Rich & Complex

White grapes are, generally speaking, more delicate than red grapes. Their skins are discarded promptly after the juice has been squeezed from within them and much care is taken in the winery to preserve their delicate flavours. However, some of the finest, most aromatically complex, and age-worthy whites defy this notion. In this collection of Rich and Complex white wines, we celebrate the textured, the deep and the mouth-filling that offer worlds of flavour in the glass.

It is the more neutral white grape varieties that lend themselves to augmentation in the winery, so it's these that we tend to see here. Playing around with subtler white grapes can inhibit the aromatic expression so it tends to be avoided. Perhaps time in an oak barrel, perhaps prolonged lees (dead yeast) contact with some bâtonnage, perhaps left with a little residual sugar, the technique may vary, but the wines in this collection have in common a depth of aromas and layers upon layers of flavour that will delight your senses. Some of the most famous wines in the world fall into this category (Champagne, Chablis, Sancerre, Riesling) but you’ll find some unusual and unpronounceable gems too - Pinot Bianco Riserva, Erbaluce di Caluso, Gumpoldskirchner – all offering their own take on the furthest reaches of where white wine can take us.

Look out, too, for the natural whites that we’re becoming ever-bigger fans of. Natural wine-makers shun many of the techniques that would traditionally make wines more (as they argue) bland and homogenous, so check out the Rego do Sol Albariño, fermented to an orange hue thanks to prolonged skin contact, and the Obvius Bianco from Salcheto. So, whether you’re after conventional, wild, or somewhere in the middle, be sure that the wines in this collection are full of flavour, full of personality, and full of confidence.