£12.95–£15.25, Amps Wine, Vinvm, Cheers Wine, The Surrey Wine Cellar, Booths supermarkets, NY Wines, Fareham Wine Cellar, Whole Foods Market
This is a lovely Chilean Pinot Noir: elegant and fine-grained with sweet fruit and savoury complexity enhanced by the wild ferment using native yeasts.
It's light ruby-garnet in colour, fragrant with strawberry, red cherry and rose-hip fruit and framed by delicate, smoky, coffeeish oak, sun-warmed earth and mouthwatering salty freshness.
The oak element – 11 months in French oak barrels (15% new) after fermentation and maceration – is just right, adding to the complexity as well as a subtle flavour note.
The hand-harvested grapes comes from two vineyards that benefit from proximity to the Pacific Ocean, which moderates the warm summer days with morning fogs and evening breezes. La Escultura vineyard in Casablanca and Errazuriz’s Aconcagua Costa vineyard are 30km and 12km from the coast respectively.
When I chose this wine for the bank holiday, I was thinking of a versatile red for picnics and barbecues (although spared of the thrusting barbecue sauce). If the weather doesn’t play ball, it will taste just as good inside with the likes of baked salmon or prosciutto wrapped fish, mushroom dishes, duck or quail, sweetbreads, pork, bresaola or a simple pan-fried fillet steak. 13.5%. Empty bottle weight: 587g.
Errazuriz Wild Ferment Pinot Noir 2021, Aconcagua, Chile
£12.95 (offer), Amps Wine Merchants; £13.05 (offer), Vinvm; £13.95 (offer), Cheers Wine Merchants; £14.99, The Surrey Wine Cellar; £15, Booths; £15.05, NY Wines; £15.25, Fareham Wine Cellar; Whole Foods Market
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