This grape variety can produce glorious results in Argentina, Australia and South Africa
El Enemigo Semillón, Uco Valley, Mendoza, Argentina 2022 (£18, Tesco) In this space a couple of weeks ago, I extolled the virtues of the many great wines being made in Argentina from grape varieties other than its most famous vinous export, malbec. One variety I didn’t mention last time out is the white sémillon, which had been very widely used in Argentina until the 1970s, when growers started ripping it out in favour of chardonnay. There’s not all that much left these days (there’s about a tenth of what was around at its peak of popularity), but what remains can make for some seriously interesting stuff – including the standout bottle in a lineup featuring a number of fun new wines at a recent Tesco press tasting. El Enemigo comes from 70-year-old vines, and, as so often with venerable vines, their presence accounts at least in part for the wine’s glorious depth and balance. But there’s a substantial savoury feel, too, and some tropical fruit and herbal notes – it’s a complex, gastronomic delight.
Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley Semillon, New South Wales, Australia 2023 (£20.95, Nickolls & Perks) As Graham Nash, the Tesco wine buyer responsible for snapping up the El Enemigo, says in the notes he presented to the press, there isn’t a great deal of single-varietal semillon around these days. One exception is Australia, home, as it happens, to a perennial favourite of mine from the Tesco’s range that is also very much on song in its latest vintage (2019): the sweetly golden elixir dessert wine that is Tesco Finest Dessert Semillon made for the retailer by De Bortoli Wines in the Riverina. At £6.75 for 37.5cl, it remains one of the best-value stickies around, a delight with blue cheese or fruity puddings. Australian winemakers also use semillon to make one of the most distinctive dry white wine styles around in the Hunter Valley, with Tyrrell’s a benchmark example. Deliciously tight, taut and lemony right now, it will transform over decades into a whole other toasty, lime-marmalade and lanolin-scented dimension.
Coterie by Wildeberg Sémillon/Sauvignon Blanc, South Africa 2022 (£13.45,
NY Wines) The wines made from sémillon in its ancestral homeland, Bordeaux, are, like almost everything made in this corner of southwest France, blends with other varieties – sauvignon blanc and sometimes a dollop of muscadelle. The recipe is nicely worked in Château Argadens Bordeaux Blanc 2023 (from £13.50, hedonism.co.uk; cambridgewine.com; tanners-wines.co.uk), with sauvignon blanc taking the lead and bringing zip and grapefruity tang, while the sémillon adds texture and weight in a dry white that absolutely sings with rich, creamy dishes involving fish or with gratin-type vegetable dishes. Producers all over the world have been inspired by the Bordeaux-patented sem-sauv mix, just as they have by the region’s cabernet sauvignon-merlot red blend. These days, many of my favourite examples come from South Africa, among them Coterie by Wildeberg, which has a tingling, contrasting combination of fluency, pithy citrus, depth of feel and herby complexity (lemon thyme and fennel).
Source: The Guardian
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