WHAT I’VE BEEN DRINKING THIS MONTH

Beautiful Herefordshire fillet steak, courtesy of the friends with whom I was staying, and to go with it, a bottle of the Rocche dell’Annunziata Barolo 2013 from Rocche Costamagna (£43 Justerini & Brooks) in La Morra commune. Comparing it with an excellent young 2016 claret, we all preferred the Barolo – for its reserve, its refinement and its shaping, tutorial tannins, which brought focus to the fresh but open, accessible fruit.

The piece of paper I use to jot down resolutions is almost covered – on both sides. These are drinking resolutions, naturally: wines I must try, or drink more of. The trouble is my default wines, already in the fridge, or just (like Chablis) the obvious solution to so many of life’s teeny problems, fill too much of our domestic capacity. So resolutions build up: more Greek wine is high on the agenda. More of the new output of Spain. A closer focus on Chianti, Chile, southwest France, Okanagan valley... Will life be long enough to do them all justice? Not a chance.

I see it as a problem because in a sense it’s my job. You don’t have to. You may not even have noticed the spring-like burgeoning of wines and wine regions whose progress has been below the radar. How many of the white wines emerging in Italy have you drunk? What about Kiwi Syrah? Up to speed with Chile? Perhaps, above all, England. Those of us who expected gradual emergence from chrysalis to butterfly have had to change our ideas. There’s no more bet-hedging: ‘Of course, it’s not quite Champagne...’ In many cases it’s better, with a purity and liveliness that few Champagnes achieve. I was delighted to see that Oz Clarke has just published English Wine: From Still to Sparkling (£16.99 Pavilion); if anyone can convince the sceptic, it’s Oz. As the fabulous 2018 vintage filters through, with gorgeous reds as well as the usual suspects, England’s status as a country of (or perhaps ‘with’) fine wines will be accepted as normal.

Resolutions like this have rubbed in something else: the blatant injustice of much wine-pricing. Read the results of Decanter’s regular tastings. Prices are often so divorced from assessed quality that I wonder who is fooling whom. I see a niche wine from the Languedoc is going for four times the price of one of South Africa’s best. Something as fundamental as this seems to call for editorial comment.

South Africa is – or certainly should be – high on any wine lover’s agenda at the moment. Its government’s apparent disdain for one of its most prestigious products should make us all pay attention – and not just for the resulting bargain prices.

PS: Immodesty compels me to mention that a new edition of my The Story of Wine (first published 1989) is just out from the Académie du Vin Library (£30).

Hugh Johnson OBE is a world-renowned wine writer

‘Resolutions build up: more Greek wine is high on the agenda’

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