Mighty whites

After the Pinot Blanc at Launceston Place, over the last couple of nights I’ve enjoyed a Tesco’s Finest Tingleup Riesling. It’s a grape variety I always used to avoid, not being one for big, fruity, off-dry-or-worse whites, but I’ve tried a couple of really enjoyable Australian examples which were certainly dry, but with more complexity to them than your NZ Sauvignons, which to be fair might just be because I’ve drunk quite a very lot of New Zealand’s signature white wine. So my resolution this year, as the sun starts to spread its delicious warmth on our backs for the first time, is not to buy any New Zealand sauvignons at all, and to explore other potentially more surprising and rewarding areas instead. If reports of New Zealand’s washout 2008 vintage are anything to go by, I might be better off giving it a miss…