Wildstone Reserva Roussanne, Colchagua Valley, Chile 2024 (£8, Waitrose) There are white wines that zap and thrill with a trill of electric acidity: I’m thinking of the best examples of chablis, muscadet, riesling, and sauvignon blanc, wines that are all about crispness, brightness, energy and verve. But white wines can also charm in other ways, offering something softer, rounder, fuller, and richer – wines that tend, in their flavours, towards stone fruits, pears, ripe apples and quince, rather than the citrussy and the green, and which, as a result, tend to chime with a season when we’re looking for ballast against the cold and to complement richer food rather than gasping for refreshment in the heat. Made by Luis Felipe Edwards, a reliable and increasingly adventurous member of Chile’s club of big, export-focused producers, the Wildstone Reserva Roussanne, a new entry in the Waitrose range, fulfils those requirements beautifully. With a generous helping of mouthfilling fleshy peach and pear succulence, it’s a superb-value autumnal white.
M&S Chez Michel Collines Rhodaniennes Marsanne, France 2023 (£9, Marks & Spencer) Roussanne is rarely seen without its traditional, rhyming partner in wine, marsanne, which plays a small (15%) supporting role in the Wildstone, and the roussanne-marsanne blend is the heart of many a wine in France’s northern Rhône Valley where both varieties originate. Like roussanne, solo marsanne makes wines that incline to the fuller of body and the autumnal of fruit, while at their best retaining a stream of freshness and floral tones, qualities on show in two other highlights of supermarket ranges I’ve come across recently. M&S’s Chez Michel is a delightful expression of marsanne from the northern Rhône’s Cave de Tain l’Hermitage co-operative: a wine that deftly combines ripe pear and white peach, blossomy scents and a touch of revivingly herby, pithy bitterness; Paul Mas Marsanne, IGP Pays d’Oc, France 2023 gives the variety a sunny southern French lilt, with riper stone fruit leaning into tropical and a soft-focus honeyed touch.
Tahbilk Marsanne, Nagambie Lakes, Victoria 2022 (from £14.50, hicwinemerchants.co.uk; htfwines.co.uk; nywines.co.uk) As far as Rhône varieties go, syrah (usually going by its preferred Australian moniker shiraz) dwarfs Australian plantings of marsanne and roussanne. But, Tahbilk, a producer with a 164-year history, has access to some of the oldest marsanne vines in the world in its home in the Nagambie Lakes region of Victoria, from which the family-run firm produces a consistently excellent dry white that, in the latest vintage, has a lovely flicker of herb and fennel under its fabulous pear and pithy citrus. As well as being great value, it’s a wine that can happily age for many years. Also capable of adding extra honeyed layers over time, but in superb nick right now, is the gorgeously fluent, ripe, yellow-plum-fruited, shimmering 70/30 marsanne/roussanne blend that is Maxime Graillot Domaine des Lises Crozes-Hermitage Blanc 2023 (£40.25, yapp.co.uk), a rare, low-production sister wine to the same producer’s red Crozes-Hermitage I recommended a couple of weeks back, and every bit as silkily good.
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