Delicata Celebrates Viognier Day

Viognier Bunches

Every last Friday of April is International Viognier Day. This year it falls on April 25 and Delicata has got good reason to celebrate.

The white wine grape variety Viognier is of course closely associated with the tiny French appellation AOC Château-Grillet, an enclave in Condrieu, where its single producer makes around 13000 bottles per year of all-Viognier wine from about 4 hectares (ha) of vines.

In the Maltese Islands the entire land planted out to Viognier is not much larger, if at all. Here too Viognier is rather hard to find since its plantings amount to a total surface area of about 6 football fields, or less than 5 ha.

This difficult-to-grow variety arrived in Malta in the late 1990s. By then Viognier had already spread its wings from its south of France homeland to many other wine producing countries. Winemakers in the Languedoc-Roussillon and the New World especially have latched on to it.

Locally there’s a thirst now for wines made from this grape variety that’s relatively new to our shores but grows so well in the local soils.

Understandably, because Viognier, either vinified dry or as a sweet wine, can make a very seductive drink indeed.

Generally, it produces unwooded as well as oaked dry white wines that are similar in weight to Chardonnay but that have a marked peach and apricot character and an opulent lushness – at least the best examples do. Well-made wines from around the world but full of distinctive perfume and ripe fruit serve as a welcome alternative to the excellent although usually expensive Condrieu bottlings.

Delicata is a believer in its potential and Malta’s leading winemaker majors in an unoaked dry mono-varietal in the premium Grand Vin de Hauteville range. The latest 2024 Grand Vin de Hauteville Viognier is particularly appealing.

It startles the nose with aromas of honeysuckle, lily and white blossom. It’s a dry wine with lively, dancing acidity, well-extracted and endowed with subtle hints of green melon and pear fruit. A sweet pie crust scent coming from the fine lees nicely marks the wine, which with a few months of bottle age is likely going to delight with subtle hints of more tropical fruits like mango, anise and lychee.

Previous vintages of Delicata’s top Viognier (pronounced Vee-yoh-N’YAY) were already very well received locally and fared well at several prestigious wine competitions, even in France and at Decanter World Wine Awards, UK.

It’s always an uplift of a Maltese white. Drink it well-chilled on its own or match with firm fish, lobster and crab, mild Indian kormas or, best of all, a chicken tajine.

I’m not sure if this chic grape’s popularity will persist or not, or whether Viognier will actually firmly establish itself as the ‘new Chardonnay’. But, certainly, wine lovers in Malta who can get their hands on a bottle of Viognier will be delighted to raise a glass of it in celebration of the grape’s imminent special day.