David Crossley's Wide World of Wine

Recent Wines May 2026 (Part 2) #theglouthatbindsus

Posted on 18/06/2026 by dccrossley

For the second part of Recent Wines for May I can’t promise that each wine will come from a different country this time (inserts a ROTFL emoji), but they are a diverse bunch. More important, there isn’t a wine here I wouldn’t drink again tomorrow. We have two wines from Spain, one from Catalonia and one from Gran Canaria. We have two from England, one from Kent and one from Leicestershire. The other two bottles come from Greece and Czechia, the last in that list (second-last below) being a Chardonnay every bit as good as that Gascogne bottle we saw in Part 1. There is one coincidental string running through all these wines though, one which I have only just noticed. By chance they all come from the 2023 vintage!

Blanc de Blancs 2023, Raventós i Blanc (Catalonia, Spain)

Raventos is one of the great family names in Catalonian sparkling wine. The name has been going in Catalonian wine since 1497, when the business was founded in what is now the region’s Cava capital, Sant Sadurni d’Anoia. They may well be one of the oldest wine companies in continuous ownership in the world. They first made Cava in 1872. In 1986 Josep Maria Raventos i Blanc sold his share of the business to Cordoniu, but the best vineyards, part of a large estate with woodland and farmland, based around Conca del Riu Anoia, were retained. The vines are now farmed biodynamically.

In 2012, Pepe Raventós withdrew from the Cava DO. There were several reasons, around the rules of Cava, which Raventós felt were too lax, but he wanted to focus on quality way above that which the great majority of Cava were aiming towards at the time.

This wine blends Xarel-Lo, Macabeo, Parellada and Malvasia de Sitges, grown on chalk. It saw 18 months on lees. 2023 was apparently a drought year in this part of Spain. The result is a wine with a special level of concentration, I think. The floral bouquet is exquisite. The palate has fresh and concentrated citrus and a saline minerality. A gentle nuttiness sneaks in under the mat, so to speak. It also has a bit of complexity, the result of twelve months post-disgorgement ageing (it was disgorged in May 2025) after its second fermentation in bottle. It’s Extra Brut, so it is pretty dry but I felt it would work either as a good aperitif or with food, though nothing too heavy.

The agent for Raventós is Liberty Wines, and it retails for around £25. Berry Brothers also stocks it. You’d be pushed, grape varieties aside, to find a Champagne remotely this good for the money, although I guess the uninitiated might not appreciate how good this is, if they are told it is Spanish. More fool them.

Field Blend 2023, Ham Street Wines (Kent, England)

Lucie Swietowska and Jules Phillips are the husband-and-wife team behind Ham Street Wines, named after the village not far from Ashford where they are located. They planted four hectares on the edge of the Romney Marshes in 2019. Their commitment is to regenerative agriculture and biodynamic methods, to create fully natural wines without the addition of sulphur. The field blend is a collaboration with the coincidentally named Daniel Ham of Offbeat Wines, based now in Wiltshire.

This wine is around 70% Pinot Meunier with Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Bacchus and Pinot Gris. It saw a nine-day carbonic maceration before ageing in used oak. There’s just a hint of volatility here, but it actually lifts the wine and adds interest in my opinion. The fruit is remarkably concentrated, both red fruits and yellow stone fruit. The latter is what adds a creamy touch as it tails off on the palate.

This is also one of those wines where it really is apt to comment on the colour, a pale shimmering bronze (though the winemakers call it copper pink). Whatever your perception will be, it looks lovely, and it tastes lovely too. A beautiful low alcohol (10%) summery wine. Drink it chilled down on a warm evening.

It’s also worth mentioning the label. Ham Street have had a label rebrand and the new ones focus on the cover crops and plants that pop up, and are obviously left to help the ecology thrive, in the vineyard. The Red Clover on this one reflects an important plant in their specific ecosystem.

This bottle came from Communiqué Wines in Stockbridge, and is £29 on the shelf. Wines Under the Bonnet is the importer. I am slowly trying all of their new English producers when and where I can get hold of them.

