Wines to capture the taste of the ocean

Southern Right Sauvignon Blanc, Walker Bay, South Africa 2023 (from £11.45, ndjohn.co.uk ; ampswinemerchants.co.uk ; noblegreenwines.co.uk ) Grape vines, like holidaying humans, love to be by the seaside, and an inordinate number of the world’s best wines are produced in vineyards that are near or in some cases directly overlooking the sea. The thing the vines love most about the coast is ultimately the same as what leads us to the beach when the mercury rises: the sea regulates the temperature, taking the edge off extremes of heat and cold. That helps ensure a slower, more even ripening of the grapes, preserving acidity and ultimately producing more balanced, lively wines. It’s an effect that has become all the more precious as the climate crisis has worsened, with growers all over the world seeking out coastal sites, such as Walker Bay, on South Africa’s south coast, the source of such luminous, vibrant, pristine sauvignon blancs as Southern Right from one of South Africa’s deftest producers of cooler-climate wines, Hamilton-Russell.

Domaine St André Maritime Rouge, IGP Pays d’Oc, France 2022 (£12.49, houseoftownend.co.uk ) The most famous maritime winegrowing region in the world is arguably the world’s most famous wine region full-stop: Bordeaux, where the black-fruited depth and power of the wines is leavened and given focus by a certain Atlantic coolness. No wonder, then, that so many of the better examples of wines made from Bordeaux’s grape varieties (principally cabernet sauvignon and merlot, but also cabernet franc, petit verdot and others) are from coastal sites such as Bolgheri in southern Tuscany, Margaret River in Western Australia, and Hawke’s Bay in New Zealand. The proximity of the vineyards to the Étang de Thau lagoon by the Mediterranean in southern France also seems to have brought plenty of lift and life to Domaine St André’s very drinkable, plummy aptly named Maritime rouge, which is primarily made from merlot, a grape variety that doesn’t always show it’s best elsewhere in the heat of the Languedoc, but here works very well indeed.

Viñatigo Negramoll, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain 2022 (from £30.86, strictlywine.co.uk ; nywines.co.uk ; winepoole.co.uk ) There are some wines where the coastal influence is even more literally littoral. In Colares, on Central Portugal’s Atlantic coast, the vines are planted directly into the dunes and the long-lived wines, small in production and hard to find in the UK, have a distinctly salty tone that gives them a mouthwateringly savoury drinkability. The style of bone dry sherry known as manzanilla produced in the bodegas of the coastal town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Andalucía is also famous for its saline-iodine tang: grab a bottle of Equipo Navazos I Think Manzanilla en Rama NV (£13.95, 37.5cl, thewhiskyexchange.com ) to have with shellfish and feel that complementary salty seasoning (along with a Marmite savouriness and lemony tang). I also get a pronounced whiff of the sea in the wines of the ocean-breeze-buffeted Tenerife, not least the exquisite red made from the negramoll variety by Viñatigo: a wine as graceful light and airy as a great pinot noir, but with an elemental Atlantic drama all its own.

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