An Occasional Tipple: Donne and dusted with these delightful wines

Seeing my distress, a stranger approached me. Terrified, I pointed towards the fiery orb in the sky. “It’s ok,” he said, “it’s the sun- surely you remember?”. And indeed, when he spoke, I calmed down. Visions of bright carefree days roaming through the cornfields as a child with my cousins came to mind. The sun! Of course! Let’s crack open a bottle to celebrate.

A perfect day for a G&T in the garden except that, despite having an abundance of gin at my lovely home, Rose Cottage, having given up on the sun ever returning, I had neglected to replace the tonic water. No matter. Plan B.

I put a bottle of today’s WINE OF THE WEEK, the delightfully dry, zesty and thoroughly refreshing 2022 Virgile Joly Bourret (£13.99, Naked Wines) into the fridge to chill while my Madame and I worked up a sweat preparing our courtyard garden for the upcoming season.

This elegant, delicately scented Languedoc-Roussillon white was ample reward for our efforts. An impressively floral bouquet led to a smoky, mineral-rich palate with pronounced notes of green apple and yellow plum flavours before a brief, discreetly acidic finish. One for lazy, languorous evenings on the patio watching the sun set, as it must, with someone you love. Serve lightly chilled with seafood or salad.

My Madame is equally partial to a splash of pink in the sunshine and, ever eager to please her, the following day I rustled up a Thai-style prawn curry which I carefully matched with today’s second recommendation, the complex, elegant and gloriously refreshing 2022 Crocodile and Palm Tree Rose (£11.99, Lidl). This well-rounded, supple Rhone Valley drop is packed with red berry and citrus flavours on its exuberantly juicy palate before a clean, satisfyingly savoury finish.

Lovers of red, you have not been forgotten by either myself or the weather. As I write this the clouds have returned, the sun has gone and I’m sipping today’s final selection, the powerfully flavoured yet very approachable 2022 Las Dalias Malbec (£12, M&S).

An extravagant bouquet with lots of red fruit and delicate spicing leads to an opulent palate with cherry and blueberry flavours alongside gentle tannins before a lingering finish with hints of oak and vanilla. This decadently smooth Argentinian red will be an ideal match to a Sunday roast of lamb or beef.

Having barely recovered from one massive shock it's perhaps foolhardy to seek another but wouldn’t it be nice if that busy old fool, the unruly sun, to paraphrase John Donne, were to shock us all by sticking around for a few months? Till next week, tipplers, sante!