Assyrtiko Jeunes Vignes 2023, Thymiopoulos (Macedonia, Greece)

Assyrtiko may be at its most famous from Santorini, but that is by no means the only part of Greece in which it is grown. Apostolis Thymiopoulos makes wine in Macedonia, in the far north of Greece. Both Apostolis, and the wine region here (we are effectively near the appellation of Naoussa) are better known for red wines. But Apostolis worked for the late Haridimos Hatzidakis on Santorini when he was younger and he has planted Assyrtiko in the mountains here. This wine is labelled as IGP Macedonia.

This young vine wine has something of a mountain character to it. The colour is sunshine yellow, the bouquet is citrus fruit, perhaps a deeper lemon skin than juice. There’s a little mineral texture and a bit of depth too, maybe a hint of herbs on the finish. It might not have the finesse, quite, of a fine Santorini version, nor I suspect the ability to age, yet I can really recommend it. It is fresh, vibrant and clean.

It isn’t difficult to find this Assyrtiko, but The Wine Society sold me this bottle for £15. All the more reason to grab a some.

Tinto 2023, Bodegas Lava (Gran Canaria, Spain)

Bodegas Lava is aptly named. The Canary Isles was really one of the first volcanic island chains to gain recognition for its table wines, although fortified Madeira’s fame goes back further. Even so, for the past decade, Tenerife has been doing most of the running for the Canaries. Finally, other islands have come to our attention. Even so, Gran Canaria is not a name you see on many labels in the UK.

Based in Brígida, Juan Manuel Martín Monzón grows the Listán Negro grapes that go into this cuvée at between 700-to-1,200 masl. That is high altitude viticulture. Naturally, the terroir is volcanic. This is a pale red with an attractive bouquet of red fruits which seems to waft under your nose. The palate has red fruit too, very juicy, but there’s a peppery note that holds it back, like a dam. Bright acidity likewise encounters a little texture.

Very enjoyable, a wine I think best served cellar cool or, as I did, popped in the fridge for ten-to-fifteen minutes. It’s so good to see new Canary Islands coming through, and this was in fact part of an offer of an assortment made a while ago by The Wine Society. It was only £20.

Fermentum Pastor 2023, Petr Koráb (Moravia, Czechia)

Petr makes this Chardonnay from the Malá Hora vineyard, one of his newer sites near his winery at Boleradice in Southern Moravia. The vines are on a sandy-chalky mix of soils, and grapes are fermented and aged in used oak. All very simple. Somewhere along the way he is able to transform the fruit into this very remarkable wine. What’s so remarkable, you ask? Well, aside from it being spectacularly good, it seems we have here yet another unique Chardonnay. No one will say this tastes like a Burgundy, or say an Aussie Chardonnay (whatever such a thing might be?). In winemaking terms and flavour profile, the only name nudging at my memory cells is Pieter Walser of Blank Bottle Winery (S. Africa).

First thing to hit is the freshness. It is off the scale citrus fresh. But complexity is ratcheted-up with some bruised apple which broadens it out a little. Is there oxidation? Perhaps the tiniest bit. Not enough for it to be obvious, but enough to ask the question. It does finish with that old chestnut which sparks heated debate, minerality. I only mean that it has that crisp texture for which the “M” word seems to conjure the right image. It is labelled at a very precise 13.8% alcohol, which disguises itself well, but broadens the wine out in terms of mouthfeel alongside the apple flavour.

I would also say that it’s one of those wines where you can’t quite put your finger on what makes it so different, but it would stand out in a lineup of Chardonnays. Whether as a wine buyer you would select it depends rather on your customer base, which would need a sense of adventure and a willingness to seek out boundary pushers.

For me, this is stunning even by Koráb’s very high standards. I certainly see him in the top three of Moravia’s younger winemakers (and the other two are married). In fact, he’s irrefutably one of the most exciting young winemakers in Central Europe, but perhaps that is connected with the fact that he makes the wines his grapes tell him to, and often a cuvée won’t be repeated next vintage. It’s a wholly different way of thinking. Basket Press Wines is the importer. I can’t see this cuvée on their web site, though they are listing his excellent Neuburger for £27. The Fermentum Pastor can still be had, it seems, at Prost Wines, for £31.

