Dinavolo '06 and Dinavolino '10

£19.32 & 13.32, Les Caves de Pyrene

Very few of my close friends have any notcieable physical defects. I should point out that this is not out of any kind of bigotry, or eugenic companion selection on my part, it just so happens that amongst them they count not so much as a single cleft palate, club leg, or webbed toe.

I do however have a friend, Rollo, who has ginger hair.

I applaud the fact that in these enlightened times it is no longer acceptable to whisper, point, or throw faeces at those with ginger hair, and that the vast majority of the population do all they can to make these people feel accepted and comfortable amongst the rest of us. Small children may still cry in the street, but that's only natural.

With this in mind I decided to emphasise my own free-thinking liberalism by bringing a(nother) bottle of orange wine to a recent, 'though long-overdue, eating and drinking session with her: 2006 Denavolo "Dinavolo".

Made by Giulio Armani, winemaker at the well-known La Stoppa winery, but this from grapes on his own vinyard. 25% Some kind of Malvasia, 25% Ortrugo, 25% Marsanne, 25% God-knows-what. Straddling the line between 'minimum intervention' and 'just can't be fooked, mate.' The LCdP wine list reckons that '06 Dinavolo spent a year on its skins. Whoever told them this either a liar or certifiable, or most likely, both.

Dinavolo is wine that is savage in the best possible way (as holy as enchanted). Deep, dark orange, and opening with funk and cheese, rich oranges, herbs and spice come through, half sherbert, half dark British marmalade. The palate's huge, with brutal tannins, and fine acid, changing in the bottle by the hour, sometimes sweet, sometimes savoury. This one's pretty lairy even in comparison with other XM whites. Rollo loved it with cheese, and hated it on it's own. Which is a pretty liberal and open-minded approach to something quite so leftfield.

In comparison then: You wouldn't call Dinavolino a 'Baby Cuvee' to its face. It's got cheese and flowers on the nose, and is only a shade lighter than the Dinavolo. All the aggression's here too with a big mouth-puckering structure backing citrus fruit, by turns lush and sour. It's losing a little in terms of coplexity and layering of flavour, but at the price this one's a winner.

Drinking for the rebel and the rake. Outcast winemaking at its best.

Testalonga El Bandito 2009

probably around £20, Green and Blue

A total lack of sleep in the previous 2 1/2 days had lead seamlessly into five or six hours spent with some confused looking doctors at the Royal Surrey Hospital who were experimenting with a myraid of hedonistic delights, taking in everything from pupil-expanding drops, to a mixture of steroids injected straight into my eyeball.

The comedown was killer.

As much fun as being medicated at had been, I was pretty sure that some self medication was probably due... The weird turned pro some time ago, and the going needed to catch up, so I chucked a bottle of extended maceration* white wine in the fridge and settled in for the evening.

Skin maceration is the vinifiication technique used in all red wine in which the pressed juice is left on the skins (and sometimes stalks), in order to extract tannin, colour and flavour from them in the the final wine. A lot of rose wine involves limited maceration to just extract a little colour. White wine alomst never has an intentional maceration, and if it does usually only for a few hours, to extract flavour from some of the more neutral-tasting varieties such as Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Girs and Semillon.

There are though, on the controversial fringes of the wine-making world, a disparate group who'll leave white grapes on their skins for days, extracting colour, wild, heady aromas, and grippy tannic structure, to create the Marmite of the wine world: Orange Wine.

I love it like like I do yeast spread.

I had pretty high hopes for Testalonga's El Bandito; 100% Chenin Blanc, and probably the only X-M white being made in South Africa at the present time. It's also pretty damn rare, not available yet in the UK, and only from Natural Wine specialist Green and Blue in Dulwich when it is.

Colour is not at all orange, but a deep clear gold. The nose is dominated intitially by yeast and lees, giving way to spice and little lemon twist, tannin is light to non-existent on the palate, on recognisable by a faint bitterness at the tail. Mouthfeel is unbelieveably rich, with all the honeyed Chenin texture you could hope for, and a load of exotic spiciness.

It's nothing like the biting, agressive X-M whites coming out of Italy and the flavours seem more driven by the lees than by the skins, which is concurrent with the non X-M version, El Bandito 'Cortez', which I personally also find just a tad more comlex.

It's good, unctuous stuff, and great with food I imagine, but I left it just slightly struggling to see the point.

If you're going to do something weird, best to push it all the way. This one's like ending the party at home with a mug of cocoa in bed, rather than at a hospital with a hypodermic needle in your eye.


*which I have decided to abbreviate to "X-M"