The Solent Cellar – Like a London Wine Shop in a Sleepy South Coast Town

I am working through my list of feature articles about some very special wine merchants. I’ve written about Feral Art et Vin in Bordeaux, and Butlers Wine Cellar in Brighton. Next up, The Solent Cellar in Lymington, Hampshire. Lymington is, it’s fair to say, a sleepy conservative town on the south coast, on the edge of the New Forest. There are many second home owners, and a number of yacht marinas, plus one of the ferries which ply over to the Isle of Wight. It is certainly an attractive town, and on a Saturday there’s a great street market which would give a good French market a run for its money.

Simon and Heather Smith used to work for Majestic, although in Dorset and Surrey, not in Lymington (the Lymmo store is of a more recent vintage). Heather also trained at the famous cookery school, Ballymaloe, in County Cork, Ireland. They both felt a bit constrained by the narrowing range of their employer, and opened Solent Cellar in a prime location at the top of Lymington’s main street in 2011.

With family in Lymington, I used to pass the shop fairly frequently, but I resisted going in for some time. First, I thought I had enough wine shops to stay loyal to, but I also rather stupidly underestimated what I might find inside. It didn’t take very long, once I had crossed the threshold, for this shop to become one of my favourite wine retailers in the country, and so it remains to this day.

Aside from the adventurous nature of the wines on the shelves, Simon in particular has become one of those rare retailers who I know I can trust 100% with any recommendation. Every wine he suggests I buy hits the spot because he’s taken the time and trouble to get to know my admittedly odd tastes. Perhaps because he shares many of them.

To be fair, I think it has worked both ways, as I have definitely introduced Simon to all sorts of things. Not least among these, the Jura in France (both its wines and the place). Simon now has a far better collection of Vin Jaune than I can boast, and his passion for poulet aux morilles et Vin Jaune is certainly equal to my own. Not to mention the Bugey and Swiss wines, among others, which have appeared on the shelves, though I wonder whether they regret my cajoling there. Is Lymington ready for Bugey? I think the regular summer listing of Tim Wildman’s petnat Astro Bunny may be down to a bottle I took down a few summers ago.

I asked Heather and Simon how wine retailing had changed over the time they’ve been trading. When they opened, they were the only non-supermarket wine retailer in the town. Now there’s competition [of sorts] but increasing the amount of wholesale business, converting the shop garden for events, plus external events and tastings, has given Solent Cellar a far greater profile in the town. Today about 60% of the business remains retail, 30% wholesale (mostly pubs and restaurants) and 10% the rest (including online sales and wine sold at the pop-up shop and garden events).

The pandemic saw a massive change in shopping habits, says Heather, and as a small retailer Solent Cellar was able to adapt and respond quickly and flexibly, with deliveries and online sales (their online shop launched back in 2015). As Heather and Simon agree, convincing people to spend a bit more than the supermarkets charge was a challenge but the pandemic helped customers to see the value of good knowledge and good, personal, service. It helped create even more loyal customers. In a town with many second home owners who came down, often from London, in Lockdown, they were perhaps more used to buying quality wine and seeing the value of paying a bit more than the usual Tesco fodder. This established a market that has remained loyal.

Simon says “for me, the biggest achievement is still being here after thirteen years and still growing. The biggest challenges are all the red tape after Brexit which makes importing ourselves that much harder. Also, finding good staff and developing their knowledge isn’t easy. We now have a great team of three alongside Heather and myself”.

That team consists of “Simon C” who came from managing at Majestic (confusing to have a shop manager also called Simon), Kate (currently doing her WSET Level 2) and Cam “who previously worked in the wine trade in Scotland, another great addition to the team, as well as being our Whisky Girl”.

Becoming a direct importer is one way many retailers are helping their margins and therefore keeping prices down. If done well, this can bring in unique offerings, but it does require constant travel, both to keep relationships going and to find new suppliers. Solent Cellar has managed to get a good foothold in Chablis, Provence and The Loire. Their Château Maravenne Provençal Rosé wines are massively popular in the summer, especially at the Lymington Seafood Festival where it’s pretty much the house wine. The Chablis from Domaine Gueguen are really popular wines too.

Some of Solent Cellar’s own imports, including, on the left, the first Rosé shipment for summer

This year staff have already visited Champagne, The Loire, Rioja, Piemonte and Provence. These may sound like perks. They are work, but yes, it’s a nice thing to be able to do for your staff. Of course, the trade tastings in London are shared around as well, which means staff get a chance to broaden their palate, and have some input in what is taken onto the list.

Simon hits the nail on the head about another big challenge. “One of our suppliers said that £15 is the new £10. We’ve always wanted to keep our regulars happy with a good range of every day wines alongside our more specialist offering but it’s a real challenge to find bottles we are happy to have on the shelves at £10-£12 now”. That’s why direct importing helps. In addition to the estates already mentioned “we began last year working with Gael Felix in Quincy and Domaine de la Croisée in Pouilly Fumé. We’re excited as they are just starting out but are making some fantastic wines”.

Solent Cellar stocks a great range of some of the Loire’s finest names, Sanzay, Guiberteau and Alliet for example (check out their deep Loire offering, I could easily buy a case of just Loire wines from this shop), so adding in a couple of new and dynamic producers from the same wider region to the list of those they import themselves is a smart move. It means they can group wines together to bring in mixed pallets, which naturally cuts costs.

Just part of the Loire selections

Simon thinks The Loire is the last of the French classic regions where you can buy fine wines at affordable prices, and wines which are genuinely value for money. I would add that at least right now, frosts aside, the ripeness now being achieved with Cabernet Franc is really showing what potential this variety has.

I asked Simon what he’d like to sell more of? “Sherry never seems to quite enjoy the comeback always hinted at in the press. German wines are also under appreciated, both dry and off-dry styles. I’d like to sell a bit more Aussie but it seems to have fallen out of favour, and darker Rosé wines, because I like a challenge.”

I wondered whether there’s a big increase in the market for English wines? Heather says that the tourists often want to try a local wine, and there has been a noticeable increase in the market for English Sparkling Wine. “When we get any of Tim Phillips’s Charlie Herring Wines that sparks a lot of interest, especially online. We sell a lot of Langham and Black Chalk. Domaine Hugo is now listed too, among others. However, they also sell a fair bit of Champagne, especially the Les Riceys producer, Gallimard, which is pretty much like their House Champagne (I have a few magnums myself awaiting a forthcoming event).

Italy is also an expanding part of the range, and the shelves are packed with so many interesting bottles. Tuscany, of course, does well, but Piemonte, especially the outliers like Carema and Gattinara (which Simon and Heather visited this winter) are gaining traction.

What of outside events? Tasting events are very well attended, as are regular garden events. The walled garden behind the shop makes for a very special place for food popups and as Heather says, “we try to open wines which customers might not normally try. It’s a nice way for a larger crowd to enjoy a few glasses of wine with food in a less formal situation than a tutored tasting. Bottles are always available to purchase on the night.”

“The Lymington Seafood Festival allows us to reach a much wider audience. If the sun shines, we sell lots of Rosé, and many of the wines we ship from the Loire are also seafood friendly. We also now have the chance to use a bigger venue at the Coffeemongers Roastery on the edge of town, where we can put on tastings for more people than can fit into the shop. We are doing a rum tasting there this Friday (26 April)”.

I had to ask about Jura. Heather: “We probably have a ridiculous amount of Jura wines for such a traditional town like Lymington. We do love a challenge”. I’ve always been impressed by the commitment here to Jura wine, partly because I think it was my own enthusiasm that helped nudge Simon and Heather towards their first visits to the region (they are now old hands). That photo of Vin Jaune bottles is astonishing because I doubt anyone else retailing wine in the UK could match it (and I’m not sure it’s even comprehensive).

Shhhh! Some VJ

Of course, some wines are available in such tiny quantities that they sell quickly, but I can always find bottles to buy from the Jura. A recent visit to the region has led to them adding Domaine Mouillard, including their Château-Chalon, which I have yet to try. Of the same estate’s L’Etoile, Simon says it was “recently delicious with a roast chicken followed by a cheese board”. That is classic L’Etoile, for sure.

What else do the Smiths like to drink at home? Beaujolais, especially Foillard, German wines (they usually stock Falkenstein, Prum and a few auction bottles from the likes of Lauer and Schaeffer etc). The most recent German wine I opened from Solent Cellar was an excellent Sylvaner from Rudolf May. Heather professes to like lighter reds at this time of year, Mencia, Gamay and Nebbiolo, but “always Sherry, especially Fino/Manzanilla, there’s always one chilling”. The couple have run the Sherry Half-Marathon in Jerez a few times, and try to get down there most years. Simon is currently on a deep Chenin Blanc journey (Les Terres Turones Montlouis and Guiberteau Saumur Blanc getting special mentions).

Among the most impressive bottles from the shop recently have been Marie Courtin Champagnes, which they both describe as “Absolutely stunning”. The fabled unicorn, Rousset Jura Aligoté, got a massive thumbs-up at the last staff event, along with the Domaine Chanzy Bouzeron Clos de la Fortune VV, a star wine they introduced me to last year (I’d never tried it and as an Aligoté lover I can tell you…).

The Solent Cellar is at 40 St Thomas Street, Lymington, Hampshire, SO41 9ND, tel 01590 674852

Closed Sundays and Bank Holidays, opening times via their web site:

 thesolentcellar.co.uk .

They have given me at least ten years of friendly service and excellent advice, and as I have said before, they are just like a London wine shop in a sleepy but very pretty town in the New Forest. If you are in the vicinity, definitely pop in, but do check out their web site, especially if you have similar tastes to mine and like buying wine from really nice people. It is worth much more than a mere detour.

Missing Out – Tutto Wines Trade Tasting in Edinburgh

One or two of my readers may be aware that I have been struck low with a virus this week. Not only has that meant an involuntary wine detox, but it has also tested my addiction to writing, just at a time when I was expecting to knock out three more articles before Real Wine comes around at the end of the month. One of those was to be on the Edinburgh Trade Tasting of Tutto Wines, held on Tuesday this week. I just couldn’t drag my coughing and spluttering body out of bed but I thought that I’d still give Tutto a bit of a plug.

It’s not because those nice chaps Alex and Jack had been kind enough to allow me to elbow in on their trade clients (though it was indeed very kind of them). I’m writing purely out of self-interest. Tutto don’t, unlike many importers who sell to individuals (in Tutto’s case via their Tutto a Casa online shop), deliver to private customers in Scotland. This means that to grab their wines I have to persuade the Edinburgh Wine Trade to stock them. You see, Tutto sells a whole bunch of producers who are essential to my cellar.

Although this article is merely a selfish attempt to grab these wines, of course it is of just as much interest to my wider readership, which is after all somewhat stronger in England, the USA and Australia than it seems to be in Scotland.

Another reason for being seriously pissed-off at missing the tasting is that it was held at Montrose, the new venue just opened by the team at Edinburgh’s famous Timberyard. It’s in an old 19^th Century pub around the back of Calton Hill, about a fifteen-minute walk from Waverley Station. It’s on Montrose Terrace, which is actually part of the A1. By all accounts the Timberyard team has made a good job of the conversion of this listed building, and they are putting out food to match.

Anyway, back to Tutto. They showed a little over twenty wines from their ever-expanding portfolio (more of that later), plus a couple of the Savoie beers they bring in. This was a mix of the big guns (Cossard from in this case Chiroubles, Lambert from Anjou, Robinot’s Jasnières, and of course Anders Frederik Steen from the Ardèche) with some good value gems from Banyuls, Sicily, Lazio, Hérault and Ardèche once more.

If I were to single out one thing only that I like and admire about Tutto, it is this. Many importers have the really big names sewn-up. What Tutto excel at is finding the new, hip, trendy, cool but most importantly goddam brilliant producers that hardly anyone has heard of. They do it time and time again and it proves that they really know their sh…tuff.

What I thought I’d do in this very short piece is list a selection of producers from Tutto Wines’ portfolio that I suggest are worth looking out for. Attendees at the tasting will have had a sniff of a few, but others didn’t make it up to Scotland, which might well be because they just sell out too quickly and they are awaiting a restock. It can’t be because the guys don’t think Edinburgh is savvy or cool enough for them. So here we go:

Manon Farm (Adelaide Hills, South Australia): Monique Millton and Tim Webber (yes, Monique is a daughter of the famous NZ Millton wine family) have a small (under 5ha) farm up in the “Hills”. They are pretty much unknown in the UK, although a flick through Honey Spencer’s new book shows she, as ever, has her finger on the pulse. Tutto sells three wines from Manon Farm, showing just their Rosato on Tuesday. I wonder how many tasters knew its geek factor, but it isn’t expensive.

Lambert Spielmann (Alsace, France): I won’t say much about Lambert. My very last article praised one of his superb “New Alsace” cuvées. Rising star is, in any case, becoming a bit tired and over-used. But innovative will do. Makes wine from a tiny domaine scattered around Epfig and nearby hamlets/villages in a sub-region of the Bas Rhin that is the beating heart of natural wine Alsace.

Yannick Meckert (Alsace, France): Tutto really do have a nose for Alsace. All their growers are more than worth a try, but they recently took on Yannick, whose wines I already knew through his now curtailed association with Du Vin Aux Liens (imported by Glasgow’s Sevslo Wines). Not only has Yannick worked with some fine natural wine producers around France, but he has also made Sake in Japan with Terada Honke (respect!). He has 3.5ha around Rosheim and I could go on at length about the man’s future potential.