The Orange 2023, Matt Gregory Wines (Leicestershire, England)

Matt Gregory is an exemplar of what I suppose is a new wave of English winemaking, although whether the wave is all that new depends on how long you’ve been watching. It is certainly the case that we have had the quality revolution in English sparkling wine, and there has always been plenty of still wine sitting beside it. It came before the fizz, but wine writers tended to be very sniffy about it. Some very fine English still wine is made in the image of mostly French equivalents. And then there’s this contingent of small, artisan, natural winemakers.

Many of these are now grouped together in the Wines Under the Bonnet Portfolio. Not all of them. The wonderful Westwell Wines are with Uncharted Wines, who Matt was working with until fairly recently. Matt has always stood out for me because his wines all seem to have a certain style and focus, despite the variety of bottlings he makes. This is especially true of his fruit. It struck me this year when a young English winemaker made something which immediately reminded me of Matt. It turned out that the fruit had indeed come from his vineyard in the Leicestershire Wolds.

This version of The Orange is sub-titled “Zero”. It’s the zero added sulphur version, of which there were just 120 bottles made. That Matt can knock out a zero additive, zero sulphur wine up on this cold-comfort wine frontier of Eastern England is remarkable, although poor bloke, he will never get Certification because his neighbours are all farming arable intensively…and it’s windy.

The grape variety is 100% Solaris. The parent varieties of Solaris are a real mix (Seyve-Villard is in there with, inter alia, Riesling and Pinot Gris), but it is very resistant to fungal diseases and ripens early with good frost protection. In a warm climate it ripens with high must weights, but in a cooler (or cold) climate it makes dry wine.

This version spent nine weeks on skins before pressing, and then rested eight months in stainless steel. Amber in colour, to me the bouquet is unmistakably clementine with peach or apricot skin. The palate is quite unique and hard therefore to really describe, but it is beautiful, full of a yellow/orange fruit mix and something just slightly darker and slightly sour. In my imagination I’m mixing four parts apricot juice with one part dark black cherry. Who knows how my senses work, but certainly with enthusiasm.

I picked this up at Spry Wine in Edinburgh. Spry are good friends with Matt, and usually have some of his wines, although I’ve also bought his wines from Communiqué Wines here as well. As Matt admitted, this wine is a bit “spendy”. £40, but I’m glad I got some.

Recent Wines May 2026 (Part 1) #theglouthatbindsus

Posted on 16/06/2026 by dccrossley

We begin coverage of the wines we drank “at home” during May with the best two bottles we drank staying in a house belonging to friends in The Gers at the beginning of the month. They were both recommended by a wonderful wine shop in Lectoure, which could have kept me interested for weeks. The second of them was so good I went back for more, but they’d sold out, more expected on the day we had to leave for Bordeaux at five in the morning.

Back home we drank one of the best value orange wines around, from Catalonia, then a superb Chilean Semillon which I had tasted at the Clay Wine Fair earlier in the year, a Chasselas from one of my favourite producers in Switzerland’s Lavaux, and a cracking value Victorian Chardonnay, which had me screaming at the difficulty of finding Aussie wines like this today, as compared to back in the late twentieth century.

Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh Sec 2025, Domaine Laougué (Gers, France)

Sylvain Dabadie is the fourth generation of his family to make wine in Viella, not far from Madiran. Pacherenc is effectively “white Madiran” as the two appellations have the same boundary, more or less. This bottle is made from a blend of both Gros and Petit Manseng, varieties perhaps better known to us in the blend for Jurançon, which is maybe 20-30 kilometres to the southwest, near Pau. Both appellations sit in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

The Laougué Pacherenc is made in tank, without oak influence. It is dry and crisp and quite “mineral”. It comes off a clay and limestone mix of soils and rocks, with galets roulés pebbles scattered across the vineyards in the manner of some parts of Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe. In the glass it developed a nice mix of peachy stone fruit with a touch of fresh lemon. Not complex but very nice. We enjoyed it with asparagus, which was abundant in the markets, and on which we willingly overdosed (white and green) during our week. Others recommend it with shellfish/seafood, none of which we ate this far from the coast.

