Usually when I send one of these articles to my editor at FT Weekend Magazine, I ask for its subject to be made very clear at the beginning. This week, I’m hoping to disguise my topic until I have lured you into at least the second paragraph, because I know what a turn-off it is for many of you, and yet I really, really want you to come to know and love it.
No, the subject is not reduced-alcohol wine. Nor Bordeaux primeurs, which the wine-consuming chattering classes have decided is the most boring sort of wine there is. What I want to draw your attention to is the world’s greatest white wine grape. Not Chardonnay. This grape makes wines that go much better with food than the heavier and often oakier Chardonnay. Its wines also express place more eloquently than almost any other white wine grape. And they continue to develop interestingly and reliably (none of this premature oxidation nonsense) in bottle not just for years but for decades.
My hero is, of course, the grape that dares neither speak nor spell its name – Riesling, pronounced Reece-ling and misspelt almost as often as it is mispronounced. Most of the wine trade loves it for the aforementioned qualities but many wine drinkers dislike it. I used to think this was because Riesling has so much flavour that its strength of personality puts people off. But the popularity of Sauvignon Blanc, equally powerfully perfumed (and, in some cases, equally sweet), casts doubt on that theory.