Gen del Alma Jiji Red, Tupungato, Mendoza, Argentina 2018 (from £17.50, St Aandrew’s Wine Company; Noble Geen Wines) Of the thousands of wine tastings that are put on by the wine trade in London over the course of a year, one of the highlights is always an annual event hosted by 12 of the UK’s best small importers. As ever this year’s Dirty Dozen tasting was packed to the rafters with sommeliers, merchants and press looking for the importers’ latest discoveries (each showed a couple of dozen wines each) – and an insight into what’s going on in each of their areas of expertise. What’s new? Well, Indigo Wines, originally known for bringing the best of a new wave of Spanish wines to the UK, has been branching out and was showing a pair of wines that show off the new, funkier side of Argentine wine from winemaking couple Andrea Mufatto and Gerardo Michelini. Their wild-cherried, slippery textured, super-fresh red blend was a personal favourite.
Julien Sunier Morgon, Beaujolais, France 2017 (£27.50, Roberson Wine) The Jiji red is representative of a kind of red winemaking that has been the fashionable default around the world for some time now. It’s a style – genre might be a better word – loosely inspired by or indebted to the wines of Burgundy and Beaujolais, where elegance, freshness and what tends to be called drinkability is more prized than power. Examples on various points of this spectrum abounded at The Dirty Dozen, from the almost piercingly racy, vividly coloured, fresh-berried exhilaration of Anselmo Mendes Vinhão 2018 (£14, Bottle Apostle) from Portugal’s northern, and generally white winemaking Vinho Verde to the beautifully elegant, Burgundy-challenging perfumed prettiness of German pinot noir in Weingut Jülg Spätbrugner, Pfalz 2015 (£13.48, Howard Ripley). And from the astonishingly good, gorgeously poised modern Californian of Hirsch Sonoma Coast An Andreas Fault Pinot Noir 2016 (£64, Roberson Wine) to the outstanding, deep, layered but super-silky and fresh-finishing Beaujolais of Julien Sunier.
Tenuta Tobia Rosso No 1, Tuscany Italy 2014 (£18.95, Swig) One of my favourite white wines at the Dirty Dozen tasting was actually a good deal more powerful than many of the reds: Ellio Ottin Petite Arvine 2017 (from £25, Old Bridge Wine; Lay & Wheeler) from the high altitude vines of the Valle d’Aosta in far northwestern Italy clocks in at 14.5% alcohol. But the weight and fullness and honeyed peachiness of a wine made from a grape variety, petite arvine, better known for making some of Switzerland’s best whites, is balanced by a racing stream of cool freshness. A similar balancing act between toasty-creamy richness and a tart-apple bite of juicy freshness can be found in Dewaldt Heyns Weathered Hands Chein Blanc, Tulbagh, South Africa (£17.25, H2Vin). For a red of power and southern-sun infused flavour, Tuscany provided a Dirty Dozen standout in the complex form of Tenuta Tobia’s warm earthy, leathery, dried herby smoothie from vines near the Brunello di Montalcino zone.
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