Why muscat is a must when it comes to summer

A sweet and floral muscat from the Rhone Valley is sunshine in a glass

Domaine des Bernardins Muscat de Beaumes de Venise, Rhône, France 2023 (£14.90, 37.5cl, tanners-wines.co.uk) Deep in the Mediterranean southeastern corner of France in the Southern Rhône Valley, Domaine des Bernadins is one of those impossibly charming family-run wineries that are the heart and soul of French wine. Romain Hall, the fifth generation of the family to make wine at the domain, works amid a higgledy piggledy mishmash of tanks and barrels in his cosy cellar, which sits by a graceful house and garden filled with aromatic plants and flowers that could very easily have been the subject of an impressionist painting from around the time the winery was founded (from money made in the silkworm trade of all, improbably romantic things) in the mid-19th century. The domaine makes a wonderfully evocative Côtes du Rhône red called La Balme: light on its feet (and in colour) and filled with notes of lavender and cherry. But it’s perhaps best known for its work with a local speciality: sweet, delicately floral-scented fortified wines made from muscat grapes.

Carte Or Muscat de Beaumes de Venise, Rhône, France NV (£8.99, 37.5cl, Waitrose) Muscat de Beaumes de Venise is made by fermenting the famously aromatic muscat à petits grains grapes grown in sandy-soiled vineyards in the Beaumes de Venise appellation. Before all the sugar turns to alcohol, the winemaker adds some neutral grape spirit: the yeast is overwhelmed by the sudden influx of alcohol, and the fermentation stops. This process, known in French as “mutage”, leaves a fortified wine of 15% alcohol (the same as a dry sherry such as fino) but with the floral and fresh fruit aromas still very much intact and with around 120g of sugar per litre of wine. In France, this style used to be a very popular aperitif. In the UK, it’s always been sold as more of a dessert wine. Domaine des Bernardins’ version, with its pithy tang of orange zest, rose petals and stone fruit, would add an extra summery dimension to fruit desserts and blue cheese; so, too, the good-value, Carte d’Or.