The wine made by Yannick below is not, I think, one of Tutto’s, but it does betray some early YM-style branding

Maison Maenad (Jura, France): Tutto have, I think, ten Jura domaines and as you will know my particular love of the region, you’ll know this is hard for me. I’m choosing Katie Worobeck’s domaine at Orbanga because you may not know her wines yet, but they will soon have every unicorn chaser in East London asking for an allocation (thankfully I have a secret, non-UK source, at least for the odd bottle). Katie was born in Canada but worked with the Ganevats for five years before she found her old vines. This is a producer who will sort those who trust my ability to be ahead of the game and those who don’t.

Tutti Frutti Ananas (Banyuls, France): This collaboration turns out quite simple but super-tasty wines from the barren and stony hills above Collioure, near where the Pyrenees literally plunge into the Mediterranean. I think they grow their red grapes on their own small plot, but buy in the white grapes (Grenache Gris and Vermentino). They make the wines with the better known “Les 9 Caves” co-operative. The wines are made in an old garage in the town. Vibrant stuff for a good price (for natural wine). Nice packaging too.

Domaine de Kalathas (Tinos, Cyclades, Greece): For me, subjectively, one of the two best natural wine estates in Greece (the other being Ktima Ligas). They are based on Tinos, an island in the Cyclades ravaged by winds. The wines, the product of very old bush vines off sandy granite, seem to distil that turbulence and come out intense with energy. The winds make for disease free natural winemaking, not that the island doesn’t have other issues (like bush fires…and property developers…and more bush fires). These wonderful wines have, I admit, become somewhat more expensive than they were before the B-word severed the Channel link, but wonderful they are, nevertheless.

Le Coste (Lazio, Italy): This isn’t a small estate. They (being Gianmarco Antonuzzi and Clémentine Bouveron) farm 14ha near the Lago di Bolsano, at Gradoli. They’ve also been making natural wine here for around twenty years, and they make (and Tutto imports) over twenty different bottlings, plus some rather fine olive oil if it’s a decent harvest.

Testalonga (Liguria, Italy): I had to include the Ligurians. Okay, forget some of the beaches, but have you seen how beautiful this small region is? Testalonga is the label of Antonio Perrino in the region of Dolceacqua (not to be confused with the exceedingly hip South African Testalonga label). I think Tutto lists his “Bianco”, as well as the wine for which the region is synonymous, Rossese di Dolceacqua. These are semi-aromatic reds, foot trodden and with the potential to age a very long time, which I kind of doubt a single bottle that reaches the UK ever will. The grape is known as Tibouren in Provence, which lovers of the wonderful Clos Cibonne will know.

Cascina Tavijn (Piemonte, Italy): Nadia Verrua makes wine in a place I know very well, the Monferrato Hills in the Piemontese province of Asti. The rolling hills here are very beautiful and its alure as a destination for wine tourism remains woefully under-appreciated. Viticulture and winemaking at this estate have been called “rustic”, but that should only be taken as a compliment. Zero added, the wines are characterful and soulful, and they remind me of the kind of wines the really old timers used to get a tear in their eye talking about when they’d been to Beaujolais before the Nouveau debacle.

Other names you will know, but may not be aware that Tutto is a UK importer, are Arpepe (Valtellina), Domaine L’Octavin (Jura) and the late Julie Balagny (Beaujolais). I would wonder at the thinking behind any wine retailer who wouldn’t be jealous to have all three on their shelves, although sadly in the case of Julie, there must be very little left now?

So, if we include the three above, that’s ten producers. All of them deserve to appear somewhere in any budding natural wine metropolis. I’d be very grateful if they did…plus any others you tasted on Tuesday and fell in love with, but which I missed out on trying. Let’s see! I missed out on Tuesday, but you don’t need to.

Recent Wines March 2024 (Part 2) #theglouthatbindsus

For the second part of my bottles drunk at home in March we have six different wines, all from different regions, and indeed all different sources to those drunk in Part 1. We begin with a sadly rare grape variety from Piemonte, the white Nascetta. Then we have a wine from one of my favourite young Alsace producers, one made in a very interesting way. We have a superb pétnat from Lorraine, a relatively inexpensive Pinot Noir from California, a “ginger” wine (it’s a thing) from the grandfather of Czech/Moravian natural wine, and to finish, a Bourgogne Aligoté which I know is a favourite of many of those who follow this blog. Part One is a hard act to follow, but this group of wines had a good stab of doing so.

Nascetta del Comune di Novello 2020 Langhe DOC « Arnaldo Rivera », Terre del Barolo (Piemonte, Italy)

Nascetta is a rare Langhe native variety, pretty much only grown now in the comune of Novello in the Langhe Hills. It fell so out of favour that it was often used as a table grape, but someone must have decided to give it another try, and for me it does at the very least rival Arneis, the best known of the local varieties for dry whites. It has small berries, is classed as semi-aromatic, but for me is more interesting on the palate.

Terre del Barolo is a large co-operative whose Barolo wines often appear in the supermarkets. Arnaldo Rivera was Mayor of Castiglione Falletto, where they are based. He was a teacher, but he founded the co-operative in 1958. The cantina makes a premium varietal range from single sites to honour him.

Made in stainless steel to retain freshness, it is quite aromatic with a floral note developing, along with a whiff of beeswax. The palate is waxy, with ripe apple and pear acids, over time softening as hazelnut comes in. There’s a little bit of texture, possibly from a lees element, and it is savoury enough for food matching with a medium body and 13% abv. Interestingly, Nascetta is said to age well in oak and the profile of this wine makes me interested to taste one that has seen oak.

I doubt this is a “natural wine”, but the variety was irresistible to try, and I thought within the context of Piemontese white wine, this was pretty nice. Not expensive either, £22 from The Solent Cellar.

Chien Noir/Chat Blanc 2021, Lambert Spielmann/Domaine in Black (Alsace, France)

Ex-musician Lambert Spielmann’s wines, and even his domaine name, are riddled with music references and riddles (I’ve just bought tickets to see The Stranglers, Lambert). He has approximately three hectares of vines around the villages of Dambach-la-Ville, Epfig, Nothalten, Obernai and Reichfeld, and he’s one of Bas Rhin’s rising stars.

This is a newer cuvée from Lambert, and it has a neat twist to it. It is made from 40-year-old Pinot Auxerrois grapes grown on clay, direct pressed, but the juice was infused with Pinot Noir skins from the previous vintage for a week before pressing into vat. The result is a fantastic cranberry juice colour, so bright it looks radioactive. The bouquet is all cranberry, strawberry and raspberry with just a hint of lemon from somewhere.

Fruit and acids intermingle making this extremely refreshing, but there’s a little texture too. It’s just a brilliantly conceived wine, and it sports another very cool label designed by Fred Bouchet. Many of you will know that these cuvées also come with a recommended track to listen to, always worth checking them out. This one is “Was Romeo Really a Jerk” by Emir Kustorika (2007), a Serbian actor/director/musician possibly best known for his film “Time of the Gypsies” (1988), for which he won Best Director at Cannes the following year.

Imported by Tutto Wines, this bottle originally purchased from Noble Fine Liquor. Tutto has an online shop, Tutto a Casa, in which Lambert’s wines appear sporadically. They say they deliver to England and Wales. For Scotland we have to pray that some fine Edinburgh or Glasgow retailers will order some (please!). Tutto has a trade tasting in Edinburgh next week so help me here, someone!

Pet’ Native Blanc 2021, Maison Crochet (Lorraine, France)

Lorraine isn’t perhaps very well known as a wine producing region, certainly not outside of Eastern France, but as somewhere with no reputation it is attractive to very independently minded winemakers. I first got to learn about this producer through Vanessa Letort (Du Vin Aux Liens). Vanessa has moved her base from Alsace to start a vineyard not far from the Crochet domaine at Bulligny, 30km south of Nancy, close to Toul. Although Toul now has an appellation (formerly VDQS), this domaine eschews the AOC in favour of Vin de France designation.

They are an organic domaine which the current generation has converted to making natural, low intervention, wines. They also practise sustainable viticulture and use only very low doses of sulphur. I think this is my third Crochet wine and probably the one that has thus far shown the best. It’s a pétnat made from 100% Auxerrois from a vineyard called Mont-le-Fou (mad or crazy mountain). They say it is from a “terroir limoneux profond”, which is alluvial silt.

The fruit is entirely direct pressed, with no additives, no filtration and fermented with native yeasts. This cuvée can be disgorged or not from the bottle it undergoes its second fermentation in, depending on customer preference. This one had no apparent lees or cloudiness. It has subtle bubbles, a floral bouquet with yellow fruits, with similar fruit on a saline, mineral, palate. In essence, I’d call this a lovely dry peachy lemonade but with 11% alcohol. If that sounds appealing, well it is. And Maison Crochet deserves to be better known. If they were near Sélestat or Arbois, they would be.

Only circa 1,000 bottles were made of this cuvée but it was very good. I would definitely buy it again. The importer is Sevslo in Glasgow, and I found it in their retail outlet, Made from Grapes, in the same city. I am hoping some Crochet wine may make its way to Edinburgh, but Sevslo now has their new web site up and running and you can purchase wine there (www.sevslowine.com ). Massive respect to Séverine of Sevslo for importing these wines.

Central Coast Pinot Noir 2021, Land of Saints Wine Company (California, USA)

The fruit for this Californian Pinot comes mostly from Santa Maria Valley, a source I remember from my first tastes of Cali PN many decades ago. We also have fruit sourced in Edna Valley and Arroyo Grande, in effect from the counties of Santa Barbera and San Luis Obispo, generally known as the Central Coast. We are lucky that we are a way away from Napa fruit prices here, but fruit off these mostly volcanic soils (with granite and riverstone) can make good wine if handled well.

The Land of Saints project joins Angela and Jason Osborne (of A Tribute to Grace fame) with Manuel Cuevas (C2 Cellars). They take the fruit from the three sites mentioned and vinify it with 20% whole clusters. Each site is vinified and aged separately in used barriques, blending taking place in tank just before bottling.

The bouquet has ripe cherry fruit, the palate, which has some body, doubling up on the cherry fruit but with a spicy liquorice note, not overwhelming but a with sort of pin-prick intensity, on the finish. Alcohol is listed as 13.6% but the juice is balanced and bright with a pleasant mouthfeel. It’s definitely warm climate but errs on the right side of reasonable restraint.

There were a little over 2,000 cases of this 2021 (I think the 2022 has appeared by now), so it’s hardly small production, but the volume allows this to translate to a UK price after shipping, duty and several margins, of £27. I think that’s not bad really for a tasty Californian Pinot Noir, very well made but with wide appeal. Purchased from Smith & Gertrude (Portobello), imported by Lea & Sandeman.

Ryšák 2020, Jaroslav Osička (Moravia, Czechia)

The grandfather of Czech natural wine makes many wonderful cuvées from his small winery cellar and beautiful vineyards (he farms around just three hectares) in the Southern Moravian wine village of Bílovice. It’s a bit like the profusion of cuvées one finds in Alsace here, but this one must come close to topping the interest list. Ryšák means “ginger” in local dialect and it’s an actual wine style, somewhere between an orange/amber wine and a Rosé.

This is a blend of equal parts Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris, grown and vinified without any additives or manipulations. This is another of those wines you would probably buy on its colour alone. If you took such a punt, you’ll not be disappointed.

The grapes see a short maceration of five or six hours followed by a whole berry co-fermentation in vat.

On first sight it looks pretty much like a Rosé, albeit in the darker spectrum towards a pale red. But when you look deep into the glass you do see a sort of ginger hue, unless I’m imagining it. What will then strike you pretty swiftly is the bouquet. Strawberry yoghurt with a hint of tinned peach. Now I live close to a famous gelataria, and these flavours are known to my palate, but this fruity but dry wine is delicious on another level.

Chill it down…not too much, just as you’d chill a light red wine. I don’t think “gorgeous” is too strong a word to describe it, a wine that looks, smells and tastes fantastic. And, of course, if you want to try Czech natural wine then Jaroslav is the guy who more or less started the movement. His son, Luboš, along with some of his wines, will be at the Real Wine Fair in London at the end of April.

In case you thought Jaroslav was isolated in Moravia, he was a teacher at the local wine school for many years, and he gathered around him a posse of similar-thinking natural wine talents who form one of the most exciting natural wine movements in Europe today. He cites Jura wine as a major influence, specifically Pierre Overnoy, with whom he shares some similarities.

This wine came from Basket Press Wines and I believe they have now taken delivery of the latest vintage. It may well be available to try at Tobacco Dock, if you are going.

Bourgogne Aligoté 2021, Du Grappin (Burgundy, France)

Du Grappin is the negoce label of Andrew and Emma Nielsen’s Le Grappin domaine. The fruit for these wines is bought-in, but they have significant control over the viticulture and harvesting (many friends and acquaintances that I know have done a harvest or two with the Nielsens and lived to tell the tale, of hard work and fun).

The Aligoté fruit for this wine comes from a site called Perelles le Haut, at La Roche Vineuse in the Maconnais. It’s a south-facing slope of white Bathonian Limestone, 80-year-old vines of the Aligoté Doré clone giving small berries and tiny yields.

Hand-harvested and foot-trodden, the slightly golden-tinged grapes see a very slow press into large old oak vats to ferment. Ageing is a full nine months on lees. The terroir info should give some indication of some of the wine’s qualities. Instead of high acids common to some wines from this variety, we have rounded and ripe fruit with a hint of southern sunshine. There is also a super streak of minerality from the lees ageing, although this is not the version labelled “Skin”, which sees skin contact. If the bouquet has something of a warm spring sunset about it, the finish on the palate is pure dessert apple. If you were ever to call an Aligoté “lush”, then this would be the one, after a couple of years in bottle.

