In these cold dark days we need wines to give our spirits a boost

Willi Schaefer Graacher Riesling Feinherb, Mosel, Germany 2022 (£24, tanners-wines.co.uk) I don’t have synaesthesia, the neurological condition that leads to experiences of “seeing” sound or “hearing” colour. But when it comes to flavour, I can’t help but think in a similarly sense-jumbling way, with certain tastes or organoleptic sensations having strong associations with certain colours and visual effects. At this time of year, when the conditions outside incline to the murky and muted, and it’s easy to sink into grey lethargy, I start looking for ingredients that offer flashes of mood lifting brightness and colour: I get through a hell of a lot of ginger and chilli, and pile the fruit bowl high with blood oranges, limes and mandarins. I crave similar sensations in wine, too, which is one of the reasons why January is a riesling month for me, with the shimmering, quicksilver acidity, zing of lemon and lime and fleshy tree-fruit juiciness of Willi Schaefer’s fleet-flooted Mosel just the perfect antidote to wintry gloom.

Taste the Difference Alsace Gewurztraminer, Alsace, France 2022 (£10.50, Sainsbury’s) Another part of the appeal of zippy off-dry rieslings such as Schaefer’s at this time of year is the homeopathic dose of sugar, with the barely perceptible sweetness being a very happy foil to those bright chilli and gingery spices. Other grape varieties that are sometimes made in a way that retains a similar heat-shielding layer of a few grams per litre of sugar include pinot gris, which is the base of Louis Guntrum Pinot Gris 2023 (£11.99, down from £14.99 until 21 January) from the Rheinhessen in Germany, which has a very small spoonful of 6g sugar per litre to flesh out its quince and vibrant fluent acidity; Romania’s fetească regală, as in M&S Expressions Fetească Regală 2023 (£6.50), which mixes lightly syrupy peach juiciness with summery floral tones; and gewurztraminer from Alsace, such as the ever-reliable Sainsbury’s own-label made by Cave de Turckheim, a wine that trades the pulsing energy of riesling for the no-less-transporting full-on high-summer fragrance of roses, Turkish delight and ginger.