New kids on the block at Great Western Wine

By Angela Mount

With spring blossom and a sea of green leaves and shoots bringing a welcome cheer to gardens throughout the country, there’s also been a veritable spring feast of new buds, a riot of fresh colour and a happy sense of an exciting new season at Great Western Wine. The team has been quietly scurrying around over the last few months, sniffing out some superb new wines, which I had the opportunity to taste this week.

There are over 40 new wines in the range, far too many for one blog piece; here are my favourite new fizzes and white wines – I’ll be writing about my pick of the reds next week. The great news is that there’s also 12% off many of these wines throughout May, so a good time, to try out something new. Click here to view the wines

Let’s start with fizz; last month the team turned my view of Cava on its head by bringing in an absolute blinder of a wine, both in terms of what was in the bottle, and also with the wackiest, and coolest label I have seen in ages: TORELLO BRUT RESERVA CAVA, SPECIAL EDITION – rich, complex and intriguing, it puts many more expensive sparkling wines in the shade, with its fine stream of bubbles,  delicious aromas and flavours of ripe, fleshy peaches and poached pears.  Look at for the equally eye-catching and edgy TORELLO MALVAREL- LO 2013, with its succulent, citrus freshness and warm, ripe fragrant stone fruit character.

A new Champagne house is also on the agenda, and I love discovering top quality wines from small family producers, who make it their life’s work to make the very best wines, in small quantities, on their own estates. Step forward Champagne Gonet-Medeville,  a family-owned company, who produce a top quality range of very distinctive Champagne in tiny quantities, from just 3 hectares of vineyards. It’s well worth exploring the range but my favourite is the GONET MEDEVILLE  BLANC DE NOIRS CHAMPAGNE NV, with its rich, toasty, hazelnut and brioche aromas, and bold, red fruit, voluptuous flavours –  there are less than 3000 cases of this wine made, so snap it up quick.

Moving on to white wines, there are several lovely new selections from Europe – my favourites are the bright and breezy SAUVIGNON DE TOURAINE DOMAINE DE PIERRE 2013 – tongue-tinglingly fresh with crisp, green apple fruit and a definite hint of spearmint; a fabulous summer time, zesty white, more delicate and restrained than New World Sauvignon, and great value too. Definitely one for my fridge this summer.

There’s also a lovely, creamily elegant dry white from northern Italy, in the form of ONORATA LANGHE FAVORITA 2013, with its smooth, fleshy, waxy lemon and fresh herb character – a great wine for fish and white meat.

My favourite new discovery has to be the new signing from Germany, Weingut Knipser, a long-established, family owned and run estate in the warm, southern German wine region of the Rheinpfalz. The wines are hand-crafted and oozes elegance and a thoroughbred , haughty restraint – there are several new wines on the list; my favourites are the searingly dry, chiseled, JOHANNISHOF RIESLING TROCKEN 2012, enchanting in its delicate aromas, and eye-poppingly zesty, bright and citrusy on  tasting – if you think you don’t like German wine, I implore you to try it, and I guarantee I’ll have a lot of converts.  At the top end is the sumptuous KNIPSER MANDELPFAD GROSSES GEWACHS RIESLING 2012, an exotic and glorious expression of Riesling at its very best, full of opulent, rich, peach and apricot flavours, honeysuckle, and lime zest, with a myriad of textures, and a seamless, elegantly fresh and citrusy, pedigree finish.

There’s also a lot of excitement and new arrivals from South Africa and Australia.

First up is Strandveld, the most southernly winery in South Africa, perched on windswept hills, close to the Atlantic Ocean, in Cape Agulhas. The climate is as cold as Europe, so it’s perfect for STRANDVELD SAUVIGNON BLANC 2013 – this is an edgy, zesty, herbaceous style of Sauvignon, with gooseberry fruit, hints of asparagus and a grassy freshness – perfect for zesty salads and lime and ginger infused fish dishes.

Australia is the other country to bring new gems to the fold, with the welcome addition of the internationally- acclaimed, Western Australian Howard Park, to the fold, as well as the more quirky Fowles wines from South Australia.  Howard Park, from the cooler climate Western Australia’s Margaret River is already well known and acclaimed by wine experts and wine lovers alike,  - one of the most established and award-winning, family-owned wineries, it focuses on a range of seamless, hand-crafted wines, running the gamut from Chardonnay to Shiraz.  Two of my current favourites are the rich, yet racy HOWARD PARK GREAT SOUTHERN RIESLING 2011, full of aromatic, classic oily Riesling character – a bit of kerosene, lots of pickled lime, a hint of honeysuckle and a dash of acacia honey – fresh, zesty, and impressive this will be a great addition to any household this summer – especially with spicy dishes.

Finally onto Fowles, a winery established in the relatively unknown area of Strathbogie Hills near Victoria, in South Australia by an ex hot shot lawyer, obsessed by wildlife and hunting.  The bold, distinctive labels and quirkily named ranges reflect this focus – ARE YOU GAME? CHARDONNAY 2012 is rich, creamy, and tropical-fruit driven, with a lively citrus style, whilst the somewhat controversially -named LADIES WHO SHOOT THEIR LUNCH WILD FERMENT CHARDONNAY 2012 is rich and buttery, with layers of texture, and an intense, almost Burgundian baked apple and toasty vanilla oak character.

If you think you know most of the Great Western Wine range, have a try of some of these – I’ll be writing up my pick of the reds in the next few days.