The Lectoure wine shop I mentioned is De La Terre au Verre, where this bottle cost €12. On returning home I discovered that The Wine Society had the 2024 before they sold out. Tanners does list the 2025 for £17. They list it as pushing out 13.5% abv. My bottle said 14%, but to be honest it didn’t taste like it was that high. A nice fresh white wine, a bargain in France, and to be fair not ridiculous at UK prices either.

“La Voile” Vin de France 2021, Domaine Jeandaugé (Gers, France)

If the previous wine was nice, it didn’t prepare us for this beauty. It was a genuine revelation. It was the kind of wine you want to bring home to drink with your most wine-obsessed friends, but as I mentioned in my intro, it wasn’t to be. I felt vindicated in my judgement by discovering that Christina Rasmussen, whose opinions I value greatly, had visited the domaine for Littlewine (littlewine.io ) a few years ago, and had pretty much felt the same.

Sébastien Fezas is based at the village of Courrensan, not far from the town of Condom. This is Côtes de Gascogne territory, but Sébastien bottles his wines as Vins de France. He took over the family domaine in 2012, bottling the wine himself and cutting out the chemicals. He now farms biodynamically, he makes his own preps, and has the loan of some local sheep to graze the vineyards.

This is a natural wine (no added sulphur at this domaine) made from 100% Chardonnay. It spent a year and a half on lees with no topping-up. The result is mildly oxidative but magically fresh, no hint of heaviness. It has bags of salinity and a mildly nutty undertone beneath fresh fruit edging towards citrus.

Someone really should import this, I thought. Then I saw Doug Wregg had written about the domaine on his blog, so I checked out the Les Caves de Pyrene trade list and lo and behold, there on page 17 sit four of Sébastien’s wines…but not this one. Never mind. I’m sure what they do have is very good. They include a concrete-fermented Colombard called “Partie Fine”, which I brought back from France myself in lieu of the Chardonnay, and three reds. Doug waxes lyrical about a Syrah, though it’s the Tannat I would love to get hold of.

Back to La Voile…as already mentioned, it came from De La Terre au Verre in Lectoure, which is a pretty village on the pilgrim route to Santiago, with a rather fine market on a Friday and an excellent restaurant called Racinette (booking essential but worth it, cooking of a standard way above the €88 including a glass of wine each we paid for lunch). La Voile cost us €24 retail, and it shocked a local couple we went to a bar with that we had paid that much for a bottle of wine. I guess if Les Caves did import it, I’d be paying a lot more, but I would probably deem it worth it at, say, £40 in the new era of societal collapse.

Oníric Xarel-lo Brisat 2024, Entre Vinyes (Penedès, Spain)

This domaine is the project of Maria Barrena and Pep Tort Montserrat. They have revived abandoned vineyards in Penedès to make some magical Catalonian wines. Oníric is a natural wine made from old vine Xarel-lo that has been given a maceration of around two weeks. It then goes into amphora, resting six months on lees.

The winemaking results in a nice texture to the juice, but not too much. Otherwise, we have a wine that is light and fresh. Peach and lemon seem to be the prevalent flavours of the month here, but this has a saltiness and a slightly leesy element which you might think a negative, but it is a creaminess which adds interest and pleasure. Although there’s a bit of grip, this is definitely the lighter side of brisat/skin contact wine, perhaps reflected in the low (10.5%) alcohol.

I probably buy two-or-three bottles of Entre Vinyes a year which, if you know me and my desire for variety, is an endorsement of what this couple are doing. This is a delicious and lovely wine, and it is equally ridiculously good value. My bottle cost £17 from Smith + Gertrude (Portobello, Edinburgh). The importer is Modal Wines. On the subject of Modal, I was thrilled to bag a couple of their latest New Zealand wines last week.

