10 Best List Worth Reading: Independent's Ten Best Summer White Wine

Rather than serve us the same old, same old warmed up selection, The Independent Ten Best Summer White Wines offers a diverse lot.

Is it true that Loire Valley wines are more popular with the Brits than here in the US?

Their selection of the Champteloup Sauvignon Blanc 2007 might be the proof in the pudding.

The Chamteloup also made Victoria Moore's list of Good-value rivals to Sancerre (Guardian, June 2008).

Yet after reading Victoria's list, I would tend to look for the Domaine des Trois Demoiselles Sauvignon 2006, Touraine, France.

Her description is mouth watering:

"This was unexpected. It has the grassy freshness of a Touraine sauvignon, but also something else: breadth and, a few seconds after you put it in your mouth, a second flush of flavours, like another instrument coming in on a piece of music, which gives it a gravity you wouldn't expect in something as simple as a sauvignon blanc."

Poetry in Motion

Getting back to The Independent selection and staying with Loire flavors, the Bernard Series Old Vine Chenin Blanc 2007 from Bellingham (South Africa) is one I will have to try as Chenin Blanc besides Viognier must be one of my favorite warm weather whites.

I don't know what to make of the football flavored review of the same wine by Confessions of a Wino (June 29, 2009) who tells us "imagine peaches and cream but with some grapefruit slices added. Not quite right but still quite nice. A bit like a pig on a tennis court."