WINE CONNOISSEUR
White Wine, Please
“White wine, please” – a simple phrase, and one that for years was all you had to say since many bars and restaurants had only one white wine selection! Times have changed though, and now you can ask for the varietal or a specific style, and if you’re lucky, even a vintage. Life is good.
help heart health? More good news: it can also help your brain. New studies suggest that these special French bubbles can help ward off dementia as well. Lucky little lab rats that got to have Champagne before their repetitive maze tests, in what one could only imagine were very tiny little glasses, fared far better than their deprived and besmirched cousins that did not. Science is fun. Anyway, that’s all good enough for me… Champagne anyone?
Summer It’s hard to get excited about a glass of big, tannic Bordeaux in the middle of a heat wave, or a mind-numbing, 80degree, high-alcohol Zinfandel while sitting on the beach. But a nice cool Sauvignon Blanc or Champagne? Well, that sounds like it might be just what the doctor ordered. And speaking of the doctor, did you know that Champagne is rich in polyphenols, those antioxidants that can
Time for new discoveries Champagne, as well as other sparkling wines, is always in style and surely helps the moment become merrier (“happiness in a bottle” is what my wife calls them), but there are worlds of great “still” whites out there that deserve some attention during a long, hot summer, as well. Most of us know Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay and a few other whites like Pinot Grigio and Riesling, but there are some new
kids in town as well. There’s Albariño – the zesty, bright and fruit-forward Spanish white that is similar in many ways to Sauvignon Blanc, and is a perfect companion with the plethora of great shellfish available to us here in New England. Also from Spain, the lush and full-bodied, elegant Godello is a longstanding favorite of mine. My relatively newly-discovered gem is “Lugana,” which is made in a diminutive area in northeast Italy from the wonderful yet almost completely unknown grape Turbiana di Lugana. It is lush and exotic like a cross between a great white Burgundy from Meursault and a Viognier from the northern Rhone Valley. Cesari “Cento Filari” is the finest example of this wine that I have discovered, and it is my current favorite white wine. France From France, we have many whites that are perhaps the wind beneath the
BY GORDON HEINS Product Merchandising Specialist for New Hampshire Liquor Commission 10 | Celebrate NH • JULY 2016
PHOTO OF GORDON HEINS BY
P.T. SULLIVAN