Altos de Guarilihue Vinos Parcella Semillon 2024, Ana María Cumsille (Itata, Chile)

I’m always on the lookout for good South American wines, though perhaps “good” isn’t the right word I’m looking for. Perhaps I should say wines which fit my own expectations, and which don’t fit in with a more commercial vibe, good as those wines might be. I found this on a table at the Clay Wine Fair earlier this year and liked it a lot. It took me so long to get some because I had to put in some serious footwork to a part of Edinburgh I rarely reach.

Ana María Cumsille is Chief Winemaker at Viña Carmen, but this is a side project. She buys grapes from a selection of growers and winemakers to showcase the high-altitude vineyards of Itata. This wine comes from the Itata sub-region of Guarilihue Alto. The grape grower (all the growers are highlighted on the labels) is Ariel Sandoval. He’s growing cool climate Semillon at above 300 masl in this case, and the vines average eighty years old.

This, as befits a wine presented at “Clay”, is a skin contact cuvée, aged partly in amphora and partly in oak. It has a bit of texture, more soft than hard. The fruit rises above that structure, very pure fruit, lovely and rounded, smooth, sensual. A delicious wine.

I bought this at Woodwinters Wine, from their shop in Newington (South Edinburgh). It seemed very reasonable for £26. I tasted a very nice Cinsault at Clay Wine as well, but what intrigued me in the shop was a Pais, though next time I will have to have the capacity to bring back another Semillon beside those reds.

Villette Les Murets 2021, Blaise Duboux (Lavaux, Switzerland)

Blaise Duboux is part of a family which has been farming the slopes of Lavaux in the Canton of Vaud, above Lake Geneva (Lac Léman), for five hundred years, or seventeen generations. Blaise runs a fairly small domaine based at Epesses. He only converted to organics in 2016, so late because that was the year it became prohibited to spray the terraced slopes here (a UNESCO heritage site) with helicopters (meaning no vines were safe, so organic certification would have been impossible). He now farms using selective biodynamic methods and adds very small doses of sulphur if and when needed. He also tries to avoid using copper sulphate, a mainstay for many organic farmers.

Chasselas is the main variety here. If you wish to taste this variety at its finest, then Blaise’s Dézaley Grand Cru Haut de Pierre Vieilles Vignes is the one to seek out. He also makes one of the best versions of Plant Robert, which is a locally specific Gamay mutation beloved by Swiss wine obsessives (like me).

Les Murets is a lighter expression of Chasselas, not a wine you need to age like the Grand Cru, but as you will see from this 2021, not a wine you absolutely need to drink in its first year or two. It comes off sandy soils near the village of Villette, at the western end of Lavaux, a little outside Lausanne. The wine is very dry with a mix of herbal notes plus added lime citrus and a bit of texture. This 2021 is still pretty fresh, although I’d like to see a more recent vintage if it returns into stock (see below). It has plenty of character, wholly expected with any wine from this producer.

This was £22.50 at The Wine Society. It’s was good value for a Swiss wine, let alone a wine from one of the people I’d certainly say is in the top few Lavaux producers I know, a man who would definitely get a bottle in any mixed case of Swiss wine I were to buy given the choice. Perhaps their excellent buyer of the less-trodden paths of the wide world of wine will manage to squeeze some more wine out of Monsieur Duboux? Please.

Red Hill Chardonnay 2024, Port Phillip Estate (Victoria, Australia)

I’ve a strong affection for the wines of Mornington Peninsula. It was far from the first Australian wine region I visited but I did manage to spend a couple of days there on my first visit, and have subsequently been back. It’s a region which, like the Yarra in the opposite direction from Melbourne, caters very well to wine tourism. You can soak up the tasting samples, if you are not spitting, with food ranging from the excellent contents of wood-fired pizza ovens to the sort of posh nosh you’d also find in Melbourne. Naturally you can eat at Port Philip Estate.