For me, this type of Aligoté is a world away from the battery acid Aligoté of old, wines sometimes only fit to form the base of a Kir, a foil for the sweet liqueur (though it must be said, I am missing drinking Kir, I’ve not had one for ages). At this price it is very much worth seeking out, but not to use as a mixer.

Another purchase from Smith & Gertrude (Portobello, Edinburgh), for £22. Newcomer Wines has recently signed up Le Grappin and will hopefully stock some of the Du Grappin bottlings.

Recent Wines March 2024 (Part 1) #theglouthatbindsus

March began with some stormy weather, then up here in Scotland we had some marvellous spring days bringing floral profusion to our little rain shadow just outside Edinburgh. As I type, at the end of the month, we have wetter and colder days. Freezing wind and rain this morning and bright sun this afternoon. Frankly, the weather is all over the place, and as usual, so is my wine drinking.

Well, almost. For the first part of my home drinking for March we have one wine from South Africa, but two from Germany (technically the same region but it would be hard to imagine two wines more different in style and philosophy). To complete the first half of the case, we have a Jura Savagnin, a South Australian Fiano, and a Portuguese red field blend.

Drinking quality seems really high right now. All of these were good, and I’d even suggest that there are four “wine of the month” contenders already. In some ways the wine I’d recommend you trying isn’t one of them. It’s the last wine, the Portuguese red. It’s wild and exciting, and it retails near me for under £20 (a few pounds more in London, it seems, but still cheap as chips used to be).

Smaug the Magnificent 2017, Blank Bottle Winery (Western Cape, South Africa)

Pieter Walser’s Blank Bottle Winery got a prominent mention in my article earlier this month on Butlers Wine Cellar (20/3 or 3/20 for my American readers). I drank this back on 5^th March and it is, like the dragon in the story, magnificent.

Pieter blends Roussanne, Grenache Blanc and Gris, and Verdelho, plus a splash of Chenin, sourced from around Voor Paardeberg, a small wine growing district within Paarl, Western Cape. It’s a really characterful Cape Blend style. Very complex, you could identify tangerine and lemon pith, greengage, garrigue-type herbs and a lemon-beeswax texture. In some ways this complex picture doesn’t begin to explain what is going on in this nicely aged bottle. My family found Laalmohn, which is the Nepali name for the Indian honeyed sweet, gulab jamun, but I’m guessing only a minority of readers might pick that up.

The label, by Pieter’s young son, is equally as magnificent as the wine. Imported by Swig, the currently available 2021 vintage will cost around £30 (probably the best price) from Butlers Wine Cellar. If they have sold out, try Lay & Wheeler, or of course Swig direct. Definitely worth granting it a little bottle age though.

Bombacher Sommerhalde Spätburgunder “R” GG 2011, Bernard Huber (Baden, Germany)

Huber must rank among the finest producers of Spätburgunder/Pinot Noir in Germany. Bernard split from the Malterdingen co-operative in 1987 and soon developed a reputation for quality, and became one of the pioneers who have led a genuine quality revolution in German red wine.

Julian Huber now works the winery. They grow their Pinot Noir on shell limestone in a part of Baden called Breisgau, close to, but distinct from, the volcanic Kaiserstuhl directly to the southwest. This cuvée is made from a “Grand Cru” site keeping yields extremely low. The wine is fermented on the skins and aged on its fine lees, matured of course in oak.

It’s a cuvée that needs time, which this bottle, a gift from a friend some years ago, has benefited from. Very smooth on the palate, both here and on the bouquet, we get cherry, plum, blackberry and raspberry. It’s not all fruit as there’s a tangible spice note as well. Complex, long, smoothly satisfying to both the intellect and the soul. It becomes very gourmandise, quite savoury in the glass (which should be a proper burgundy stem). The best “Pinot” I’ve drunk for a very long time, from anywhere.

Savagnin de Voile 2010, Domaine de Saint-Pierre (Jura, France)

I’ve been lucky to have followed Fabrice Dodane for many years. He took over this estate, of which he was manager, just outside of Arbois, more or less in the direction of Dôle, after the untimely death of its original owner, Philippe Moyne, in 2011. The six-or-so hectares he farms are split between the villages of Vadans, Saint-Pierre and Molamboz, but the winery is in nearby Mathenay.

After first converting the domaine to organics, Fabrice swiftly moved on to making natural wine, using only a small amount of sulphur just in his white wines, and only when deemed absolutely necessary. This wine is of course aged in barrels in Fabrice’s “dry room” (separate from the conventionally aged wines), where a layer of flor develops, similar to Vin Jaune. There it ages, oxidatively, for six years. So, you will see that we more or less have a mini-Vin Jaune.

How does it differ, other than in the ageing requirement? The bouquet is certainly similar, with hazelnut, lemon peel and curry spices. The palate is smooth now, very smooth. You get spiced apple more than anything. I’d say that whilst there is intensity here, it isn’t quite the powerful intensity you get in his VJ.

That is in no way putting this down, in fact just the opposite. It has moved from precision to generosity and is truly stunning. Such flor-aged Savagnin is perhaps a little more versatile at the table, and certainly costs less than Vin Jaune. Why it didn’t become one, I have no idea but if it were not deemed to meet Fabrice’s (quality?) requirements, this is still a remarkably fine wine. If you have any, you are very lucky indeed. My only bottle, but I do have some Saint-Pierre Vin Jaune stashed for even longer ageing.

I think Fabrice’s wines have become extremely expensive now, rather quickly too. Imported by Les Caves de Pyrene. It may cost you more than some estates’ VJs for the most recently released vintage of Fabrice’s “Sous Voile”, but in my opinion, worth it.

Trio Sauvage 2020, Max Sein Wein (Baden, Germany)

Max Baumann runs his own tiny vineyard at Dertingen. According to Max this is still technically Baden, but it’s a lot closer to Würzburg, which is in Franken, hence you will often see his location described as Franken. Trio Sauvage is, like all Max’s own wines (there are also family vineyards which he may come to take over) designated as simple Deutscher Wein (without appellation, by choice).

If all this looks like simple wine, don’t be fooled. Max has a growing reputation even outside Germany. His low intervention philosophy comes from the people he has worked with, not least his revelatory spell at Gut Oggau in Burgenland.

This cuvée is made from just under two-thirds direct-pressed Silvaner with equal parts Chardonnay and Pinot Gris, those two varieties being macerated on their skins for ten days. Like the Huber wine above, the terroir here is also shell limestone, which does impart a great minerality to this white, but it was also aged ten months on lees in oak, which sediment makes its own contribution. The nose is floral at first and then rounds out to a buttery note, perhaps the second variety in the list, skin contact Chardonnay, coming in a little later there? The palate has great salinity, with lemon-fresh acids and a good bit of texture, not obtrusive though.

The finish has a nicely piquant peppery spiciness, and this helped it go especially well with a Kashmir Pepper-spiced aduki bean and black lentil bake topped with thinly sliced potatoes, baked in the oven. Despite the heat of the dish, the wine still felt very much “alive”.

Imported by Basket Press Wines, £30. Max makes some very impressive red wines, often preferring Pinot Meunier to Pinot Noir. He makes some of the most impressive Meunier still wine I know. His white wines are no less worthy of our attention. The prices are creeping up as people realise Max is a guy to watch.

Jade & Jasper Fiano 2021, Unico Zelo (Riverland, South Australia)

Laura and Brendan Carter source their fruit for this Fiano from the Riverland in North Eastern South Australia. It’s right on the border with Victoria, from where it continues into the Murray-Darling region. When Aussie wine made an impact here in the UK, in the 1980s, much of the wine from the irrigated vineyards up here was labelled South Eastern Australia, and indeed these regions, along with Riverina (also in Victoria) were the source of much bulk wine, later shipped in tanker and bottled in Warrington etc.

Times have changed a little. Melbournites now compete for the dwindling water resource of the Murray River with the unhappy farmers to the northeast, but Riverland has, partly as a consequence, seen a new role for wines of quality, if also remarkably good value (because the vineyards are cheap). Among these new quality wines, we are seeing more and more so-called “alt-varieties”, wines made from grapes other than the international star varieties so well known under the Australian sun.

Quite a few of these varieties are more drought-resistant and need less, if any, irrigation. A good example is Brad Hickey’s ZBO (Zibibbo/Muscat) which I buy when I spot it. Fiano isn’t one of these “Mediterranean” varieties, it is a classy white one from Piemonte, but it does seem to thrive there. It is also a variety which has been receiving quite wide acclaim throughout South Australia, especially as a few famous names have some planted, not least Jeffrey Grosset in the Clare Valley.

This is turning into a long entry for what is a fairly simple wine, but one which is nevertheless really worth trying. It’s a good example of what will surely be one of Australia’s many “futures” (ie alternative varieties) for wine.

Moving on…Laura and Brendan make very good natural wines using sustainable farming methods off ancient sand and limestone in Ngawait Country, as they identify the First Nation owners of this land. The label says “sharing memories of spring time”, hence my choice of photo backdrop. The label also suggests that this wine is “aromatic, juicy and textural”. It’s all those things, plus waxy, floral, savoury, with hints of white peach and spring blossom. There’s citrus acidity but the wine doesn’t lack sunshine weight of fruit, and at 12.5% abv it is nicely balanced.

I’d call this very good value for £22 at Cork & Cask, Edinburgh. The importer is Berkmann.

Uivo Renegado Vinhas Velhas 2022, Folias de Baco (Alijó, Northern Portugal)

I’ve said recently that I’m looking more to Portugal for really good value natural wines, and it would be very hard to find one that fits that bill better than this one does. Tiego Sampaio took over his grandparents’ vines near Alijó in the upper reaches of the Douro in 2007. These are old vines, many over 80 years of age, at between 550 to 700 masl, growing on clay and slate/schist.  He has since grown his holding, acquiring scattered parcels from disinterested families with smallholdings, to around 10-ha.

Renegado is made from more than twenty autochthonous Portuguese varieties, approximately half red grapes and half white, co-planted as a field blend. Picked in September, by hand, the fruit was meticulously sorted in the vineyard. Fermenting all the grapes together in traditional granite Lagares, following a three-day maceration, the wine is then aged six months on lees in cement tank (95%) and 2-to-3-year-old chestnut cask (5%).

What we have here is a pale red which is delicious drunk chilled. You get vibrant red fruits to the fore with just a little texture. I always imagine that’s the cement, but of course the lees do their part. The bouquet is very much cranberry juice, the palate adding in redcurrant and strawberry, lots of strawberry in fact. Nice acidity too, the high-altitude vineyards allowing for cold night time temperatures even in what we imagine is the hot baking Douro summer. It’s a juicy, simple, natural wine, but boy is this good! And at 11.5% abv it goes down a treat even before the sun (goes down).

I paid £19 from Cork & Cask for this one. Imported by Modal Wines, I’ve seen this listed in London for £22-£23. Still a bargain in today’s market.

Basket Press Wines Spring Tasting at Spry in Edinburgh – This is Very Much a New Wine Frontier Now

Monday 18 March was the date for the Basket Press Wines Spring Tasting for the trade, held at Spry Wines, the wonderful restaurant/wine bar/natural wine shop in Central Edinburgh. Now, I know I’ve brought you a lot of articles on this small London-based importer over the past six months, but I’m not going to miss an opportunity to taste more than twenty new vintages, nor to write about them. I was lucky to taste a few new wines before Christmas, but having such a wide range of wines together was instructive. Not least because I think these wines were showing better than ever in what was a fantastic tasting.

Jiri from Basket Press Wines at Spry

There are way too many wines here to give extensive notes on each. What I will do is to give you a summary here, of which were my own personal favourites. You can refer to the entry for each wine below to find out any brief technical details, and you can probably find out even more, including about the producers, on the importer’s own web site.

I ought to point out that Basket Press Wines are much more than an importer of Czech wines. Not only did we have wines here from Czechia, but also from Slovakia, Slovenia and Germany, although they also have wines from Georgia, a producer who I think will be at the Real Wine Fair, along with several represented here. Their star producer from Hungary, Annamária Réka-Koncz, wasn’t represented because her new wines were landing in the UK as we were tasting. Anyway, they sell out pretty quickly, something my readers ought to know by now.

My wines of the tasting? First, Petr Koráb is the king of petnats and his new cuvée, “Dark Horse” is very possibly the best pétnat I have drunk for a year or two. It’s red, but a blend of both red and white varieties. I just bought some more.

Max Baumann (Max Sein Wein from the Baden/Franken border) continues to prove he’s a genuine rising star of German wine. Both his wines shown here were superb, though we didn’t get to try any reds. He’s a Meunier maniac.

Mira Nestarecová is bound to get a lot of interest, being married to Czechia’s first star of natural wine on the export market, but I think her wines are superb. So alive, so concentrated. I don’t usually go wild for Sauvignon Blanc, for instance, but this one stung me. A special project.

Other standouts? Check out the wines from Slovakia’s Magula, Vykoukal (from Moravia, I especially liked their Neuburger and Cabernet Moravia, which got appreciative noises all round). Utopia’s Ice Cider (from the Bohemian Highlands) is, of course, off the scale. You never ever spit this. Jiří, who led the tasting, suggested that Jaroslav Springer are making the best Pinot Noir in Central Europe, not just the Czech Republic. I would not disagree. The cuvée on show here, their “village” wine equivalent, was delicious, and quite different to Mira’s beautiful Pinot.

But I also want to mention the real bargains. Krásná Hora and Basket Press Wines’s new signing, Syfany make wines which may not be the “finest” on the list, certainly not the most expensive, but the quality-price ratio is remarkable. For example, you can buy a better Welschriesling than Syfany’s Ryzlink Vlassky for sure, but not remotely close in price to this one.

