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Willi Schaefer Graacher Riesling Feinherb, Mosel, Germany 2022 (£24, tanners-wines.co.uk) I don’t have synaesthesia, the neurological condition that leads to experiences of “seeing” sound or “hearing” colour. But when it comes to flavour, I can’t help but think in a similarly sense-jumbling way, with certain tastes or organoleptic sensations having strong associations with certain colours and visual effects. At this time of year, when the conditions outside incline to the murky and muted, and it’s easy to sink into grey lethargy, I start looking for ingredients that offer flashes of mood lifting brightness and colour: I get through a hell of a lot of ginger and chilli, and pile the fruit bowl high with blood oranges, limes and mandarins. I crave similar sensations in wine, too, which is one of the reasons why January is a riesling month for me, with the shimmering, quicksilver acidity, zing of lemon and lime and fleshy tree-fruit juiciness of Willi Schaefer’s fleet-flooted Mosel just the perfect antidote to wintry gloom.
Taste the Difference Alsace Gewurztraminer, Alsace, France 2022 (£10.50, Sainsbury’s) Another part of the appeal of zippy off-dry rieslings such as Schaefer’s at this time of year is the homeopathic dose of sugar, with the barely perceptible sweetness being a very happy foil to those bright chilli and gingery spices. Other grape varieties that are sometimes made in a way that retains a similar heat-shielding layer of a few grams per litre of sugar include pinot gris, which is the base of Louis Guntrum Pinot Gris 2023 (£11.99, down from £14.99 until 21 January) from the Rheinhessen in Germany, which has a very small spoonful of 6g sugar per litre to flesh out its quince and vibrant fluent acidity; Romania’s fetească regală, as in M&S Expressions Fetească Regală 2023 (£6.50), which mixes lightly syrupy peach juiciness with summery floral tones; and gewurztraminer from Alsace, such as the ever-reliable Sainsbury’s own-label made by Cave de Turckheim, a wine that trades the pulsing energy of riesling for the no-less-transporting full-on high-summer fragrance of roses, Turkish delight and ginger.
Klein Constantia Estate Sauvignon Blanc, Constantia, South Africa 2023 (£15.99, or £13.99 as part of a mixed case of six bottles, majestic.co.uk) If you are temperamentally allergic to sugar in wine (or are in the midst of post-Christmas calorie consciousness), it’s worth remembering that riesling can be just as dazzling, if not more so, in bone-dry form, a style perfected by the producers of South Australia’s Clare Valley, and on full, enlivening, pure lime-drenched form in Pauletts Polish Hill Riesling 2022 (£20, christopherpiperwines.co.uk). These dry styles are perhaps less happy with extreme spice, but are simply excellent with milder chilli and other parts of the Vietnamese and Thai-inspired herb-and-spice repertoire, such as coriander, mint, Thai basil, lemongrass, and galangal. So, too, examples of another dry southern hemisphere sun-filled winter tonic white, sauvignon blanc from New Zealand (the classically herbaceous vibrancy of Waitrose No 1 Astrolabe Sauvignon Blanc, Awatere Valley, Marlborough 2024; £12.99, Waitrose) or South Africa (the wonderfully textured mouthful of juicy white peach, minerals and tingling lime and grapefruit of Klein Constantia).
