Unusual Italian wines

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/12/unusual-italian-wines-david-williams

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Aldi The Exquisite Collection Gavi 2013 (£5.29, Aldi) I once enjoyed a similar dish to Claudia's octopus salad in a restaurant in Genoa: the consolation for a missed train and a difficult day. The wine, inevitably for this part of the world, was from Gavi, 30 miles inland – a typically lemon-skin scented and lemon-juice tangy dry white made from the cortese grape. Gavi can be fabulously flowing, textured and mineral (like La Guistiana Gavi di Gavi Montessora 2012; £22.30, hedonism.co.uk). Aldi's creditable cheapie is rather less complex, but it's richer than you'd expect and does a good job of providing a dry and citric condiment for octopus and other seafood.

Tesco Finest Teroldego, Trentino, Italy 2011 (£7.99, Tesco) For similarly sentimental reasons, I have a soft-spot for the plum-and-cherry juiciness and uncomplicated drinkability of dolcetto, the red wine that the Piemontese drink when they're not meditating on life with a glass of the more serious Barbaresco or Barolo. My memory may be playing tricks, but I'm sure they used to be easier to come by: for now you have to go to independents for fragrant bottles from the likes of Manual Marinacci (bbr.com) or Sottimano (leaandsandeman.co.uk) to get a fix. Or, as a match for Claudia's farro salad, you could try this tartly fresh equivalent from the northeast.

Cigliuti Langhe Nebbiolo, Piedmont, Italy 2012 (£17.95, Lea & Sandeman) We are hard-wired to think red when we're looking for a wine to match lamb (or any other red meat). But the zingy freshness of the mint, lemon and white wine in the sauce for Claudia's lamb shanks would go rather well with a richer, rounded and subtly herbal, white, such as the Vila Mattielli Soave Classico Le Brume 2009 (£16.95, corksof.com). If you can't get past the Pavlovian craving for the tannin-and-fat bond of tender meat and red wine, however, Cigliuti's Langhe nebbiolo, made from the same grape as their celebrated Barbaresco, is vivid and pure with just the right dose of fine-grained grippy tannin.