Domaine du Vieux Pressoir Saumur Puy Notre Dame, Loire, France 2015 (£23, redsquirrelwine.com) A change within the season means a change in crimson wine fashion: away with the chunky, the wealthy, the highly effective; in with the elegant, the aromatic, the refreshing. No wine fashion matches the latter transient higher than the crimson wines of the Loire, particularly these constituted of the more and more modern (everywhere in the world) cabernet franc grape selection. In a clutch of appellations comparable to Chinon, Bourgueil, and Saumur-Champigny, cabernet franc produces wines that mix a springtime sappiness and leafiness with currants and berries on a textural spectrum that runs from just-ripe and crunchy to supple and advantageous. For an energisingly vibrant instance that’s happiest displaying off its just-on-the-right-side-of-tart summer pudding flavours after a half hour or so within the fridge, attempt Waitrose’s Les Nivières Saumur Rouge 2018 (£9.99). For one thing slightly extra Bordeaux-esque, subtle and mellow, but nonetheless with an underlying pulse of Loire River liveliness, the Vieux Pressoir could be very sensible certainly.Antinori Prunotto Langhe Nebbiolo Occhetti, Italy 2018 (£20.65, vinvm.co.uk) Is the northwestern Italian grape selection nebbiolo able to making summer reds? Not, by and enormous, when it’s getting used within the nice crimson wines of Piedmont, Barolo and Barbaresco, each of which might pack a good quantity of alcoholic and tannic punch of their deceptively pale ruby body, alongside the variability’s trademark tar and roses perfume and its solid of fruit from the crimson finish of the spectrum. These are wines that I affiliate extra with autumn, particularly the older bottles which could add truffly notes, smoke and savouriness to their enchanting combine. In Piedmont itself, the summer wine par excellence is historically a relaxing down bottle of the black cherry juiciness of Dolcetto, such because the superbly cherry-skin satiny Cantina del Pino Dolcetto d’Alba 2017 (£15.88, laywheeler.com). But most of the area’s producers additionally make a nebbiolo in a youthful more energizing fashion, wherein perfumed raspberry crimson fruit is to the fore, and the tannic grip is significantly much less agency, comparable to in Prunotto’s polished instance.Dominio do Bibei Lalama Red Ribeira Sacra, Spain 2016 (from £22.75, thegoodwineshop.co.uk; vincognito.co.uk) Spanish crimson wine was as soon as simply caricatured as heavy and oaky or each. In the previous couple of a long time, nevertheless, wines of a significantly brighter, nippier, more energizing persuasion have been cropping up everywhere in the nation. Many of my favourites are constituted of mencía, a spread that shares sufficient similarities in floral-edged contemporary currant perfume and brightness with cabernet franc to have had growers believing they may be one and the identical. Ampelographers (aka grape scientists) might have since disproved that principle. But mencía wines, notably these from my favorite area for the variability – the spectacularly steep granite and slate slopes of Ribeira Sacra in inland Galicia – fulfill an identical thirst to the French selection in wines such because the vividly crimson fruit juicy Guimaro Mencía 2019 (£13.98, vinatis.co.uk) and the hauntingly stunning Dominio do Bibei Lalama, which provides 10% of different uncommon native grape varieties to the combo in a wine resonant with graphite minerals and racy raspberry.Follow David Williams on Twitter @Daveydaibach