The wines in the Basket Press portfolio are all bargains in their way, but prices are without doubt creeping up. It was gratifying talking to other tasters who acknowledged the quality and value, not to mention the excitement these wines bring to the table. It was a good palate calibration exercise, and gave me confidence that my “promotion” of these wines is valid. If you haven’t tried any now is perhaps a good time. Before prices rise further and before the small production wines sell out, as they inevitably do.

Now follows a list of all the wines tasted with three of four lines of explanation. I haven’t included prices but for the trade they range from around £11.50 to just under £20. It is unusual at a tasting like this to be able to say that I would happily drink every single one of the wines on taste, and I have doubtless done a disservice to those wines not mentioned above as “stars”. So read through the wines and see whether any others take your fancy.

Sparkling Wines

Kmetija Stekar “Izi” 2022 (Goriska Brda, Slovenia) – Rebula (aka Ribolla just over the border in Italy), 6m on lees in stainless steel, slightly cloudy, lightly sparkling fresh pétnat style. From a domaine known for their skin contact wines, but their “monkey label” series are made in a fresher style.

Petr Koráb Dark Horse Petnat 2022 (South Moravia, Czechia) – Mentioned above with ebullient praise, a blend of red (Hibernal and Blaufränkisch) and white (Traminer and Welschriesling) grapes, with a whole year on skins for the white varieties, but in an inert glazed ceramic vessel. Disgorged style. Bitter red fruits with a dark side. Love it.

White Wines

Kmetija Stekar “Belo” 2022 (Goriska Brda, Slovenia) – White field blend, 6m on lees in stainless steel. Perfumed, creamy apple merges well with fresh mineral saline acids. Field blend of eight varieties including Chardonnay, Glera and Friulano, plus one you may not have tried, Polsakica!

Dva Duby “Divide” 2019 (South Moravia, Czechia) – 70% Frühroter Veltliner with 30% Müller-Thurgau, one year in mix of oak and stainless steel, on lees. Off volcanic soils, perfumed, lovely fruit, plumps up in the glass.

Max Sein Wein “Les Autochtones” 2020 (Baden, Germany) – Silvaner off shell limestone with a little maceration, aged in large oak. This is toned down Silvaner without the acidity common in many. Smooth, soft-fruit style, very interesting and appealing as a result.

Mira Sauvignon Blanc 2022 (South Moravia, Czechia) – For me, Mira’s wines are quite intense. They come from unpruned vines (cf Meinklang, Lissner etc). Some skin fermentation, 6m in acacia. The unpruned vines give more grapes, but smaller berries, so higher skin to pulp ratio. Think more towards NZ’s Hermit Ram than your average French SB.

Syfany Ryzlink Vlassky 2018 (South Moravia, Czechia) – Note the vintage. 6m in stainless steel on lees and then aged in bottle. Honeyed notes with white peppery finish. Remarkable value, and as with all the wines here, “natural” low intervention juice.

Zdenek Vykoukal Neuburger 2021 (South Moravia, Czechia) – 24 hours on skins, 12m in used acacia (600-litre) barrel, then 6m in stainless steel. Off a steep limestone slope, nice weight and texture, rounded, generous. If you like Neuburger and have noticed the price of some of the Austrian versions, try this.

Skin Contact Wines

Zdenek Vykoukal “Resch” 2022 (South Moravia, Czechia) – An orange wine, 95% Müller-Thurgau with 5% Sauvignon Blanc, 3 weeks on skins, 10m on lees in acacia barrels, before transfer to stainless steel to rest before bottling. Soft and velvety.

Krasna Hora “La Blanca” 2022 (South Moravia, Czechia) – White field blend weighted towards Riesling with Traminer, Neuburger, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris, 40% of grapes macerated on skins, ageing in oak and stainless steel. Clean, pale, but textured.

Max Sein Wein Blanc 2021 (Baden, Germany) – Max blends Müller-Thurgau and Silvaner off shell limestone for this cuvée, adding a little skin contact for a lovely perfumed wine (tropical fruits and camomile on my nose).

Petr Koráb “Ambero” 2022 (South Moravia, Czechia) – 70% Welschriesling with Veltliner and Traminer aged one year in a 1,000-litre glazed vessel in his remarkably cold underground cellar, to which he adds 30% Hibernal (a red variety) which was aged in barrel. Definitely an orange/amber wine but so “alive” and “vivant”. Bouquet is that clementine juice Tesco sells, good legs, lively acids, textured fruit, savoury finish.

Magula “Oranzovy Vlk” 2021 (Little Carpathians, Slovakia) – The Orange Wolf is classic Magula, and beautifully packaged as are all their wines. Veltliner, Traminer, Welschriesling and Devin, 14 days skin contact, aged in used oak and acacia barrels, stoneware vessels and amphora. Dark but shimmering gold colour, gentle orange nose, both fruity and savoury (like sweet & sour…almost, but not sweet) with rocky salinity.

Pink Wine

Krasna Hora “Pink” 2022 (South Moravia, Czechia) – KH make great value wines. Organic but in conversion to biodynamic, they are indeed a dynamic, family winery with modern facilities and a beautiful vineyard sloping up to ancient forest. 100% Pinot Noir, whole bunch pressed, a rosé with delightful red summer fruits.

Red Wine

Jaroslav Springer Pinot Noir Vintage Selection 2020 (South Moravia, Czechia) – a “village” selection from the Czech Republic’s Pinot specialist, aged in a mix of new and used oak. This is smooth and fruity with definite varietal character. Ripe, and with a savoury touch. Not enormous complexity but I’m buying one.

Mira Pinot Noir 2022 (South Moravia, Czechia) – Like the SB, quite intense and quite different to the Springer above. Darker for a start. Semi-carbonic here, from those small grapes off unpruned vines. Aged in oak. Ripe, smooth, a bit of tannin, very expressive. Mira was a dancer/dance teacher and her labels all feature 20^th Century avant-garde dancers.

Krasna Hora Ruby 2022 (South Moravia, Czechia) – A simple but lively red field blend aged in stainless steel using Zweigelt, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and St Laurent. Summer fruits, red and dark berries with a bit of flesh. A nice summer wine, which I would chill down a bit. I do like a chilled red. Not just pale ones, so long as they aren’t heavy and have bags of fruit.

Magula “Carboniq” 2022 (Little Carpathians, Slovakia) – A red made as it says on the label, from grapes grown in warm and dry conditions at higher altitude and aged in stainless steel. It’s a single varietal Blauer Portugieser. The result is full of summery red fruits but with a little structure and bite, and it’s sappy and delicious.

Mira Cabernet Franc 2022 (Southern Moravia, Czechia) – This was the first Mira Nestarecová wine that I drank, a month or so ago, and I was immediately impressed. Unpruned vines, of course, partial whole bunches, eight months ageing in 450-litre old oak. The fruit is concentrated blackberry and blackcurrant, perfumed with good fruit acids. Is it as good as the SB and the PN? Yes, but it’s possibly the most subtle of the three…maybe.

Zdenek Vykoukal Cabernet Moravia 2021 (Southern Moravia, Czechia) – Cabernet Moravia is a 1960s crossing between Cabernet Franc and Zweigelt, created when temperatures in Moravia were somewhat cooler. Off limestone soils, the wine sees ten months in old oak and then six in stainless steel. It has that Cabernet Franc green pepper note on the bouquet with juicy red fruits on the palate, a palate which is generous and ripe. Already a fan myself, I heard other exclamations of appreciation in the room. An individual wine!

Petr Koráb Saint Laurent 2022 (Southern Moravia, Czechia) – Aged one year on lees in oak, this is perhaps one of Petr’s more “traditional” wines, and he keeps his old, less wild/more conservative labels for this cuvée. It’s still a generous summery wine but grounded with a spicy, textural, finish. A red worth cooling before serving. Don’t let the label put you off!

Magula Baccara 2019 (Little Carpathians, Slovakia) – Whereas this is beautifully labelled. I just bought a mixed case from Basket Press Wines and this was the thirteenth bottle that didn’t make the cut, partly because I know it so well. A blend of “Rosa” with some Frankovka (aka Blaufränkisch). Named after a famous rose, it does have an unmistakable rose petal element to the bouquet. The palate is mid-weight with vibrant dark fruits. The fine tannins are receding but still there on first sips.

Syfany Frankovka 2018 (Southern Moravia, Czechia) – The wines of Syfany are all relatively simple but inexpensive and amazing value for money. This “Blaufränkisch” had one year in acacia (I could write positively and at length about ageing in local acacia). It has this lovely brightness and zip that makes it so versatile for picnics, parties and definitely restaurant/wine bar lists. I’ve got a few Syfany wines at home because there’s little to compare in terms of QPR, except perhaps from Portugal!

Utopia Patience Ice Cider 2022 (Bohemian Highlands, Czechia) – If the north of the Czech Republic has a name for beer, there are some lovely orchards too. Utopia make ciders of amazing quality but this is the jewel in their crown. Frozen apple juice (from untreated fruit) fermented with wild yeasts, one year in oak. Extremely concentrated, a perfect balance between fruit and acidity…imagine a fine German Auslese but made from apples. A firework display on the palate. At tastings this is a veritable DNS (Do Not Spit). Half bottles keep the price down and spread the joy.

Utopia Drinking Apple Vinegar (Bohemian Highlands, Czechia) – Utopia created a range of very fine vinegars where a cider base (aged itself for 12 months) is aged slowly in oak for twenty more months. It becomes vinegar by the traditional “Orléans” method (without heating). These are macerated with wild berries foraged from the forest. This one is apples, wild cherry and elderflower flavour. It is concentrated, though not thick, and is quite sharp yet the fruit presence makes it drinkable (though perhaps sipping, not glugging). For those who like a cider shot for health, this is perfect, although I used mine as a finish in cooking and also for dressings (I bought one last summer).

For further information speak to Jiri or Zainab at Basket Press Wines, via sales@basketpresswines.com .

Look out for a good selection of these producers at the Real Wine Fair in London in April. See whether our palates coincide. I shall be there.

Butlers Wine Cellar – The Evolving Nature of Wine Retail in Brighton

A lot of you read my “interview” with Feral Art & Vin in Bordeaux last month. I think I mentioned that it was the first in a short series on wine shops which rock my wine world, and for the next three retailers I’m staying in the UK. I want to write about some of the people who have sold me quite a bit of wine over the years, and who have made me want to buy more.

Why wine shops? Well, I do love browsing, for records and books as much as wine. I guess some people like to sit at a computer and order, whilst others like a more tactile shopping experience. I will say that almost every time I go into a wine, record or book shop something leaps off the shelf that I didn’t know I was going to buy when I went in. Not always good for the wallet, but nevertheless it’s worth it for the pleasure of discovery.

I do buy wine direct from importers, many of whom have online shops, but right now my particular circumstances make it difficult to wait for deliveries, and challenging to afford to order a case quantity. Hopefully that will have eased by summer when we finally get to move into our new place. But wine shops add a lot of value to the buying experience. They do a lot in their community (I’ll bet wine shops do more charitable stuff than most), and consumers get an opportunity to go to tastings or other events, where they not only try new wines but will meet fellow wine lovers.

More than anything, for me at least, being a regular customer in a wine shop means a chance to have a relationship with the staff. This can be especially beneficial if they can let you know when things are coming in, and even stick the odd bottle aside until you can make it in person. That doesn’t always work. One retailer, who shall remain nameless, put up a new batch of Jura wines, from a producer I’ve not tried, on Instagram one day after they despatched some bottles to me.

So, who are we covering this month? If you read my “Recent Wines” articles you will notice that Butlers Wine Cellar (they don’t use an apostrophe so I won’t) comes up with some frequency as a source. I probably buy a lot less from them now that I live so far away, but when we lived in Brighton I was often pleased they were on the other side of town (for bank balance reasons). I always argue that people are important, and Henry and Cassie are amazing human beings as well as being talented wine pros. Henry is pretty much a legend in Brighton, that’s no exaggeration.

Butlers was established in 1979 by Henry Butler’s father. He’d been involved in a restaurant in Brighton, but that was pretty challenging with a small baby. He got a job in London in the whisky industry but wine was his real passion, so he set up the Sussex Wine Appreciation Society, effectively a tasting club. Members wanted to buy the wines tasted so the family home became full of boxes. Henry said that one day a stack of them fell on his parents’ bed, and his mum said either stop or get a shop. The famous original Butlers shop on Queen’s Park Road came up and it had a cellar for all those cases, so the company and the name were born.

Some of the original wines were amazing. All so-called classic wines, mostly French, German and fortifieds, but many from pre-War (WWII) vintages and some even dating back into the 1800s. I recall my own first visits in the 1990s when we moved down to Brighton. It was before I’d discovered natural wines, and it was what seemed like an endless supply of well-aged classed growth Bordeaux which first grabbed me.

Around 2000 Henry’s parents separated and Henry bought his father out, taking over the business. From then on, the selection became much wider. Next was a second shop, opened around thirteen years ago (hardly feels like that long). I remember one Brighton wine seller was expanding and looking for new locations. I think that prompted Henry and his wife and business partner, Cassie Butler-Gould, to just go for it.

It turned out to be a good move because the new shop, in Kemp Town’s St Georges Road (just east of the city centre), is in a much better area for passing trade and for retail in general. The old shop was out on its own. When issues arose with the Queen’s Park store during the Covid lockdowns, it was just easy to make St George’s Road Butlers’ base. All the wine in one location, the one which saw the most customer footfall, though leaving premises they had occupied for forty years was a little traumatic.

