As you can see from the list I enjoy drinking white wines from the Loire Valley but this year when I visited the wine Fair at Angers at the beginning of February I was looking for some interesting reds. The reason being that in 2003 there was so much sunshine that the red grape varieties, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, gamay and pinot noir were actually ripe when harvested and consequently were made into some stunningly good wines. On the other hand the 2003 whites were generally flabby and low low in acidity. You can't have every thing in life I suppose!

2004 in the Loire was generally a modestly good year especially for those that missed some of the late summer hail storms, one of my producers lost half of his excellent sauvignon to one such nasty. Who would be a grape grower?

Further south, in the Languedoc and Provence it was again a very mixed bag. I am absolutely thrilled with my friend Bernard Coste's Chardonnay from Domaine Montrose, truly mouth watering and I don`t often say that about Chardonnay.

The AOC of Cassis is tiny and like the little town from which its name is taken, I have an absolute gem of a white wine, Clos Val Bruyere. Didier and Sophie Simonini-Cerciello have yet again combined wonderful topical fruit with elegance, structure, freshness and a lovely long finish.

They also produce under the name of Chateau Barbanau a simply wonderful rosé, all strawberries and cream!!