Dorothy Parker Wines
by Harry Eyres
For the past three years I’ve been serving on the committee of my local tennis club in west London. Calling it a tennis club is accurate up to a point;...
White Varietal: Godello
2022 Casa Ferreirinha Planalto White Reserva, Douro Valley
( £8.99, 12.5%, Majestic )The Douro Valley may be better known for Port and red table wines, but its whites can offer tremendous quality and value for money too. This brilliant, unoaked blend is a cuvée of seven different local grapes – Arinto, Codega, Godello, Malvasía Fina, Moscatel, Rabigato and Viosinho – from cooler, higher altitude sites. Spicy, pithy and intense, it’s a bright, tangy, seafood friendly number with citrus, lime, white pepper and fennel flavours and a lingering finish. Outstanding value.
2021 Gallina de Piel Manar dos Seixas, Ribeiro
( £23.98, 13%, Shelved Wine, The Fine Wine Company )David Seijas was the sommelier at El Bulli, considered the best restaurant in the world at the time, for 11 years, but is now making an excellent range of Spanish wines under his Gallina de Piel label. This is brilliant cuvée of mostly Treixadura with lesser amounts of Godello, Albariño and Loureira, sourced from the granite soils of the Ribeiro region. Intense, stony and bone dry, it has flavours of lemongrass and pink grapefruit, plenty of grip and intensity and top notes of green tea, chamomile and juniper. Utterly delicious.
2021 El Jardín de Ana Godello, Monterrei, Galicia
( £10, 12.5%, Tesco )Albariño is Galicia’s most famous white grape, but Godello from the same part of so-called green Spain can be every bit as good. This appealingly packaged number from Martín Codax is engagingly fresh and perfumed, with jasmine and chamomile scents, tangerine and pink grapefruit flavours and thrilling freshness and minerality. Amazing value for a tenner.
2018 Verónica Ortega Cobrana, Bierzo
( €26.75, 12.5%, Cuvee 3000, Decantalo )Verónica Ortega worked in Burgundy (at Domaine de la Romance-Conti, no less) before she set up her own winery in Bierzo in 2010. This hauntingly delicate wine isn’t made from Pinot Noir, but it wouldn’t look out of place in a line up from Chambolle-Musigny. Sourced from seven parcels at 750 metres on slate soils, it sees no wood (only amphoras) and is wonderfully poised and balletic. Raspberry, tobacco pouch and wild strawberry flavours are complemented by rose petal aromas and a nip of sinewy tannin. You may have trouble tracking this down right now, although I’m assured that UK agent Vine Trail will have some next spring.
2019 Verónica Ortega Kinki, Bierzo
( €21.80, 11.2%, Cuvee 3000, Decantalo )The intriguingly named Kinki is a very unusual Bierzo for several reasons. First, it’s a co-fermenteation of Mencía with Alicante Bouschet and 30% white grapes (Godello, Palomino and Doña Blanca); second it has only 11.2% alcohol; and third it is fermented and aged in a combination of amphoras and larger barrels. Pale, delicate and elegant, with some clove spice from 100% whole bunch fermentation, flavours of watermelon, wild strawberry and pomegranate, racy acidity and a hint of reduction. Bierzo meets the Côte de Beaune.
2019 Verónica Ortega Cal, Bierzo
( €25.65, 12.5%, Cuvee 3000 )Cal is one the most exciting wines I’ve tasted this year and ranks among Spain’s very best whites. Made entirely with Godello grown on rare (for Bierzo) limestone soils at 650 metres in San Juan de la Mata, it’s fresh and light bodied, but with remarkable density and concentration for a wine with only 12.5% alcohol. Lees, chalky and saline, this is like a cross between a Chablis and a Rías Baixas Albariño, with aromas of white flowers and sea salt and notes of fresh bread, wet stones and lemon zest. Stunning.
2012 Bolo Godello Mountain Wine, Valdeorras
( £9.95, 13%, The Wine Society )Alabriño may be more familiar to consumers than Godello, but the latter grape can be just as exciting. It’s more mineral and weighty (and even works well with oak on occasion). This high altitude example is fresh and bone dry, with a chalky, almost Chablis-like note and flavours of citrus, apple and pear.
Try before you buy: the future of wine?
by Natasha Hughes MW
Some 10 years ago, when I first started out as a wine, journalist I was commissioned (by a certain Tim Atkin) to write about why people bought the wines they...