October Mini-bar

Four delicious wines from the estimable Private Cellar. Three are from France, and one from Italy. A mixed case would, I think, cover all your drinking needs for quite a few days.

The Italian is a Soave. That’s Italian for ‘suave’, but much of the wine sold under that name is less boulevardier than chav. It comes from vast co-operatives, where the growers bring in truckloads of grapes which go into hoppers, and most is made with less care than a cup of motorway tea. By contrast, the 2011 Soave Gregoris, made by Antonio Fattori (1), is a delectable, golden, peach-and-apricot wine, bottled nectar. It could not be more different from the generic Soave sold in dreary Italian restaurants. (Often, in the provinces, people say, ‘We have an Italian restaurant every bit as good as anything in London!’ It rarely is, though the prices tend to be as high, and you can tell it’s a wrong ’un if their Soave doesn’t bear the winemaker’s name.)