Port Phillip Estate, and sister winery Kooyong, sit close to the viticultural centre of the Peninsula, just over the ridge from another excellent estate, Polperro, at Red Hill. Mornington has a maritime climate, as you’d expect from a bit of rock sticking out into the Bass Strait, with its Antarctic currents. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir do not always thrive here, and the wines can even have way too much alcohol in some vintages, but they do most of the time, displaying the thrilling edge that comes with a marginal climate. With this Chardonnay there are no worries. Superstar winemaker, Sandro Mosele, has moved on (also from Kooyong too), and he now has his Elanto Vineyard project at Balnarring, still on the Peninsula, but the winemaking here at Port Phillip Estate seems to be going strong.

The Chardonnay vines here date to 1987, planted on the deep red volcanic loam at between 140-to-160 masl on Red Hill. They use “low intervention” viticulture, whatever that means. The result, though, is a really lovely lemony wine that is way fresher and more spritely than you’d expect from a European version packing 13.5% abv, but I don’t detect any obvious acidification. It was aged in oak, but probably not new oak. You can’t taste any overt oak, just a bit of influence, and I’m guessing the price suggests new oak is unlikely.

When I put a pic up of this originally, on Instagram, I called it “lean but not mean”. Someone at The Wine Society agreed it was a good description, which I meant very much as a compliment. Even today there are some Aussie Chardonnays that are tough to drink, packed with oak chips. This one is pleasantly the opposite. Yet again, it’s a wine that is currently unavailable, but it may return. It cost £20.

Posted in Artisan Wines, Australian Wine, Chilean Wine, Natural Wine, Spanish Wine, Swiss Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Merchants, Wines of Southwest France, | Tagged #theglouthatbindsus, Altos de Guarilihue Semillon, Ana María Cumsille Chile, Blaise Duboux Epesses Vaud, Celler Entre Vinyes Penèdes, Chasselas, Chilean Semillon, De La Terre au Verre Lectoure, Domaine Jeandaugé Courrensan, Domaine Laougué Gers, La Voile 2021 Domaine Jeandaugé, Mornington Peninsula, Oniríc Brisat Entre Vinyes, Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh, Penèdes natural wine, Port Phillip Estate Mornington Peninsula, Racinette Lectoure, Recent Wines May 2026 Pt 1, Red Hill Chardonnay 2024 Port Phillip Estate, Sébastien Fezas Domaine Jeandaugé Gers, Villette Les Murets Blaise Duboux, Wine of Itata Chile, Wines of Lavaux Switzerland, Wines of the Gers | Leave a comment

Cork & Cask Summer Fair 2026, Part 3 (Sake, Richmond Wines, Beer and Ciders)

Posted on 08/06/2026 by dccrossley

In this final part of my coverage of Cork & Cask’s Summer Fair 2026 in Edinburgh we have a range of different drinks. We begin with Sake, which I hope is as interesting for you as it is for me. The wine content here is via Richmond Wines. We have beer, dipping into Futtle Brewery (across the water in Fife) and Newbarns Brewery in Leith (Edinburgh). Both have some excellent summer beers, and if any of the three articles are packed with summer drinking, it is this one. We end with some “summer in a glass” ciders.

As with Parts 1 and 2, prices are retail at Cork & Cask, Edinburgh.

MARUSSIA BEVERAGES SAKE

Marussia is a UK Sake importer, well known (but far from exclusively) for the widely available Akashi-Tai Sakes. Fabio from Edinburgh’s own Izayaka bar, Kome, in Broughton Street, Toll Cross, was pouring and sharing his expertise. I first got into Sake via a wonderful Tonkatsu restaurant in Aoyama, Tokyo, called Maisen, back in 2007, but it took me a long time to get to properly understand it in all its nuances. I was helped significantly when Anthony Rose published Sake and the Wines of Japan in 2018 (Infinite Ideas, now the Académie du Vin Library) and I cannot recommend this book more highly. The information in the first para below comes mostly from this book. I really got to appreciate sake when I began to understand what I was drinking, which is no different to wine, after all.