Henry and Cassie at St George’s Road, Brighton Kemp Town

Butlers began as a retailer noted for Bordeaux above all else. If my memory is correct, I first saw their name in an advert they regularly placed in Decanter Magazine, so when we moved to Brighton it was on my list to visit. Gradually that changed. California somehow became a specialisation. Henry won a trade trip to California, which may have helped. It led to Henry meeting, and becoming close friends with, California specialist James Hocking. You will still find some rare Californian treats hidden away on the list, most being sold online to collectors and fans.

I can remember the likes of Peter Michael wines on the shelf when their importer was virtually rationing it. Henry mentions labels like Donelan, Somnium, Kistler, Moone Tsai and Onda. It’s well worth checking out their range, closer to forty lines than the 200 Californian cuvées they once stocked, but you can still get a bottle of Peter Michael’s stunning 2014 “Les Pavots” (which I remember buying back in its first vintage from Lay & Wheeler) if you have a spare £270. Or maybe an Ovid Hexameter 2013 for £450? Don’t worry, there is much to be had for £20-£40 a bottle. I’m more likely to buy Birichino these days.

There are perhaps three further areas where Butlers seem to have a genuine specialisation, and these are varied to say the least. English Wine, especially the sparkling variety, has been a long-time specialism, which is probably to be expected from a shop near so many great Sussex vineyards. Back in the day, Henry’s parents knew Peter and Christine Hall at Breaky Bottom, and Henry remembers visiting the farm when he was small. Back then it was still wine and pigs rather than sparkling wine and sheep. Henry and Cassie remain great friends with the Halls, and great supporters of their wines. Definitely a source for back vintages at a reasonable price. If it’s not there on the web site, do ask.

Butlers has worked with Ridgeview since the 1990s, also being friends with the Roberts family. They also got on with Dermot Sugrue right from the off. Having sold Wiston through Dermot’s era as Chief Winemaker, they are now championing the Sugrue South Downs wines that Dermot and Ana are making closer to Brighton. Not that these star cuvées need much championing. Henry and Cassie are now neighbours with Dermot and Ana.

Henry insists that to get a listing the wines must be both good, and good value. One new addition they particularly rate (and which I’ve not tried, and although I’ve spotted the label, I can’t find them in any of the four books on English wine I own) is Everflyht, a vineyard at the foot of Ditchling Beacon, the famous steep ascent towards the end of the London to Brighton cycle ride. Worth noting because they are less steeply priced than many of the newer English estates which seem to enter the market at above £50 more often than not these days. The Everflyht Brut is usually retailing for somewhere either side of £30.

Equally, both Henry and Cassie like working with producers they really get along with. In the same way that I have found their relationships with customers matter, so it goes for winemakers. It’s certainly true that Peter and Christine Hall, and Dermot Sugrue (I haven’t met his partner, Ana) are among the most fabulous wine people you could wish to meet.

Then comes Portugal. Butlers has consistently promoted Portugal so I asked why? Cassie says that Henry’s dad began selling Portuguese wine in the 1970s. I remember some veritable gems on the shelf in the 90s. It’s simply the amazing quality and value for money that attracted Henry and his father, and now they like nothing more than explaining the flavours to open-minded customers. It’s also the proliferation of small and “sustainable” producers which appeals.

“They are such food-friendly wines too” says Cassie, and I only refrain from mentioning some of the mouthwatering food matches she describes because I am going to have to start cooking myself pretty soon and my stomach is rumbling. Plus, Cassie’s dad, aunts and extended family live in Portugal now, so they visit more than anywhere else. Cassie says “we will always be a go-to place for Portuguese wines and we never stop seeking out new ones”.

The other area of specialisation is South Africa. Butlers has always excelled in their selection, but I must mention here the amazing Pieter Walser and his Blank Bottle Winery. Although Blank Bottle is imported by the excellent Swig agency, Henry and Cassie have a special relationship with Pieter. Cassie calls Blank Bottle her “Mastermind subject”. Cassie met him first and was very much taken with the wines, and indeed their labels.

Anyone who knows the whole Blank Bottle range (of which many are unrepeated one-offs) will know exactly what Cassie means about the labels, several of which Pieter farms out to his kids, who earn pocket money royalties per bottle sold. It just so happens that the wine inside the bottle matches expectations.

After a boozy lunch in London with a group of South African producers, Henry and Cassie proposed Pieter create some exclusive bottlings for Butlers, which he agreed to. For the next three vintages Butlers had their own bottles, labelled with the likes of Brighton Pier, plus nods to Henry and Cassie (the near legendary Gothus cuvée). The labels are all very apt, although they did have to get a machine gun removed from “It Is What It Is”.

Two of the exclusive Blank Bottle cuvées – It is What it is and Gothus (Pieter’s take on Cassie)

Here’s Cassie: “I can’t say enough good things about Pieter and his wines. I just wish the prices hadn’t gone up so much as they have become a much more premium range. That said, we will always have a range of these wines available. They are really excellent and Pieter is a total dude”! I’ll second that.

Butlers are special in that they are very much a community-based operation. They are very “Brighton”, meaning that in the most positive sense. Being Brighton’s oldest wine shop, and Henry’s amazing local reputation, has allowed them to become part of so much going on in the city, and they have raised more than £50,000 together for local charities, as well as assisting events which have raised many times more.

Their individual commitment to local issues comes via their involvement with Brighton Crew Club, a youth centre/project in a low-income area which provides a safe place for children, food banks and a community hub. They feed many children regularly. Henry is Chair and Cassie is a Trustee, but they are very hands-on with Crew Club.

Cassie says “having had a colourful childhood it has been very important to me to get involved with the voiceless, so I spend a lot of my time working with children and animals”.

Cassie is also an Ambassador for Raystede Centre for Animal Welfare, and is a passionate animal activist. Although she didn’t mention it, I can tell you that I’ve also seen the pics on social media which demonstrate just how much of Brighton’s wild fauna gets fed in their back garden, not to mention their pets, which now includes an adorable rescue dog and a cat which seems to like trying to steal whatever beverage Henry has poured for that particular evening. Cassie again: “I feel passionately about the treatment of animals and the direct link between animal and human abuse”.

Asking the pair what they are drinking at home at the moment, Henry complained he is always buying way too much. He says “I’m really enjoying the wines of Alto Adige from Terlaner and Nals Margreid. I’ve also been drinking a lot of good value Bourgogne Blancs and Aligoté”. For a treat, Henry also admits to often taking something from California home with him.

Saying this, Henry does admit that “at home I drink anything and everything, as is often pointed out to me”. I know what he means! Cassie has shifted from a vodka Dry Martini to Tequila and Margaritas. She’s also playing with new cocktail flavours and dabbling (like me when I can) in sake. With a Belgian mum, she also likes fruit beers, her really guilty pleasure being Fruli Strawberry (I have one in the fridge too, shhh!)

Tastings always feature in the Calendar, a recent very successful tasting being focussed on Piemonte (led by Michael Palij MW). Upcoming events include White Wines from Around the World (with Lenka Sedlakova MW) on 12 April, the Spring Italian Wine Festival at St Mary’s Church on 26 April, and a charity tasting for the Raystede Centre (mentioned above) on 21 June (all details at butlers-winecellar.co.uk ).

The success of tastings at Butlers proves how open-minded and keen Brighton people are to try new things, and of course with so many residents commuting to London there’s a healthy customer base able to afford the more expensive offerings alongside the great value wines which I feel they do so well.

As well as a blog and a podcast, they often have some highly entertaining material on Instagram, not least Henry’s Blind Tasting challenges. Henry is one of the best Blind Tasters you will ever meet, years of experience in quality…and probably quantity too.

I ended asking Henry and Cassie about what trading is like in the current economic climate. Always honest, they didn’t duck or fudge the issues. Costs have gone up and are still increasing, customers are cautious about discretionary spend on alcohol and “some wholesale accounts appear to be in a fragile position”, something every wine merchant in the UK would echo. “However, we dig in and continue to find great wines we want to share with customers, and our tastings are very well attended”.

That last comment doesn’t surprise me. Most independent wine retailers are people who have a passion for what they sell. It’s not a calling in which to make a fortune. They plough a lot back into their community, but that means they have a wonderful reputation, both as people and for what they sell. If their business is split between wholesale to bars and restaurants etc, internet and mail order sales, and retail customers visiting the shop, a whopping 40% of business is direct retail. I think Henry, Cassie and their diverse staff are just so nice to chat about wine with. They certainly deserve our support.

Butlers Wine Cellar

88 St George’s Road (in Kemp Town), Brighton BN2 1EE

Tel 01273 621638

Open Tues, Weds, Thurs 12pm – 6pm, Fri and Sat 12pm – 7pm, closed Monday.

Web Site – butlers-winecellar.co.uk

Recent Wines February 2024 (Part 2) #theglouthatbindsus

This second part revealing the most interesting wines we drank at home during February doesn’t range quite as far and wide as Part 1 (no Japanese wine this time), but there is a good spread mixing the familiar with the less familiar. This is by way of Moravia in the Czech Republic, the Peloponnese, Beaune, Burgenland, Jerez and Eastern Hungary. All good stuff at a range of prices, all worth trying, or in the case of the Beaune Grèves, worth a significant detour to beg, borrow or steal.

Miya 2022, Krásná Hora (Moravia, Czechia)

When I say “drank at home”, this is an exception, but we did take it to a popup dinner with free BYO, so as far as I’m concerned, that’s close enough. Especially so because I love this wine and I’d hate not to share it. I’ve written about the producer in an article about my trip to Moravia in 2022, so you can look that up if you want to find out more. This is a winery with a modern outlook which is keen to export, not surprisingly as they are mates with Milán Nestarec.

Working out of Starý Poddvorov in the south of the region, Marek Vybiral and his nephew, Ondřej Dubas really do operate the most modern artisan setup I have visited in Moravia, yet they do so in a rural viticultural idyll, vines sloping up a hill from the rear of the winery towards ancient oak woodland on the horizon. They have 13 hectares of vines planted on the “beautiful mountain” (as the winery name translates), and they also buy organic grapes from a further five hectares. They are currently converting to biodynamics, but they use no herbicides nor systemic agents.

The vines on this slope were mostly originally planted by Cistercian monks around 800 years ago, but it would be a stretch of the imagination to believe they are that old, and in fact the family mostly farm what we would call international varieties. Much of the vineyard does, however, date back to the Communist era, particularly the 1960s. The soils are all a mix of clay and limestone.

Miya is a Pétnat Rosé made from 100% Zweigelt, and is one of the “Faces” range of wines Krásná Hora makes. These wines bear a passing conceptual resemblance to Gut Oggau’s characters, though without a back story. Miya is the youngest “face”. The labels are pure fun and as well as Miya there are five other very different characters. What you get here is a simple, zippy, raspberry-fruited fizz from direct-pressed whole bunches. First fermentation is in stainless steel tank. A very small addition of sulphur is made. Although this is undoubtedly only a fun wine, simple yet pure and fruity, a wine like this can be just perfect.

We drank it with Sri Lankan food, with its own clean palate of flavours and Miya’s lightness went well. Although fruit-packed, the acidity, bubbles and a slightly funky finish seemed to do the trick. It’s up there at 12.5% abv, but the bottle nevertheless emptied far too quickly.

I loved the 2021. This 2022 is a slightly different shade of pink, and I would say it’s even better than the previous vintage. £21 from Basket Press Wines.

Antiphon 2022, Tetramythos Wines (Achaia, Peloponnese, Greece)

The Peloponnese produces some lovely wines, of which Nemea is perhaps the best known. This wine comes from further north in the peninsula, in the mountains of Achaia, though it is labelled as an IGP, not a wine of appellation. The UK importer of Tetramythos asked winemaker Panagiotis Papagiannopoulos to create a couple of exclusive wines in a low-intervention style made with organic grapes, and this is one of them.

It’s a three-variety blend, the first being that potentially great red grape of the Peloponnese, Agiorgitiko. It is blended with the dark, undoubtedly great, Mavrodaphne and the less well known Mavro Kalavrytino. Fermented in stainless steel and aged only five months, you get a fresh and fleshy bright wine with great fruit, even at 13.5% alcohol. It helps that the grapes are grown in very cool conditions at up to 900 masl, especially with cool, even cold, night temperatures, but achieve full ripeness over a long growing season.

We have plums, blackberry and blueberry fruit on nose and palate, the latter having a smoothness and richness with a smoky touch on the finish. Just for a moment I thought of Nebbiolo, especially Valtellina Nebbiolo. This is a genuine taste of Greece for only £19 from Cork & Cask in Edinburgh. It is quite widely available via importer Indigo Wines.

Beaune 1er Cru “Les Grèves” Blanc 2015, Le Grappin (Burgundy, France)

I have been a great fan of Andrew and Emma Nielsen’s Le Grappin wines from their first vintage, and even though I can no longer afford to buy them I still have some in my cellar. These have aged enough for me to confirm their quality within the Burgundy pantheon. Whilst it has taken the main “critics” a while longer to acknowledge this, I can at least take solace from spotting the talent a wee bit sooner, and I hope my early enthusiasm in print gave this lovely couple a tiny bit of a kick along the way to fame and stardom. I am delighted that Newcomer Wines has just taken on Le Grappin, an excellent match in so many ways.

Andrew and Emma profess to make fine wine from “under-appreciated vineyards”. Les Grèves is hardly under-appreciated among those who enjoy the particular qualities of Beaune, but only 1% of this 31-hectare Premier Cru site is actually planted to Chardonnay. It lies west of the town, with the twenty-or-so hectares of Les Teurons to the south and Les Bressandes (not to be confused with Corton-Bressandes) to the north. Grèves is noted for long-lived wines from Pinot Noir but the Chardonnay has been very well made in the past, if I recall, by Jadot. I know their Beaune wines very well, having once been a strong advocate for their Clos des Ursules, which I miss very much. I don’t know who owns the vines used by Le Grappin for this cuvée?

