Barbadillo Solear Manzanilla, Spain (£11.99, Waitrose) Southern Spain is not the first place most of us would think of as a source of fresh and racy white wine. If anything, this seems like a place for red wines, and powerful ones at that, not least after this year’s waves of infernal heat. That white grapes proliferate is in large part down to their use in some of the area’s grape-based specialities: brandy, sweet wines and, in Andalusia, the fortified wines of sherry and montilla. In fact sherry, in its lightest, driest incarnations, manzanilla and fino, is one of Spain’s greatest white wine styles, since even after fortification these wines are only about 15% abv. A chilled bottle of the exemplary Solear from one of the leading bodegas in manzanilla’s home of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, for example, offers a brightly briney form of total refreshment.
Waitrose Blueprint Moscatel de Valencia, Spain (£7.79, Waitrose) As well as making a full range of sherries, Barbadillo has long supplemented its portfolio with a dry white wine that shows that palomino fino can make a highly drinkable wine without the addition of fortifying spirit. At 11.5%, the latest, 2022 vintage of Barbadillo Blanco de Albariza Palomino Fino (£12.34, Michael Sutton’s Cellar) is a breezy, subtly floral alternative to its fortified siblings. Meanwhile in the vineyards around Valencia, the widespread plantings of white muscat of Alexandria grapes have long been used to make the golden sweet wines known as moscatel de Valencia. Waitrose’s own-label bottling is a good value example that leavens the sweetness with tangy orange and makes a deliciously simple dessert when paired with dried fruit and nuts.
Pepe Mendoza Pureza Moscatel de Alejandria, Alicante 2022 (£17, The Wine Society) All over southern Spain, ambitious winemakers are making full use of the legacy of old-vine white grapes to make serious dry whites that are among the country’s very best. In Jerez, winemakers such as Bodegas Luis Pérez and Valdespino have shown that unfortified dry whites are likely to have an important role to play in the region’s future. In the east and southeast, meanwhile, I’ve been hugely impressed with wines made from white varieties grown in high-altitude and coastal vineyards where the heat is mitigated by maritime breezes and humidity or, higher up, night-time cool. Among my favourites is Pepe Mendoza in Alicante, who makes a thrillingly nervy, fresh and subtly grippy-textured dry white infused with Mediterranean citrus, herbs and flowers from muscat grapes aged in clay amphorae.
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