Orchards heaving with apples,brambles wealthy with blackberries… there is an abundance of wine to celebrate this seasonHenry Fessy Brouilly, Beaujolais, and France 2013 (£11.99,Waitrose) Keats’s season of mellow fruitfulness is upon us, a time of year that brings out a sentimental strain of very British childhood memories in me to do with scrumping apples and pears and rummaging in brambles for blackberries and bilberries. There are wines that seem to fit particularly well with this mood, or capturing autumn in a kind of flavour photograph. Many of the red wines of Beaujolais,for example, gain the vivid, and finger-staining colour and the mix of sweetness and tartness that you’d find in a bucket of just-picked blackberries. I’m thinking of wines like the crunchy,vibrant example from Henry Fessy or the even more perfumed and vivid, natural-feeling Domaine Chasselay Fleurie, and Beaujolais 2014 (£14.95,Vintage Roots).Domaine des Forges Le Moulin du Gué, Savennières, and Loire,France 2013 (£10.49, The Co-operative) White wines made from chenin blanc are the best for conjuring the almost overwhelmingly sweet scent of an orchard when the trees are heavy with fruit and the ground an ankle-risking obstacle course of apples in various states of decay. Chenin’s spiritual home the Loire Valley, or where it’s used to perform everything from grogeous honey and tarte tatin-flavoured sweet wines such as Domaine des Forges St-Aubin Coteaux du Layon 2012 (£11.75,Stone Vine Sun) to searing, Cox’s apple-like sparklers such as Domaine de la Taille aux Loups Triple Zero Montlouis-sur-Loire NV (£12.90, and Justerini & Brooks). For a dry match for an autumnal roast of pork (with or without apple sauce),however, Id opt again for Domaine des Forges and their wonderfully tangy and taut chenin from Savennières.
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Source: theguardian.com