Six barrels were made of Le Grappin Grèves Blanc in the excellent 2015 vintage. The vines in a single plot were 45 years old at the time. Harvesting was obviously by hand, and the grapes underwent a very gentle crush and press. The juice was settled overnight and then went into 400-litre barrels with the gross lees to ferment (with native yeasts). Ageing was over ten months during which time there was no lees stirring or other manipulation of the wine.

The result is a classic Beaune Chardonnay with great salinity, rounded plumpish fruit showing a fine opulence, genuine depth and a little mineral texture on the palate. This is an all-round triumph, and it is drinking beautifully. I wish I had more but I believe this is my last ’15 white from Andrew and Emma. It must have been in one of their excellent mixed packs bought en primeur/pre-release. The current 2020 vintage on the market retails for around £57, purchased direct from Le Grappin, but their Beaune Grèves can reach up to £80 from some sources.

Rét 2022, Koppitsch (Burgenland, Austria)

This is the latest vintage of Alex and Maria’s low intervention red wine from former pasture/grazing land sloping down to the Neusiedlersee near Neusiedl am See. Rét means meadow in the former Hungarian dialect once spoken here, and not “red” as some people assume. The soils are well-drained gravels and the vines are relatively protected by the winds which whip over the Pannonian Plain from Hungary, though it is windy enough to keep the vines relatively free from disease. This assists the family no end in making their low intervention, natural wines. The shallow lake’s potential for humidity is evidence by the botrytis-affected cuvées made down the eastern shore of the lake at Illmitz, and down the western side at Rust.

The grape blend here is mostly Zweigelt (c. 80%), with 20% St Laurent. It is a light wine, just 10% abv, with a fun label. Zippy, fruity, quite funky with red cherry and blackcurrant fruit on the nose, which combine with apple-fresh acidity on the palate.

The two varieties are vinified separately, fermented on skins and blended just before bottling, after six month’s ageing. You may be able to tell that this has zero or little added sulphur, so it does have a slightly feral nature. So long as you like a bit of funkiness you will have your thirst quenched.

Recommended for spring or summer picnics, it’s a great outdoors red, neither heavy nor remotely ponderous. It’s a lovely, fresh, biodynamic natural wine from an equally lovely family. £24 from Cork & Cask (Edinburgh), imported by Roland Wines.

Fino En Rama Saca Primavera 2023, Fernando de Castilla (Jerez, Spain)

Réy Fernando de Castilla is one of the most highly regarded producers in Jérez, best known for their great aged Sherries in the “Antique” range. They have a bodega right in the centre of Jérez on the Calle Jardinillo. This firm is an exemplary small producer in every sense. Founder, Fernando Andrada-Vanderwilde descended from a family which had been associated with winemaking for two hundred years, when he started the firm in the 1960s. Emphasis was initially on Brandy, but the firm was sold in 1999 and is now run by Norwegian, Jan Pettersen, for a group of investors. Swift expansion into making more Sherries followed.

The En Rama style, translating as “from the vine”, is a relatively new offering from this bodega (first released in 2013). The wine here is taken directly from the cask without fining and filtration (I think in truth there is a minimal filtration for most en rama wines, which the marketing of such wines usually fails to detail, required for stability). Those processes when used on classic bottlings may stabilise the wine, and make it look clear and bright to the consumer, but they undoubtedly strip out flavour as well. En Ramas usually taste fresher than any other style, but many commentators assert that they have to be drunk very young (even younger than Finos in general).

The keen-eyed reader will notice that this bottle isn’t especially young, being drawn from cask in spring 2023. By the time these wines get to market in the UK some time has passed, and this was, to be fair, a Christmas present, saved for a bit of warmth and sunshine and an appropriately Spanish dish with which to serve it.

Fernando de Castilla’s en rama is slightly unusual in that it is a blend of their Classic Fino and their Antique Fino, both aged under flor of course, and bottled at between four and five years old. They generally use one butt of each wine, now only bottling a spring edition. This gives the wine almost two distinct elements, a youthful freshness and a deeper intensity as well, from the Antique Fino element.

We have a colour which is a little darker than many Finos, the Antique element again at play. Of course, one might worry that the colour is down to age and a less aggressive filtration, but the bouquet puts your mind at rest. It is both floral and saline, lovely and fresh, though hinting at some complexity. The palate shows a remarkable lightness for a wine fortified to 15% abv. Yet beneath this is great depth, more perhaps than I’ve tasted in any other en rama Sherry. The palate is nutty and salty too, both preceded by dried fruit of all things. There is also a chalky terroir element, which both grounds and accentuates the Palomino’s acid structure as well. It is described as “vegan”.

I happen to know that my brother-in-law purchased this from The Solent Cellar (£22), naturally now sold out. There is availability elsewhere but you could always wait for the Saca de Primavera 2024. Either way, highly recommended.

Eastern Accents 2020, Annamária Réka-Koncz (Barabás, Eastern Hungary)

I won’t introduce Annamária because I drink a lot of her wines and there’s plenty of information about her on my site, though this appears to be my first “ARK” of 2024. Her vines are mostly around Barabás, right on Hungary’s eastern border with Ukraine. On the very day I opened this I saw news of the new vintage due to arrive in the UK. Hopefully this will be in time for me to taste some in Edinburgh in exactly one week’s time.

Eastern Accents is old Vine Harslevelű blended with about one third Királyleányka (a grape variety I for some reason cannot learn how to spell without checking, but it is a local synonym for Romania’s Feteascà Regală). The fruit sees a five-day maceration followed by a whole berry carbonic fermentation in tank. Just 2,028 bottles of the 2020 were made.

I last drank this vintage in August 2022 and since then I’d say that an already impressive wine has blossomed. The texture has softened somewhat. The wine is plumper, rounder, but it retains a nice acid freshness and cleanness. The plump fruit reminds me of ripe nectarine, which makes it very satisfying to sip on its own, but it also has a savoury edge so it goes just as well with food.

These wines disappear very quickly once they land in the UK, certainly if you buy direct from the importer, Basket Press Wines. That said, you can sometimes find the odd bottle on a retail shelf where the shop’s customers don’t read Wideworldofwine, so don’t know what they are missing.

Recent Wines February 2024 (Part 1) #theglouthatbindsus

February seemed easier to get through this year, probably because our Lothian weather was strangely less wet and damp than that experienced in much of England, that following an unusually wet January. With no Dry January statement being made in our house, drinking (all of these wines accompanied meals) continued as usual, no binging and no famine. So, we have twelve wines, six of them here in Part 1.

We kick off with a wine from Japan, which I would like to be a less rare occurrence than it is in my drinking activities, few merchants going beyond an obvious Grace Koshu on their lists, even for the most adventurous…yet. Normal service is resumed with an Alsace Sylvaner before the usual eclectic mix of a Dão from Portugal, an unusual crossing from Czechia, a stunning wine from one of the smaller Canary Islands, La Palma, and a grand Australian Shiraz harking back to a former life.

Nagano Furusato Cabernet Sauvignon « Grande Polaire » 2017, Sapporo Breweries (Nagano, Japan)

There was a discussion on X/Twitter this week about wine scores, as crops up from time to time. I suggested that uninflated scores do have a place for many consumers, but some wines do defy scoring. This is surely one. I don’t need a score to validate my desire to try the first red wine I’ve drunk from Japan for several years. You just don’t see them.

Some readers will know I’ve visited Japan quite a few times. It’s a fascinating country, which I always enjoy very much, but I will say that I especially enjoyed a trip to the vineyards of Nagano (written about elsewhere on this site), which can very easily be combined with a trip to see the famous snow monkeys and to venture up into the Japan Alps, all of which we did (and more…add in a Hokusai museum, a couple of very special temples, among many, some cycling and some great food) from a ryokan base in Yudanaka Onsen. Whoever suggested on Google that apart from the hot springs (onsens) there isn’t a lot to do in and around Yudanaka obviously doesn’t use buses and trains in Japan. I digress…

This wine isn’t made by some artisan grower in the hills above Nagano, but by one of Japan’s best-known breweries, a large corporation to be sure. Don’t let that fool you, they are making a serious contribution to the Japanese wine revolution, which people like Jamie Goode and Anthony Rose are keeping an eye on. For readers who are interested, a lot is happening in Japan and at an artisan level it is far more dynamic (in my opinion) than the more often covered China.

I can thank Anthony Rose for some of the facts here, via his Sake and the Wines of Japan (Infinite Ideas Classic Wine Library, 2018), a book which I recommend very highly. The Grande Polaire label was first established in 2003, and one of the vineyards the winery owns is Furusato in Nagano Prefecture. It lies in the Chikumagawa Valley, at around 340 masl, being the smallest they run at 3-ha. Grande Polaire’s winemaker, Masayoshi Kudo, trained at UC Davis in California.

The wine’s profile is pretty much classic Cabernet Sauvignon, with some dark, and some red, fruits. Vanilla suggests oak of some kind for ageing. The tannins are ripe but at this stage perhaps not completely integrated. It comes together nicely though. It’s not at all heavy (13% abv), tasting pretty lively, assisted no doubt by the refreshingly bright fruit acids. Apparently 2017 was a year with very low temperatures through much of the growing season, but the sun shone at the end of the season to ripen the grapes.

This wine, which I think won a Bronze Medal at the IWSC in 2018, would have retailed for only £17, although it appears sadly not to be available any longer. I mean, who wouldn’t want to try a decent red wine from Japan for under £20?

Sylvaner “Rutscherle” 2022, Vincent Stoeffler (Alsace, France)

This Sylvaner comes from old vines cultivated on a hillside facing the Grand Cru Kirchberg, between Mittelbergheim and Barr. The soil structure is mostly marls or chalk. The Stoeffler domaine consists 16-ha of vines, of which 13-ha are close to Barr, Mittelbergheim and Heiligenstein, from which in typical Alsace style they make around forty cuvées. The domaine is moving towards a zero additives approach with eleven bottlings currently seeing zero added sulphur, but others can be termed natural wines, with indigenous yeasts for fermentation, no syntheitic vineyard applications and low intervention in the winery. The domaine has been certified organic for 24 years.

“Rutscherle” is part of the zero-sulphur “Nature” range. Vinified and aged on lees (unfined and unfiltered), this is a very dry Sylvaner with a bouquet of white flowers and fresh citrus. The palate is more herbal, acidity being relatively high (although I see the domaine suggests ageing this for two-to-five years). That said, those acids are quite invigorating. I’d describe it as fresh and mineral right now without enormous complexity, but with the potential to develop in line with their web site’s recommendation. Or, for acid hounds, drink now.

I think this came from Spry Wines in Edinburgh, priced at around £18.

Dão 2018, Álvaro Castro (Dão, Portugal)

When I first got interested in wine, which was a very long time ago, Dão was perhaps one of the most commonly seen Portuguese wines in Britain. Often, we saw wines with quite a bit of bottle age, made by larger companies, but as seems to have always been the case with Portuguese wine, sold fairly cheaply. Those wines were rarely ready to challenge the modern winemaking emerging from the rest of Europe, and equally, more often than not, failed to express the potential of Dão’s old-vine autochthonous grape varieties. Dão lies inland from that other well known red wine region, Bairrada, between Porto and Lisbon.

Two people have changed our perceptions of the region. One is the supremely talented António Madeira and the other is his older mentor, Álvaro Castro. Castro’s mission has been to shout to the world about Dão’s old vine stock, made up of a number of indigenous varieties. Castro began winemaking in 1989. He has been ably assisted by his daughter, Maria, for the past twenty-or-so years and together they have taken their Quinta da Pellada, and Quinta de Saes towards non-intervention viticulture and winemaking. But if you think of Castro as some sort of peasant farmer, he isn’t. He’s a former civil engineer who has collaborated with, among others, Dirk Niepoort.

The wine we have here is one of the entry level wines, most of which come from Saes. There is a combination here of the traditional and the modern. The blend is Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roríz (Aragonês in Spain) and Jaen (more famous further north, in Spain, as Mencia), all off granite at around 500 masl. Fermented in stainless steel (the modern bit) with yeasts from a pied de cuve, it sees eighteen months ageing, which is nothing compared to the Dão wines of the past, in a mix of old and new French oak.

You get vibrant fruits of the forest, both as part of the bouquet and on the palate. In fact, the nose is very aromatic and the fruit on the palate is beautifully concentrated. Fully organic fruit is used. Imported by Indigo Wines, this was purchased from Cork & Cask in Edinburgh, but is widely available. At £17 it really was a bargain. As you see, I’m trying to be true to my word to drink more Portuguese wines.

Hibernal 2021, Petr Kočařík (Moravia, Czechia).

If you just read this blog, you’d be forgiven for thinking Moravia was only peopled by artisan natural winemakers. There is actually a big commercial wine industry in Moravia, and Čejkovice is one of Moravia’s largest wine villages. Thankfully this producer turns out very different fare to most of the commercial operations in and around the district.

Petr Kočařík started out with what he calls a “backyard vineyard”, which he got from his parents as a wedding gift in 1997 (nice if you can get it!). Today he still only farms two hectares but this allows him to apply a natural wine philosophy, avoiding herbicides etc. He also uses minimum intervention in the winery, but does allow some skin contact for most wines, before ageing his white wines on lees in old barrels. The regime continues with no fining/filtration and the addition of the minimum amount of sulphur felt necessary for each cuvée. In all, Petr makes between 7,000 and 10,000 bottles per year. He was one of the early signatories to the Moravian Authentist natural wine Charter.

