What a scorcher, and some Torrontes

It has been one of those very rare scorching hot days in London, with bright blue skies, a light breeze, and temperatures in the upper twenties. I headed up to the Wine and Spirit Education Trust, near London Bridge, for a tasting of 28 Torrontes wines for Wine & Spirit, and because of the beautiful weather I decided to walk rather than take the tube from Waterloo.

The walk, along the south bank of the Thames, is a pleasant one, and takes around 35 minutes. It passes the Tate Modern, with the famous Millennium footbridge across to St Pauls (see picture). This was the one that opened in June 2000, but was closed after three days because of a phenomenon known as synchronous lateral excitation. Basically, it wobbled. The problem took 89 dampners and £5 million to fix before the bridge was reopened in 2002.

What was the Torrontes like? A little disappointing, if I'm going to be really honest. Quite a lot of the wines had some pithy bitterness on the finish, which wasn't all that nice. Some were pretty and floral, with grapey fruit. Others were a bit oily and pungent. Argentina doesn't do whites all that well, in my opinion. I'm not sure why, because I really like many Argentinean reds.