I WANT to share two Italian white wines with you which I discovered when wandering round the Worcester Wine Company in St John's.

Both priced at £6.75, they show the rich diversity that can be found away from souless supermarket shelves.

The first is a Gavi DOCG 2003 from patrician Piedmont at the foot of the Alps in the north. The other is a Greco IGT 2004, or Vin de Pays, from impoverished Basilicata, deep in the instep of Italy's boot.

The town of Gavi lies deep in Piedmont, to the east of where the famed Barolo and Barbaresco red wines are made. Here, along a nine-mile long strip of land, you will find a still little known white wine vine - the Cortese.

In the right hands it can produce a wine that some say can be the Italian equivalent to white Burgundy. However, in the wrong hands you get a lean, mean, acid-machine.

Fortunately Claudio Manesa, who owns the 20 hectare La Battisina estate, has some of the surest hands in the region. His vines are planted on the south-facing slopes of a hilly outcrop of chalk and clay. Picked by hand when fully ripe and then cool fermented in stainless steel, he produces a wine with the aromas and flavours of poached pears, pineapples and grapefruit with a zingy acidity and a long stylish finish. This is unashamedly a food wine; a wine that feels just as much at home with a freshly caught grilled trout as it does with a creamy risotto of wild mushrooms with truffle shavings.

Hundreds of miles away in the deep-south you'll find Basilicata.

This is one of the poorest regions of Italy, where centuries ago Greek merchants first planted a vine that became known as the Greco.

Today, although there is plenty of black Greco, the white is still comparatively rare.

However, they still make the white wine at the large Basilium winery near the picturesque hilltop village of Acerenza. Cold fermentation captures the grape's natural citrus flavours together with that hint of the herbs that grow wild among the vines and a suspicion of minerals from the rocky soil. The result is a crisp, clean fragrant wine that you can serve with a wide range of dishes where its natural acidity will eat through fat or rich sauces.