Hibernal is a crossing of the hybrid variety, Seibel 7055 with Riesling, created in 1944 at Germany’s Giesenheim Institute. To me, the variety in this instance seems to combine qualities of Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Riesling. The bouquet wafts citrus pink grapefruit aromas, whilst the palate has a little of the steeliness of Riesling with a little honeyed weight, like Chardonnay. A touch of lychee also comes in from somewhere. Its body is fullish (alcohol is up at 14.5%), but it seems to combine freshness and some complexity.

This is very good indeed. It will surprise many who give it a go. I’d not drunk this since my Brighton days and I will certainly buy it again. £30 at Basket Press Wines.

Listán Negro “Las Rosas” 2018, Victoria Torres Pecis (La Palma, Canary Is, Spain)

For me, VTP is one of the best winemakers on any of the Canary Islands. She is one of the few winemakers on the small outlier of La Palma, a solitary volcanic cone which remains very much active, as we saw from the threatening lava flows during the eruption of Cumbre Vieja in December 2021. It was the first eruption here in fifty years and at 85 days, was the longest here on record. Destroying 3,000 buildings and cutting the coastal highway, it was estimated to have caused damage totalling 843 million Euros.

The volcano is, however, the reason for both the island’s fertility, and for the quality potential for its wines, classic volcanic wines from volcanic ash soils. Thankfully, Victoria makes wine out of her family’s old bodega at Fuencalliente (Bodega Matias I Torres) on the southern tip of La Palma, which was unaffected by the lava flows, but work on the vines here is always difficult due to the terrain.

Las Rosas comes from three plots of 80-year-old vines at between 550 to 650 masl. They are all “pie franco”, or ungrafted, on pre-phylloxera roots. They are also, as Victoria says, “rain fed”, but they are as much as possible protected from the buffeting westerly winds which cool the island at these altitudes.

This is a wine of great character, although those mere words underplay the originality (in several respects) of what we have in the glass before us. Fermented in concrete with just 2,346 bottles made in 2018, we have notes ranging from red cherry to coal, with plenty in between. Sometimes it’s pointless trying to describe such an enigmatic wine. On the one hand I suspect a collector of Château Lafite wouldn’t necessarily appreciate it, but it is subtle, translucent, shimmering, yet grounded with an earthiness tied to terroir. You can see I love these wines! Sadly, my last as well.

It is so often the case that a smaller importer gets to find stars overlooked by the bigger names. This is very much the case here, as Victoria’s wines are imported by Modal Wines, who have just hosted a dinner with Victoria at Kiln in London, to coincide with the Viñateros Spanish wine tasting, both of which I’d have sorely liked to go to. If you don’t explore these small importers, you really are missing out, but remember that such wines have a habit of appearing for only a short window. Equally, the word is finally spreading about Victoria Torres Pecis.

Warner Vineyard Shiraz 2006, Giaconda (Victoria, Australia)

This is approximately #105 in the series “drinking the family silver”. Currently paying rent and two lots of Council Tax, I’m buying wine at less than a quarter of what we are drinking, and I think I’ve drunk two-thirds of the wine we brought up to Scotland. Maybe it’s a good thing. I know I have too much of a tendency to stick wine away, to occasionally look longingly at the bottle, but to put off drinking it.

If I bought wine by the case, it would be less of a problem, but I crave variety and so I’d rather have 170 different bottles that fourteen cases which all contain the same thing. What on earth would I write about?

Giaconda is in Beechworth, a region in the hills of Northeastern Victoria. It is crammed with top winemakers who, says Max Allen (The Future Makers, Hardie Grant, 2010) “have made it known they’re out to make the best wine in Australia. Some already are”. Beechworth has several things going for it. It’s cool (the weather, but perhaps some of the people as well). It’s actually a cool region surrounded by hot regions too (Milawa, Rutherglen). The hills here provide multi-aspect planting opportunities, all on a complex blend of granite, clay, sandstone, and sandy loam. Above all, in an Aussie context these vineyards are marginal.

Of those clever winemakers, I would list Giaconda, Castagna and Sorrenberg among my favourites, top-ten for sure, in all Australia. Not bad for one small region with around 130-hectares of vines (not dissimilar to the Rhône’s Hermitage).

Rick Kinzbrunner established Giaconda in 1982, after studying at UC Davis, followed by stints which included working for various top Californian estates, Moueix in Bordeaux, and then Brown Brothers in nearby Milawa. He has around 4-ha of estate vineyards at Giaconda (for Chardonnay, Roussanne, Shiraz and Pinot Noir plus a little (but growing in coverage) Nebbiolo at Red Hill near the town). Rick’s son, Nathan, has been on board full-time since the 2007 vintage, working with Rick’s nephew, Peter Graham.

Warner Shiraz is an exceptional wine, but in my experience it needs ageing. With a bouquet mixing mulberries with good old Shiraz bacon and a palate of spiced plums, this is no longer tannic as such, yet it does retain structure. For a wine labelled with 14% alcohol, it is exceptionally balanced. When I say it needs ageing, well this was my last of three bottles, the previous bottle having been drunk quite a few years ago at a London lunch. It is by far the best of the three, and on the day this was exceptional. It certainly warranted the family silver epithet.

My bottles came from Berry Brothers, in fact from their factory outlet near Basingstoke, some time in the late 2000s, perhaps 2010 at a guess. I can’t recall what I paid? Although Giaconda appears more famous for its Warner Vineyard Chardonnay, I think you’ll have to pay upwards of £70 a bottle for a current release of this Shiraz (still with Berry Brothers). If you can find one of the varietal Roussannes grab it. Arguably they make the finest outside of the Rhône Valley. I haven’t seen their Nebbiolo, though I suspect it would be priced beyond me now. But Australian Nebbiolo can be a dark horse if one can overcome a prejudice for only Piemontese examples. The Chardonnay may be one of not only Australia’s best, on the right day, the World’s.

Rewilding Bordeaux – Feral Art & Vin Three Years On (Natural Wine in that Bastion of Conservative Taste)

Back in March 2021 Russell Faulkner and his wife, Sema, opened Feral Art & Vin in the heart of the old city of Bordeaux. To open a shop selling natural wines, alongside art exhibitions, and indeed to stock around 50% of their wines from outside of France, was a very brave move back then. As lots of people have been talking about the state of the wine trade and the market for wine in the UK right now, I thought it would be a good time to catch up with Russell again to ask him how his venture has worked out.

I explained back in that 2021 article that I knew Russell back in the days when we both used to drink more, shall I say, classical wines. We were part of a privileged group of friends who were lucky enough to enjoy a very generous discount along with free BYO at the restaurants owned by Nigel Platts-Martin, including a monthly themed lunch at The Ledbury. Russell then went to work overseas but we kept vaguely in touch, but more so since he returned to Europe, choosing France rather than the UK for his and his wife’s business venture.

Russell and Sema

I began by asking Russell how a lover of the classic wines of France and Germany became an advocate for natural wines? Russell replied that he’d always liked wines with a more “natural set of clothes”. Many of the wines we drank back in the 2000s onwards, to be fair, came from smaller family producers who took care of their land, and didn’t mess around an awful lot in the winery.

It’s also true, because it is something we shared, that Russell and Sema got interested in Grower Champagnes early on. I think it was Russell who first got me interested in both Lilbert and Pierre Péters, producers whose bottles I remember buying from The Sampler when it first opened in Islington, before later visits to the region. Grower Champagne has been a way into natural wine for many people I know, such was the state of the Champagne “industry” as a whole twenty years ago.

Like me, Russell isn’t a fundamentalist so there are no rules about what can and what can’t be drunk. To do so is to miss out on a lot of great wine, as he rightly says. The big shift for Russell and Sema has been a greater focus on new producers, whether that be from Burgundy or Burgenland. Being open-minded is the key he says, with which I would obviously concur. He sees a lot of new wines which are not really exported (which is why a careful perusal of his shelves and web site are always worth your time).

Why a specialist natural wine shop, and in Bordeaux of all places? “Well, it was a bit of an accident. We arrived in France (nipped in pre-Brexit) with no plans. Originally, we wanted to operate a mixed space with a café…but a restaurant or bar wasn’t really compatible with our family life at the time (with young children), so a small shop with a single wall of around a hundred references allows the other walls to be used as gallery space, combining two of our passions”.

I suggested that Bordeaux appears pretty conservative when it comes to wine, even arrogant and parochial. Is this broadly true? Russell says it all depends on who you talk to and where you go. Bordeaux has more restaurants per capita than anywhere else in France, so there are many boring wine lists containing average wines with questionable farming practices. He suggests the main change came with the arrival of the fast trains from Paris seven-to-eight years ago. With it simultaneously came a new breed of restaurateurs and bar owners, mostly outsiders, and more willing to experiment with new ideas. There were always a few experimenters but far more now.

The big question for many of us would be how natural wine goes down in the city? As Russell says, “well, it’s not Berlin, Paris or Copenhagen but I’d say there’s a growing interest, albeit largely focussed on France”. Linked to the influx from outside of Bordeaux there are plenty of chefs and sommeliers who like to experiment with foreign wines. Sales of German wines are way higher now than in the early days of Feral.

“When we applied for our Licence to import wines directly the Customs helpline seemed genuinely baffled why anyone would want to import non-French wines and our next-door neighbour, who worked for a big Bordeaux negociant, claimed he wasn’t aware that Germany made wine…I think he was only half joking”.

This does rather resonate with me. We have wine loving friends in Paris, who have a fine cellar in their old apartment building, well-stocked with Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne (almost exclusively loyal to just one marque because of a family connection). They used to be aware of only Vin Jaune as a wine made in The Jura, and may not have ever tried it. English Sparkling Wine was a bit of a joke to them until I took some over eight or nine years ago.

Of course, you can find foreign wine in Bordeaux, but Russell jokes that it has to be Italian and also (with the occasional standout exception, see restaurants below) start with a “B”.

Asking about the type of customers Feral gets, Russell thinks many regulars are linked to the wine or food trades. He says they have a few regulars who work at quite classical Bordeaux Châteaux, a couple right at the top of the 1855 Classification. But by far the single best way to get new customers, including those from abroad, has been the Raisin natural wine app. I assume most of my readers use it?

Initially Russell wasn’t keen to sell online, saying “It’s very impersonal” (though he does have a few overseas customers he talks with regularly), and there are some “Amazons of natural wine” out there with whom it’s impossible to compete both on range and price. But after feeling they had to go down the online route it now works out at perhaps 50:50 online and in-store. One thing they’ve found is that many natural wine producers value bricks and mortar and some give preferential allocations to real shops. A couple even request that they don’t sell their wines online, which Russell and Sema naturally respect. I’ve heard of this myself, it being far from uncommon.

It would be wholly wrong to forget the art, because that isn’t just a sideline. With a small but rotating selection of wines on one long wall this allows plenty of wall space to be used for exhibitions. Each can last between one month and three, with longer exhibitions in the holidays. Sometimes they will do a fundraiser event (eg Ukraine), and a student expo is coming up where young local talent will be able to sell their works with zero commission.

There is always a vernissage (opening evening) where some natural wine gets poured. It’s usually something not too “feral” with a funkier option under the bar for anyone keen to try it. It’s a good way to get crossover trade. Once a month the artists being shown do an “apero and paint” event, where people can come and paint/make something in that artist’s style and drink some wine at the same time. “We usually charge €35-40 so it’s pretty good value”.

With transport costs, Customs Duty and paperwork making wine all of a sudden so much more expensive in the UK, how do you find things work for Feral, I wondered? The advantage Feral has (aside from French wine duties being a very different ball game) is that “in having an import licence, most wines can, except in a small number of cases, be imported direct”. It cuts out the middle man completely. The downside is Spain, where an exclusive importer brings in a few wines Russell would love to stock but they charge almost the Spanish retail price for them, so he won’t list them.

As for Germany, Russell makes a trip to the Mosel (always a passion) two-to-three times a year, but sadly he says “Baden is that little bit too far”. With regions like Burgundy and Champagne (Feral is always hot on new Growers, from both) “we can also just drive and fill up the car”. But it takes time, so in person trips and visits are usually limited to Jura, Burgundy, Champagne and Mosel.

Interestingly, because it’s the same for us here in the UK, Russell says that the challenge is getting an allocation. “New producers often become cult before they bottle their first vintage in the Insta age and the big overseas importers all have someone working for them on the ground, but customer recommendations are great, and whilst cult is cult, there’s a lot of great wine to go around”.

As I know this man has his finger very much on the natural wine pulse (judging by the stock he puts up on Instagram), I naturally had to ask Russell which up-and-coming producers he’s particularly enjoying, and what outstanding bottles he’s had, more generally, over the past year?

“New finds include Domaine La Mutine in Vézélay, Jintaro Yura in Alsace, Si Tu Sais in Burgundy and Tailleurs Cueilleurs in Bugey…We had a few great bottles in Spain over New Year, with Overnoy Vieux Savagnin 1998 probably the most amazing”.

New Year stars at Russell’s secret location in Northern Spain

The next obvious question is about what is “happening” right now. I always highlight natural wine in Alsace, once-derided varieties made by young growers in Germany, Czech wine, Portugal and Deutschschweiz. Russell identifies “the New Germany”, especially Spätburgunder (Wasenhaus, Lassak, Makalie, Enderle & Moll, Jonas Dostert), along with “new wave” Burgundy (Les Horées, Dandelion, Wolber, Didon, Mutine, Noé). He calls some of those a little mainstream now, though at least half of them won’t be found in Britain.

