3 Best wines from the High Street

2020 The Best Chilean Carmenere

£6.50 – instead of £8 until

May 24 – at Morrisons Chile’s 2020 carmenere harvest was especially difficult but you would never know from this tasty red. Centred around slightly earthy plum and dark berry flavours, it is well supported by smoky caramel elements and by barrel influences presumably from the 10 months some of the wine spends in oak.

2020 Le Rocher de Saint

Victor Picpoul de Pinet £6.49 at Lidl

Picpoul is a major success story for France’s Languedoc region. Once the main component of a vermouth (Noilly Prat), it re-emerged as a classic seafood wine that first rivalled, and then overtook, muscadet. This is a good illustration of why it became so popular. Crisp with predictable saline hints, it brings us bright apple, white plum and melon flavours ably supported by energetic grapefruit acidity and a rounded texture.

Le Mont Terre Chardonnay

£6 – instead of £7.50 until May 17 – at Sainsbury’s A warm welcome to this rich but lively South African newcomer in Sainsbury’s. Bright and zesty, it exhibits melon, peach and pineapple flavours given verve by lemon acidity. It also displays a creamy nuttiness (from time on yeast lees) to contrast with, but never overpower, the wine’s basic freshness.

ON-WINE SHOPPING

2020 A Growers Touch Durif

£9.99 at www. wickhamwine.co.uk

Less popular in France than it was, durif grapes now do great things in the new world, especially in America (often under the petite sirah (sic) name) and, as here, New South Wales. This is a great example of its power and depth. Smooth and full, it delivers intense damson and mulberry flavours accompanied by chocolate aromas, balanced acidity and controlled tannin with concluding suggestions of nutmeg and mocha.