I’ve long been an admirer of Pierre Gimonnet‘s champagnes. So much so, in fact, that I’ve come to think of the non-vintage Cuis, a blanc de blancs made from grapes grown in 1er cru vineyards, as our house champagne.

I like the idea of buying grower’s champagnes rather than grand marque wines. It makes me feel like I’m championing the underdog (despite the fact that I’m aware that many producers of grower’s champagnes are hardly down to their last centime). I also feel that I’m getting a bit of a bargain, despite the fact that grower’s champagnes are seldom discounted in the same way that grand marque champagnes often are, especially at this time of year.

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Sauvignon blanc can be a pretty strident, demanding grape at times. But while some people like their wine to shout loud, I prefer a bit of restraint and subtlety.

For this reason, I tend to favour sauvignon blancs from France over those from the New World. This is, of course, a sweeping generalisation, and there are some lovely, subtle examples of wines made from this grape in parts of New Zealand, South Africa and Chile. But, as a rule of thumb, France tends to be my first port of call.

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Sometimes you don’t want to have to think about your wine too much. There are days when you just want an uncomplicated glugging quaffer with plenty of fruit and freshness and enough character to make it a good partner for a meal, the wine equivalent of a bit of flirtation rather than a long-term relationship. Sometimes, in short, you want a bottle of gamay.

I’m a big fan of the gamay grape. Most often you’ll find it in Beaujolais, its homeland, although there are more than a few gamays made in the Loire. Increasingly, though, I’m coming across gamays made in the New World, and I couldn’t be more delighted. I’m hoping this means that the grape is shedding its poor image – tainted by vast lakes of poorly made Beaujolais Nouveau – and is now finding a new fan base.

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The other day I was casting around for something to open in celebration of a new crop of MWs (19 people graduated, bringing this year’s total to a record number of 24). I remembered that I’d been sent some samples of Exton Park‘s fizz to review, and realised there was no better time to open and taste these wines – after all, I could always toast my new colleagues with the rest of the bottle when I was done with assessing the wine in it.

English fizz has come a long way in recent years, both in terms of quality and availability. For a long time, English vineyards were dominated by plantings of some fairly unexceptional crossings and hybrids, grapes whose main virtue seemed to be the fact that they could survive our cool, damp climate in order to produce a reliable crop for still wines. (I’m damning a few of these grapes with faint praise; the Bacchus grape, in particular, can be used to make some brilliant, uniquely English wines.)

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Carignan’s a funny old grape. One of my colleagues once wrote that the only time anyone had ever got down on one knee before a carignan vine was to (and I quote) ‘uproot the bloody thing’. Things change, though, and this grape – once the workhorse of the Languedoc, planted largely for its generous yields and its ability to add acidity to a rich southern blend – is increasingly sought after.

Not all carignan, of course. Young vines planted on plains with rich soils and copious amounts of water still create wines that are, at best, rustic and chunky. As a computer programmer might say, junk in, junk out. Old vines of carignan, however, yield small quantities of grapes that make richly textured, densely flavoured wines.

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When you’re buying a bottle of wine in a restaurant, it’s often tempting to stick with the familiar. Smart restaurateurs and sommeliers know this, which is why the highest per-bottle mark-ups tend to be on wines like Chablis, Rioja and Sancerre (especially in wine-friendly restaurants, where staff are keen to get guests to try something a bit different, for a change).

The smart thing to do is to take the vinous road less travelled by (enlisting your waiter as a guide, if necessary). True, you might end up with a bottle you’re not keen on, but the odds are far higher that you’ll make some wonderful new discoveries.

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I’m just back from a brief trip to Tuscany, where I spent a few days visiting vineyards and exploring the diverse nature of Sangiovese, a grape variety with which I’ve always struggled. Not that I don’t like Sangiovese – I’m rather partial to its perfume and its spine of acidity, as it happens – I’m just not terribly good at picking it out of a line up of other grapes.

Four days on the ground in its Tuscan homeland hasn’t helped much, to be frank. The grape takes on as many disguises as a master spy, depending on where it comes from, whether it’s blended with other grapes, and the constraints imposed by its producers, that I still struggle to come up with a working definition that would allow me to say, with any great degree of certainty: ‘That’s a typical Sangiovese’.

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