Stellenrust Manor Barrel-Fermented Chenin Blanc, South Africa 2020 (£15, Tesco) Oaky white wine, once so popular when rich, toasty, buttery Aussie chardonnay was in its lurid pomp in the 1990s, is not the most fashionable of vinous genres. Indeed, when you speak to some winemakers, you get the impression they feel it’s almost a failure if their wines taste too obviously of barrels, and many will talk up their use of alternative, more discreet vessels: concrete, clay, stainless steel, or what’s known as ‘neutral oak’, which refers to barrels that have been used for so many vintages they no longer impart the flavours or tannins they did when they were new. I can understand why: ham-fistedly oak-aged whites are among the least attractive of mouthfuls, with any fruit smothered by a sensation of liquid sawdust. But we should be careful of a baby-bathwater scenario – with skill and quality raw materials, as in Stellenrust’s chenin, oaked whites can be luxuriously rich and creamy, nutty flavours dovetailing with the bright, ripe peach and apple fruit.
Morrisons The Best Marqués de los Rios Rioja Blanco Reserva Spain 2016 (£9, Morrisons) So long as they have that necessary balancing brightness of acidity, the more substantial, savoury character of many oaked whites makes them excellent like-for-like matches with weightier umami-rich foods, such as a classic garlicky roast chicken. There’s something deeply comforting about the mouthfilling feel of an oaked white, an association with indulgently fatty foods that is very welcome at this time of year. Some of my favourite oaky whites are made in Rioja, with Morrisons’ own-label, made for the supermarket by the reliable firm Vintae (which makes the good-value Lopéz de Haro brand), offering just the right combination of nutty savouriness, vanilla cream and tangy quince to wash down my current favourite late-autumn dish of baked rice laden with wild mushrooms and butternut squash.
Flint Bacchus Fumé, Norfolk, England 2022 (£22.99, Flint Vineyard) Some grape varieties seem particularly well-suited to oak. Others are rarely given the full-on oak treatment: riesling, for example, is often made in large, old ‘neutral’ oak barrels, but I don’t remember coming across an example made in a toasty new barrel (known as a barrique) of the kind used to make chardonnay in Burgundy or California. Something about riesling’s delicate floral aromas and its slim, steely shape would be swamped by oak. One might assume that bacchus, a variety with rather a lot of riesling in its ancestry, would have a similar allergy to oakiness. But Norfolk producer Flint Vineyard’s bottling suggests otherwise. Fermented and aged in barriques, the oak is by no means excessive, but it helps bring a key-lime-pie mix of tanginess, which make this one of the very best dry English whites around.
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