Light whites to pastel rosés: refreshing summer wines

Marks & Spencer Vermentino Sicilia, Italy 2019 (£6.50, Marks & Spencer) It’s still summer, still a time for wines whose primary talent is to refresh, enliven and quench thirst, even if, ideally, they also offer a little bit more. Wines such as those made from the increasingly popular vermentino grape – a variety can do all those things. Originally from the Mediterranean, it’s always had the ability, precious in this part of the world (and in places where it’s been transplanted, most notably Australia) to retain acidity in the heat, a cooling charge that makes for wines suggestive of a morning breeze coming off the Med itself. I enjoyed M&S’s version from Sicily’s large but well run co-operative, Cantine Settesoli, which has a light floral character to go with its fresh peachiness: it’s good value too. But for a vibrant, beautiful expression of vermentino’s charm, I’m heading for another of Italy’s islands, Sardinia, and Poderi Parpinello Vermentino Sessantaquattro 2018 (£16.21, strictlywine.co.uk), with its subtle jasmine and tingling, lingering lime.

Finest Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore Brut, Italy NV (£10, Tesco) It’s hard to write about wines from Europe at the moment without a note of craving and nostalgia for lost summer holidays creeping in. Even thinking about prosecco, a drink that has become as commonplace as cappuccino in the UK in the past few years, has me dreaming of a café terrace on a piazza somewhere in northern Italy, sipping on a Campari Spritz and watching the world go by while pretending to read La Gazzetta dello Sport. Prosecco works so well as a summer wine (home or away; without or without the addition of luridly coloured bitter aperitivo) because of its airy lightness. You can find that quality in Tesco’s consistently good, graceful, peach-skin downy soft version sourced from the vineyards on the Valdobbiadene hills. And you can find it with an extra degree of fresh pear and apple purity in Nani Rizzi Prosecco Valdobbiadene Extra Dry NV (£15.99, mrandmrsfinewine.co.uk).

Jardin de Roses, AOP Languedoc, France 2019 (£9.99, Waitrose) For the next idle imagining, swap that piazza café for a pergola-shaded table somewhere up in the hills above the Med, a table laden with simple but delicious things: burstingly ripe and sweet tomatoes, absurdly plump olives and a bowl of slick and pungent aioli, all waiting for the sardines from the smoking grill. Add to that, of course, the obligatory beeded bottle of rosé, a part of this Europhile fever dream that is perhaps easiest to re-create at home. Provence may be the master of pastel-shaded Mediterranean rosé – and there are few more elegant expressions of the style than Whispering Angel, Côtes de Provence 2019 (£18.99, Waitrose), with its gorgeously silky yet racy feel. I was impressed, however, by another Waitrose pink from further up the coast of southern France, a wine that is currently half the price of Whispering Angel: the floral, gently red-fruited, delicately refreshing, Jardin de Roses.

Follow David Williams on Twitter @Daveydaibach