by thedrinksbusiness.com​

The best wines from The Spring Tasting

The best wines from The Spring Tasting

We bring you the best wines from The Spring Tasting, featuring an exciting range of new releases that are due to hit the shelves over the coming months.

Patrick Schmitt

While other seasons are associated with a particular drink, be it warming reds for winter, refreshing rosés for summer, or rich whites for autumn, when it comes to spring, the theme is less about style, but newness. That’s because this is a moment for the fresh, from the green shoots in the garden to the latest releases from Champagne, just-bottled rosés from Provence, or en primeurs from Bordeaux. And so, with our Spring Tasting, it was a privilege to be able to sample in February a broad array of wines destined for springtime release without having to worry about stylistic constraints, but focus on nothing more than what’s delicious and good-value among the brand new. It was a preview of those wines due to hit the shelves as the vegetation emerges and the days lengthen; these are the bottles to pop when celebrating life after dormancy.

So, The Spring Tasting united wines by the timing of release, rather than their particular style, source area, or grape variety – which are the bases of the drinks business’s other tastings, such as the Sparkling Masters, the Chardonnay Masters or the Tuscan Masters.

And, because we were looking for the best of this year’s upcoming releases, we enjoyed some novel comparisons. For example, we sampled £15 Californian Chardonnay alongside similarly priced Hungarian Furmint, sub-£10 Chilean Cabernet next to Russian Saperavi, and Chilean blanc de blancs with organic Cava – all tasted blind, of course, with the wines’ origins and grapes only revealed to us after the tasting was concluded, and medals assigned.