Plenty of bounce: great wines for Easter chocolate

Kourtaki Cameo Mavrodaphne of Patras, Greece NV (£6.95, Waitrose) For heathens like me, next Sunday is principally a day for celebrating chocolate. And while that skewed sense of priority may not be quite so prevalent in Southern Europe, it’s there that you’ll find the wine styles that are among the best things to drink with the annual cocoa-glut: sweet red fortified wines. This is a style that is significantly less popular than it once was, with many producers in some of the most famous fortified red winemaking regions increasingly looking to make more fashionable dry red wines from the grapes they once used for their fortified styles. In many cases, the dry wines are every bit as good as their fortified cousins. You could, for example, have a wonderful Easter Sunday meal based on the Greek grape mavrodaphne, with the fresh cherry and baking spice of dry Sant’Or Krãsis 2020 (£22, oliveology.co.uk) taking care of the lamb, and Kourtaki’s sweetly figgy Cameo pairing with the chocolate.

Niepoort Unfiltered LBV Port, Douro, Portugal 2015 (from £19.95, slurp.co.uk; honestgrapes.co.uk) Maria Moutsou, the Greek native, British-based importer of Krãsis and a range of other characterful low-production Greek wines through her small firm Southern Wine Roads, likens “thick-skinned” “blue-hued” mavrodaphne to another southern European grape variety, albeit from the opposite, western side of Southern Europe: the Portuguese touriga nacional. Like mavrodaphne, touriga nacional is responsible, generally as part of a blend, for making sweet, fortified wines (port) and, in recent years especially, structured yet refined dry red wines in the spectacular terraced vineyards that follow the Douro River just east of Porto. One of the most skilled producers at making both styles is Dirk Van der Niepoort, the fifth generation to run a family firm established by Niepoort’s Dutch ancestors in 1842. For a Niepoort Easter double, you could start with the super-succulent dry red Drink Me Douro Tinto 2020 (£16, noblegreenwines.co.uk) for the lamb and switch to the mature velvet richness of the LBV port.

M Chapoutier Domaine Bila-Haut Rimage Banyuls, France 2020 (from £16.75, 50cl, farehamwinecellar.com; secretbottleshop.co.uk; noblegreenwines.co.uk) France’s great sweet fortified red wine centre is in the Roussillon, the Catalan-inflected corner of southern France just above the border with Spain. Here it’s the grenache grape variety that has the starring role, its wind- and drought-resistant, late-ripening qualities supremely adapted to the local climate, where the summer sun can be merciless, and the tramontane wind gets under the skin. The plummeting demand for fortified wines over the past few decades has forced the hand of local producers, whose dramatic, intensely flavoured dry red wines have caught the attention of winemakers elsewhere in France, among them the restlessly curious and adventurous Rhône producer, Michel Chapoutier. On his Bila-Haut estate, Chapoutier’s focus is largely dry red (and white) wines, but he still keeps faith to the local fortified traditions. For an Easter Chapoutier meal, the brambly dry M Chapoutier Les Vignes de Bila-Haut Côtes du Roussillon Rouge 2020 (£9.99, noblegrape.co.uk) does the savoury duties; the black forest gateau-flavoured Banyuls takes care of the chocolate.

Follow David Williams on Twitter @Daveydaibach