It’s very much the last of the summer wine this week, with three whites ideal for quaffing outdoors during the last picnics or barbecues of the year and three reds perfect for the warming stews and roasts of early autumn. And there’s a distinctly French flavour to this FromVineyardsDirect selection too, with just one white from Spain to break up the Gallic monopoly.
Picpoul de Pinet is all the rage at the moment and there can’t be a wine bar or restaurant that doesn’t have one on its list — with, sadly, many indifferent ones among them. The 2013 Château des Lauriers Picpoul de Pinet Prestige (1), though, is as good an example as I’ve come across. It’s typically zesty and the first sip is nothing if not invigorating. No surprise to discover that Picpoul is known colloquially in the Languedoc as ‘lip stinger’. But let the wine open out in the glass a touch and a gentle creaminess steals to the fore accompanied by a delightful underlying fruitiness.
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