaining fresh acidity is much harder to achieve. This was brought home to me recently when I was offered a rare example of a Pinot Noir made without skin-contact; the white wine produced from a Loire appellation appearing sorely lacking in depth and vivacity.

In my quest to introduce you to some great wines, when considering the white style, you can do no worse than looking at the wines of Argentina. Torrontes, in my opinion, is an emerging world-beating white wine — some say the Argentinian rival to New World Sauvignon Blanc. Forty years ago, when an English restaurant’s offering of a glass of wine was house red, or house white and your meal would have a starter – sometimes prawn cocktails on soggy lettuce, Brussels pate on dry toast or the novelty of grapefruits served with a glacé cherry sometimes with a sprig of mint or even sugared leaves (!), clever entrepreneurs in France and the USA had the idea of growing vines in the Argentinian Andean hinterlands.

Up to 3,000 metres altitude and at the uncomfortably hot latitude of 24° S at a place called Salta in Northern Argentina (located below), a lot of exciting investment and ‘flash’ wineries followed. They thought of combining the three-hundred years of wine making tradition, first started in Argentina by the Jesuit Monasteries in the 16th century, with the most modern technology and plant available and using ‘cleaner’ processing techniques imported from neighbouring Chile. Viticulturally, their aim was to stress the vines to make smaller yields of more juicy fruit and to capture these flavours by controlled temperature fermentation. The resulting generation of artisan growers with the best kit available proved the investment and the quality of Argentinian wine is now becoming renowned.

​My choice of the month is Susana Balbo's carefully crafted Crios Torrontes. A haunting nose, one writer suggests, and with gentle suggestion of honey and spices and a hint of nectarine orange, reminiscent of the grape's Muscat parentage. I tried this first in Manchester earlier this year and was duly impressed with its jasmine, pineapple and melon flavours and lively fresh acidity. If you fancy something to go with your salad or spicy curry, this wine will turn a meal to a banquet. On another tasting a month later, my notes recall delicate floral notes on the nose, rose and jasmine and with white peach and grapefruit on the palate whilst showing racy acidity. What's not to like? The world has moved on from cherry-adorned grapefruit and those ‘house white’ only days.

“Chardonnay is the world's most famous white-wine grape and also one of the most widely planted.” says a trusty source I use each day on the internet. Who could argue that for choice of styles and quality Chardonnay beats the rest. From Champagne and Chablis the style is cool-climate - steely wines, all apple, pear, and green plum flavours, with enough acidity to cut through oily fish and poultry dishes. From southern Burgundy and New Zealand the style is temperate-climate - citrus, nectarine, melon, peach and apricot (sometimes referred to as stone-fruit) flavours. Whereas in the warm-climate style, as befitting California, Chile and much of Australia, its exotic flavours such as pineapple, banana, mango, guava, and fig. How do all these flavours come from a single variety of grape? Well it’s all down to chemistry. The clever vines are sending out ‘come-and-eat-me’ signals to any passing muncher (including us I suppose!) in the form of terpenes, polyphenols, and more specific odorants, which the physiology of ripening stitches together to make a juicy treat and by scattering the pips obviously helps the vine to reproduce. And what one must consider is the more subtle message – ‘make me into wine and more wine’ by further planting and propagation. Chardonnay is the wine-makers dream grape. This noble variety of Vitis vinifera rewards the wine-maker who has choices to make: sweet or dry, oaky or mineral, still or sparkling (it does make the finest Champagne and British Fizz).

The very best examples are from the heartland of Burgundy but my choice for the month is
from the New World, a Chilean gem grown in the Leyda Valley by well-established family winery Unduragga (location displayed below). It is Sibaris Gran Riserva Chardonnay and is available online (www.goodwinonline.co.uk, who are based in Conwy, North Wales). The grapes for this wine while being vinified in the Maipo Valley, just south of Santiago, are sourced from nearer the sea with the cool on-shore breezes making the growing environment a temperate-climate region. The wine is described as having seductive aromas of citrus fruit peel, accompanied by fresh pear, white peach and honey flavours, all signs of substantial and  refreshing fruit but with a satisfying development (that’s the honey effect). They manage as well to get expressive minerality and food-friendly acidity, which is clever enough and if descriptions mean anything they have packed in a lot of nice things in this attractively presented and moderately priced wine. Spare a thought when drinking of the clever and famous Chardonnay who has beguiled us again.
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