Wine of the week: a wondrous dry white wine

published 18 October 2019

2018 G de Chteau Guiraud, Bordeaux Blanc Sec, France

£16, BoothsSupermarkets; booths.co.uk

I have hosted a few top-notch Bordeaux dinners recently and rather than serve the eponymous glass of Champagne before proceedings I decided to welcome guests with a cunning, dry white Bordeaux. I chose G de Guiraud, as I had the Sauternes from the same property lined up for the pudding course. It was a pair of neat Guiraud bookends for a serious flight of reds, which, as you would expect, formed the meat of the dinner.

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But it must be noted that this wondrous dry wine triggered widespread adulation.

I have been a fan of G for years. A 50/50 blend of sauvignon blanc and semillon, which is run around old Sauternes barrels to give it a sheen and a lustre that is remarkable and inquisitive in equal measure.

Built somewhere between a firm Sancerre and a billowing Pouilly-Fuiss, in terms of weight, this is a deft aperitif that graduated to starters duties as well, to rousing admiration. Google it and you will find that a raft of serious wine merchants sell this magical wine and because I spotted the newly released 2018 vintage at Booths, they get the nod on this occasion. Suffice to say that if 50 keen and experienced palates all fell for this wine as one, it is clearly a thing of true beauty and at £16 it is a rare bargain, too.

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (MatthewJukes.com).

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’. He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner.

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy. His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.