(Decanter) - Andrew Jefford takes a close look at Sardinia’s only DOCG wine, Vermentino di Gallura, and wonders if Vermentino will ever be considered one of the world’s great white wines.

Some varieties seem destined to be more enjoyed than admired – like shy, submissive, sweet-tempered Vermentino.  Will it always be thus?  Does it matter?  Are we just waiting for some southern Dagueneau, Gravner or Humbrecht to come along to push the variety and its vineyards to their expressive limits and make us all look at it anew?  Or will we one day realise that discretion, subtlety and fine-sewn grace are underrated white-wine virtues which might actually provide more drinking pleasure than strenuous exhibitions of oak, acidity and herbaceousness?

I touched on this question last year in considering whether Liguria’s Pigato really is the same variety as Vermentino, but a recent visit to Sardinia moved the argument on a little.

Vermentino’s heartland is best expressed in terms of maritime zones: the Golfe du Lion, the Ligurian sea, the Tyrrhenian sea.  It begins to come to prominence, in other words, in coastal Languedoc, and then performs as the key white variety for Provence, for Liguria, for Corsica and for Sardinia.  It drifts off through northwest and central Italy (the Piedmontese call it Favorita), but fades from significance in the south and the east, nor does it makes much headway in Catalonia.

I tend to think of it as the yachtsman’s white, and probably never better than when consumed on some deck or other, faced with a gently undulating horizon, a vast expanse of glittering water, a distant deserted cove, and nothing much to do during the afternoon other than terminate it with a secluded swim.

The more I taste it with food, though, the more I realise that its gastronomic potential is under-rated; indeed Sardinia’s finest Vermentino wines seem to have an uncanny ability to taste saline with certain foods, but almost sweet when drunk on their own.  It is Vermentino di Gallura which provides Sardinia with its only DOCG wine, furthermore, so (if official sanction is anything to go by) this might be considered a superior wine to the Cannonau, Carignano and Cagnulari I wrote admiringly about two weeks ago.  It is certainly Italy’s grandest and most intricate Vermentino.

Vermentino is also Corsica’s most significant white, and for me it’s one reason why Provence’s underrated, succulent and creamy white wines are often a better buy than its sometimes over-dry reds.  Remember, too, that it plays a significant role in some leading rosé wines in Provence – notably in Ch d’Esclans’ three top cuvées Garrus, Les Clans and Rock Angel, all of which are co-fermented Grenache/Vermentino blends.  I don’t think it will ever make a great white for cellaring, but I certainly think that it makes a tempting alternative to the greatest white wines based on Sauvignon Blanc, on Viognier, on Marsanne and on Roussanne – fine wines, in other words, for drinking with close scrutiny when young.