Si Tu Sais, Domaine Didon, La Mutine

I’m always noticing Feral stocking Grower Champagne I’ve never come across (usually with bright, modern, labels). I got Petit Clergeot (north of Les Riceys), Tom Gauditiabois (at Chezy-sur-Marne), La Rogerie (Flavigny, east of Avize), and Salima & Alain Cordeuil (Côte des Bars, and available, at a price, from Newcomer Wines in the UK) as Feral recommendations.

Salima & Alain Cordeuil

I asked Russell what it’s like living in Bordeaux? “We like it a lot. It’s a good size, not too big nor too small, and a great place to bring up children, and very close to the beaches and mountains. We cycle a lot and there are long bike routes to the sea, and towards Saint-Emilion. There are enough restaurants to keep things varied. Apparently, there are some big châteaux you can go and visit too”.

For visitors, what are your favourite spots for dining?

“I think by far my favourite is Au Bistro near Capucins Market, an unpretentious classical bistro with a daily changing menu. Soif is a great spot with a wonderful wine list. Resources, and its new sibling, Vivant has a Michelin Star but they are very laid back, with good lists too. Tentatzione is a One-Star Italian with one of the greatest Italian lists in France. There are other hidden spots to get a cheap bottle of Rayas or DRC…come into the shop and I’ll tell you where to go.”

Feral Art & Vin is at

22 rue Buhan, 33000 Bordeaux

Opening hours are 2pm – 6.30pm Monday to Saturday and 10.30am – 1pm Sundays.

NB Closed 22 February to 3 March for anyone planning an imminent visit!

Web site – www.feralartetvin.com

Instagram – feralartetvin

Delivery throughout Europe. Not sure that includes the UK any more, sadly.

Feral is somewhere to find an eclectic and exciting range of natural wines, and if you do visit, I’d suggest Russell or Sema be allowed to point you towards wines you’ve not tried. They may well be the kind of wines which will cost a lot more in a year’s time. Especially if they appear some time here in the UK.

Recent Wines January 2024 (Part 2) #theglouthatbindsus

My wet January continues here in Part 2 with another varied selection of wines, this time coming from Beaujolais, Slovenia’s Goriška Brda, Piemonte, South Africa’s Western Cape, Devon in England and last but not least, Champagne. None of these wines might seem like the peak of their country’s, or region’s, achievements to a more narrow-minded wine lover, but I am minded of a comment made by Robert Macfarlane in his foreword to Nan Shepherd’s “The Living Mountain”. He points out that “to aim for the highest point is not the only way to climb a mountain”. I think this is a good metaphor for learning deeply about wine.

Macfarlane also comments that “most works of mountaineering literature have been written by men”. I think that is interesting too because this was the same in wine for a very long time. Now, women are finding a voice, more and more. I wonder how many different views of wine we are getting now? Certainly, many of these writers are not obsessed only with striking out for the peaks. There’s so much more to discover in the valleys and up on the plateau. As I search for real value this year, these thoughts seem apt. But please excuse my digression. It’s time for some wines.

Fleurie 2018 Clos de la Roilette, Domaine Coudert (Beaujolais, France)

The Gamay grape has been, perhaps, one of the most misunderstood through most of my life in wine. There have been those who have loved it, and if you get the chance try to find an old copy of Arlott on Wine (Fontana Press, 1987, I see copies online for just £3.50). Arlott may be more famous as a cricket commentator but his passion for Gamay was famous.

However, I think Gamay was always seen as a fun grape making fruity wines to supp sooner rather than later. This was so even before industrial Beaujolais Nouveau did for the region’s reputation what 1970s Liebfraumilch did for German wine. Nowadays we know different, especially when it comes to the potential quality of the Crus, and Fleurie (along with Morgon) seems to have gained some sort of crown among them.

This particular Fleurie comes from grapes grown on the border with Moulin-à-Vent, which is where the Clos’s owners felt it should have been placed back in the mid-1920s when the boundaries were drawn. It’s the reason why “Fleurie” appears in pretty small letters on the label. The soils, manganese and clay, impart a greater structure to the wine than is common among Fleuries. We are also blessed with old vines, which with Gamay makes quite a difference.

In the glass we have something which is quite dark in colour for Gamay, something akin to the colour of blackcurrant juice. You would be forgiven (at least by me) for thinking this was Pinot Noir, although it is not nearly as similar to a mature Pinot as the 2011 Foillard Côte du Py I wrote about in my Wines of the Year 2023 Review. The fruit spectrum has the expected cherry, if perhaps darker cherry, plus some lovely plum notes.

To sum up simply, it’s a lovely wine. The retailer suggests (re the 2022 vintage) that the specific soils here help make a Fleurie that ages well, and to me the wine has retained some youthful vibrancy along with a little structure, even at approaching six years old. This cost me £14, a ridiculous bargain at the time. The 2022 can now be had for £25 from The Solent Cellar, which for good Fleurie is still almost a bargain.

Sivi 2022, Kmetija Štekar (Goriška Brda, Slovenia)

When I tasted some of the new vintages from Basket Press Wines in Edinburgh late last year, this was one of the wines which seemed to shout out, not only to me but to my wife, who accompanied me. The part of this producer’s range which I call the “monkey labels” have never quite stood out in previous tastings, perhaps because they have, like their packaging, a subtlety which can be drowned out by bigger wines. Not here.

Janko and Tamara Stekar have 5 hectares of vines in what is effectively a continuation over the border from Italy’s famous Collio. Winemaking here is often as obsessively quality-orientated as it is over in Italy. Sivi is 100% Pinot Grigio, made with the kind of light skin contact the Italians call ramato. Skin contact lasted 12 days during fermentation. Ageing was on the lees but it was bottled after just six months.

We have a natural wine made without any added sulphur. There are fresh acids backed up with really tasty fruit, a mix of pear and something more tropical (orange and mango, maybe). There’s a bit of spice, but blink and you might miss it. The 12% alcohol seems very well judged for balance. The texture from skins and lees ageing is present but not high in the mix, to use a music metaphor. Fun and delicious. We loved it at home in winter, but a summer picnic would be perfect. A reminder to buy more and broaden my knowledge of this producer.

Like Slovakia, Czechia, Croatia and Bulgaria, etc, Slovenia is claiming its place in our wine world. I find it fascinating how in so many countries formerly under collectivised farming there are now emerging artisan wine industries (industry being perhaps not quite the right word) which are giving us some of the most exciting bottles currently available to explore. It really is the time to get out there and try these wines before, like the French, Italian and German wines we love, the prices start to go up and, as is happening with many wines we used to import (Jura being a classic example), other markets become more attractive to the producers.

£27 from Basket Press Wines and in stock.

Roero DOCG 2020, Giovanni Almondo (Piemonte, Italy)

If Barolo and Barbaresco are running away from your budget, then Roero, in the hills north of Alba, is often the place to head. Of all the outlying sub-regions for Nebbiolo in Piemonte, it can so often throw out the best wines, both in terms of value and thrill factor. Those importers who truly know their Barolo have known this for a decade or more.

Roero, of course, can be as expensive as Barolo from some sources, but it is also a DOCG where there is so much value, usually found among small and medium-sized family estates, such as Giovanni Almondo at Montà d’Alba, towards Roero’s northern border.

We have 70-year-old vines here from three sites off soil described as 70% sand and 30% limestone and clay, all at around 320 masl with a southern exposure. The fermentation took place over eighteen days on skins and ageing followed in large Slavonian oak over a further year-and-a-half. The result is a pale-ish red wine with a lovely, gentle bouquet of red berries, violets and liquorice (is that my nasal take on tar and roses?). The palate has a softness too, with smooth cherries, vibrant red fruits and a little grip to finish.

This is perhaps a youngish wine, but you can’t always keep Nebbiolo for decades. It’s nice to have one to drink at just a few years old. I did let it breath well, and although the importer gives a drinking window of “2024 (young) to 2035” I don’t think many would be too disappointed opening it now, as I did. But do choose a decently large glass to get some air in.

This was a satisfying £17 from Smith & Gertrude in Portobello, but it is imported by Lay & Wheeler. Equally satisfying is that you get a pretty nice wine to accompany your roast dinner for less money than many a disappointing supermarket Barolo. Not complex, but it certainly passes the “would you buy it again?” test.

Rocking Horse Cape White Blend 2021, Thorne & Daughters (Western Cape, South Africa)

John and Tasha Seccombe founded their winery in 2012, after John had studied at England’s Plumpton College. This white is classic Cape, a blend (in 2021) of 32% Roussanne, 29% Semillon (a mix of Blanc and Gris), 19% Chardonnay, 16% Chenin Blanc and 4% Clairette Blanche. The grapes come from a number of sites including at Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, the Ceres Plateau, Paardeberg and Swartland, with a variety of soil types, but mostly alluvial gravels and decomposed granite.

This starts out with a whole bunch ferment in old 600-litre casks using indigenous yeasts. Pressing, in an old Vaslin horizontal press allows for just a touch of oxidation. It is described as a low-intervention wine (“no treatments or additions”) and also “vegan”, but some sulphur was apparently added. It was aged in a variety of old French oak, on lees, for ten months, where it underwent a natural malo.

The bouquet mixes apple freshness with more exotic fruits like kiwi, peach and melon, together with a richness and spice that works really well. Very attractive. The fruit-driven palate, with plum and herbs (rosemary, bay) added to the above, also has a touch of salinity to lift it.

I have drunk this wine several times before, but certainly not post-Covid. I’d forgotten how tasty it is. It’s the kind of blend where every grape variety seems to add something, so that you get complexity of sorts even in a young wine. It also tastes nicely different. It highlights the concept of the “Cape White Blend” extremely well. This bottle was purchased at Lockett Brothers, North Berwick’s wine and fine whisky shop (c £24), but down in England it can be found quite widely. Try branches of The Good Wine Shop. The importer is Liberty Wines. One to try if you haven’t already.

Artefact 2021, Castlewood Wines (Devon, UK)

I know I posted a note about this very wine in October last year, and I do try not to repeat myself. It’s just that my observant daughter, who was at the table when I drank it, tracked down what was just about the last bottle of 2021 as part of my Christmas present. As I had failed to find one, I was shocked and pretty damned pleased to be given it, and so I made sure to share it with the giver of the gift.

Castlewood is one of those English wineries which have seemed thus far to have escaped my cellar. I own five books on English (& Welsh) wine, and they don’t appear in any, not even Ed Dallimore’s Vineyards of Britain (which profiles by far the greatest number). Yet this vineyard, below Musbury Hill Fort in Devon, has a fascinating selection of wines in its repertoire, Artefact perhaps topping that particular list.

In 2016 they planted 2ha of Bacchus to supplement what was already a vineyard planted with typical sparkling wine varieties. Luke Harbor is Head Sommelier at the Pig Hotels chain, and as a local boy he had been helping in the vineyard for around five years before he asked to get involved on the winemaking side. Artefact is a collaboration with Luke.

The Bacchus for the 2021 vintage was harvested on 10 October, then crushed and destemmed into two 300-litre Tuscan amphorae. After 21 days on skins, fermenting via native yeasts, the wine was aged 11 months on lees before racking from amphorae into stainless steel, where it rested for three months before bottling (in perhaps English wine’s most distinctive bottle, with a really beautiful label designed by Tommy Gillard). No fining nor filtration was undertaken.

A lovely bouquet showcases grapefruit, mango and guava scents. The palate has zingy fruit acids with flavours of grapefruit, gooseberry and a whisp of leaf tea. The amphorae, and the lees ageing, gives the wine a little texture, of the kind that somehow (don’t ask) reminds me of iron filings, though faint. I really like this a lot, especially now I’ve drunk two bottles. What I don’t understand is why I haven’t come across this producer before. It’s true that only 1,000 bottles of Artefact were made. It was claimed, so my daughter said, that this was the last known bottle for sale (?). Retailed by IJ Mellis Cheesemongers in Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews, for just £22. The 2021 is also sold out at the vineyard. One hopes a 2022 will become available?

Champagne Palmer Brut Réserve NV (Champagne, France)

When I was a bit younger, I was always looking for Palmer Champagne, probably because I recalled reading positive things from Tom Stevenson about this producer. However, it was a marque more often encountered in restaurants than retail. Although I drank this at an hotel, I see now that it does appear in a few small retailers, though I don’t think any I have previously bought from.

One of them, Noble Green Wines, gets it spot on in suggesting that Palmer “produce one of those rare things, truly great value Champagne”. Brut Réserve blends 50% Chardonnay with circa 33% Pinot Noir and 17% Pinot Meunier, most sourced from Grand and Premier Cru sites on the Montagne de Rheims, but fruit is also included from the Côte de Sézanne, Côtes des Bar and the Marne Valley. The key to this cuvée is the use of an unusually high percentage of reserve wines from a perpetual reserve (like a solera).

There is definitely complexity. I’m not sure either how long it had on lees (though here it tastes like it had a decent spell), nor when this bottle was disgorged. It has a nice richness which comes through with hazelnut and brioche, but there’s also crisp red apple freshness with a peachy/apricot undertone. This also suggests it had been resting in the Marine Hotel’s cellars for a wee while, if not too long.

Now we come to price. This Brut Réserve seems to retail, if you can find it, for between £34 to £40 or just over. To be honest, at those prices I’d buy it without hesitation. You can get more for your money if you spend £50, but that’s quite a bit more spread over a case. I can vouch for the fact that you can do a whole lot worse at the lower end of that price spectrum. I paid £84/bottle. It was nice to treat the table to Champagne for our Burns Night Supper, but I do think they are pushing it a little. A bit gouging but what can you expect. The hotel does cater for a lot of American golfers, whose budget may surpass mine. Waitrose sometimes has the Blanc de Blancs for £54, which might well be worth a try too.