Galleons o’ Torrents - Your White Wine Guide

Galleons o’ Torrents

I noticed I had a category for Wines – Red.  I was a bit taken aback, for I mainly consume white—there’s an old oenology fundamental which asseverates that the more you drink wine, the more you drink white—once you drink white, you’ll never go back. 

Of course those fruity Cape/SA wines are delightful; you just can’t beat them.  But let’s take a salty ship over to that other SA, South America.  You just have to love torrontes.

One of the only ones I can get here is Trivento.  I really like it, but it is dangerous.  It is so steely that frankly you could get electrocuted by it if you’re standing next to your tv. Distinct floral backnotes (the vase you’re clutching as you fall by the sideboard).  

Recently tried the Lorca torrontes--is it worth the 25-33% more in terms of price than the Trivento?  Probably not.  If the two were equal in price, I'd maybe trade off equally, but even if Lorca were cheaper, I don't think I'd sacrifice that lie-detector-hooked-to-the-wrong-place shrill thrill of Trivento.

Northwest detour—that Cline viognier from California—such a delightful wine.  Watery and without much flavour ballast, but so like a new piece of fruit with all of the scent and anticipation and none of the squinchy-face upon tasting.  For drinking a couple glasses on its own with no accompaniment whatsoever, this wine is nonpareil.  Its perfect companions are sunlight, a breeze perhaps, and (increasingly generous) thought(s).

Westward ho! for the Oyster Bay and the marlborough.  Tasty, indeed.  A bit thick like. . .tasty mutton. . . .   Critics would say that you could get the same effect by nuzzling up under the foreleg of a lamb who’d been hard at work in the fields all day.  Critics’d be right.  Frankly, I bet this marlborough goes outstandingly with lamb, but I am not a Kiwi.  So perspirational is the effect, that one really does want to pair oil with oil, wine with fish yanked from dark nether reaches.  It’s a pity it’s boutique expensive where I live, otherwise I’d saa- saa-mple it endlessly.

Short hop but long run to the true motor oil of wine of any kind.  For a time I lived within shooting distance of the Barossa Valley, where so much famous Australian wine is from.

In a nutshell, what happened there was that stateless but determined Germans, non-convicts but enterprising, planted bushes to provide themselves with hooch.  When they noted that it totally knocked the corks off bushmen’s hats in the up and beyond, they industrialized it further.  Soon, steel silos began to appear all over southern Australia.  Leftists said they were American military bases.  John Howard said it was diversification.  Actually they were vast wine vats containing up to 40 million hectolitres at a go.  A grape was top-mounted into each vat, then each vat was left to fester in the relentless sun for up to six months—presto—Australian wine.  And world’s away, I can now have it for one low price of about 8$/L.  I’ll say one thing for those Australian vineyardists: they are nothing if not industrial.

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