La La Land Vermentino - Victoria Riverina

VERMENTINO is one of our fastest-growing "alternative"
wine varieties, and this one an excellent match with
summertime seafoods, salads and light Asian dishes.

A BOOM SUMMER COMING FOR VERMENTINO?

David Ellis

AMONGST the fastest-growing in sales in Australia of "alternative" wine varieties is Vermentino, a light-to-medium bodied white you'll find makes for excellent summer-time enjoyment with fish and seafoods, salads and light Asian dishes.

Over in Europe it's long been the biggest selling white variety on the French island of Corsica, in the Mediterranean 90kms off Italy's west coast, and is also going gang-busters on Italy's Sardinia Island just to Corsica's south. And on Italy's mainland, too, where it is grown along the Tuscan coast it is now so popular that growers there are having difficulty keeping up with demand – something we would not be surprised to see happen here in the not-too-distant future.

And one Aussie Vermentino well worth looking at over our coming warmer months is a first for the variety from La La Land Wines near Mildura in Victoria's warm north-west. From their 2017 vintage and carefully crafted in Sardinian style by La La Land's Frank Newman and Aidan Menzies, this is a wine whose fruit does the talking, and also rewards with delightful texture and mouthfeel.

Pay $18 and enjoy embracing flavours of fresh limes, almonds, green apples, peaches and fresh acidity, that all together in the glass will make for a great dining partner with those summertime seafoods, salads and pasta dishes.

and from John Rozentals:

The more I taste of white wines made from this newish-to-Australia Italian variety the surer I become of its future here, especially in our warmer regions. The variety retains acidity beautifully and offers plenty of racy, zesty fruit flavours. My only query about the wine concerns what I see as a quite frivolous name. What’s in the bottle is great.