Valli Unite Bianco NV

100% Cortese from the fun-loving crunchy crew at Valli Unite, a 100 hectare commune in the Tortonesi hills. About a quarter of that property is vines, the rest is a polycultural farm, so there's honey and salami being made along with wine. Started in the late 1970s, it's Italy's first natural wine cooperative and now includes 30 members who “believe natural vinification is a social responsibility.”

The Bianchino certainly lives up to this, an an affordable, everyday quaffer. It has three days of maceration on the skins, not enough to make it orange, but enough to give it a little texture to go along with the snappy acidity. Pear skin, bruised apple, and a little note of Parmesan rind on the finish make this more complex than it would seem at first glance, but it remains unpretentious and thirst-quenching. Jonathan Kemp