Akashi-Tai

Akashi Sake Brewery is based in Akashi City, Hyogo, on Osaka Bay west of Kobe. In fact, the 1995 Kobe earthquake damaged the original brewery enough that it was moved and updated significantly. It is run by the Yonezawa family, who settled in Akashi in 1856 as rice brokers, moving to the production side in 1917.The focus today is on quality sake, brought in when Kimio Yonezawa became the current president in 1999. They use Yamada-nishiki and Gohyakuman-goku rice, sourced locally and also the excellent local soft water. The updated modern equipment allows for brewing all-year round, allowing for temperature control in Japan’s hot and humid summer months. I tasted four Akashi sakes.

Akashi-Tai Junmai Ginjo Sparkling

Ginjo is a designation for a sake where the rice has been polished down to at least 60% of its original size (the greater the polish, the greater the potential quality and refinement of the sake). The bubbles come from a second fermentation. It has a lovely frothy creaminess and is bang in the middle of dry and sweet, maybe a bit like a Moscato d’Asti in that respect. It has just 7% alcohol and is vegan-friendly. Sparkling sake is a relatively new style aimed at interesting younger drinkers in sake. That applies to Japan as much as export markets. The sake tasted was a 72cl bottle (£37), but if you want to give it a try (and you should), you can buy this in a 30cl bottle for around £18. You may have noticed we drank a bottle early last week

Akashi-Tai Junmai Daiginjo Genshu

Junmai Daigingo sake sees the rice polished down to 50% or less. Genshu merely means undiluted, so no water was added, and in fact nor was alcohol, which can be added to less fine sake. This is actually polished down to 38% and the alcohol, all natural, is around 16%. It is very refined but it also has massive flavour. It’s quite complex, but a milky rice note underscores other umami elements and a hint of bitter plum, which also floats across the nose. For me, this is a sake to savour with food, but I’m not an expert. However, sake is often a good choice with dishes containing soy, ginger and some chilli. £26 for 30cl, priced to quality.

Akashi-Tai Ginjo Yuzushi

I’ve a bit of a secret soft spot for this and I’ve bought it numerous times. You have a Ginjo sake with fresh and local yuzu fruit juice blended in. The result is a deeply delicious lemon flavour, which is both sweet and yet bitter too, coming in at 10% abv. It’s a bit (only a bit) like a Japanese Lemoncello. It works with fruit desserts, or on its own. 10% abv, £28 for 50cl.

Akashi-Tai Shiraume Ginjo Umeshi Plum

This is something of an Akashi speciality and well worth seeking out to taste if you are in a Japanese restaurant. Marinated plums are added to Ginjo sake which is then aged for two more years. It has deep plum flavour with a touch of almond and a very concentrated sweetness. 14% abv, £26 for 50cl. This is perhaps best sipped on its own, but the producer does suggest pairing with cooked fruit desserts. Cork & Cask suggests mince pies, Christmas cake or Bakewell Tart, which I must remember (Bakewell Tart is a whole family favourite here).

Fukumitsuya Kuroobi Dodo Yamahai Junmai

Fukumitsuya was founded in Kanazawa in 1625. I know little about them but C&C say that this sake “sits among the more ambitious expressions in their range”. It is a blend of Yamada Nishiki and Kinho Nishiki rices milled to different levels and aged separately before blending into ceramic vessels for two more years age. The result is complex, very dry and very umami. It is one of the most complex sakes I’ve tasted, and the bouquet is pretty unique. It might not be the most refined, but that isn’t the point. It’s definitely a sake for food. They suggest izakaya bar snacks, so maybe I need to choose this when I make it to Fabio’s Kome, but at home it would be really interesting to pair it with some complex hard cheeses (from The Cheese Lady in Haddington or IJ Mellis in Edinburgh, if you live near me). 15% abv, £38 for 72cl.

RICHMOND WINES

Pinkpoul Pet Nat, Maison François Ducrot (Languedoc, France)

Picpoul, both the grape variety and the “de Pinet” appellation, have a certain popularity now. This petnat is made from the rare Picpoul/Piquepoul Noir variety. It’s a biodynamic wine, bright pink like pink grapefruit, with lees remaining because the bottle is not disgorged (if the sediment worries you, just stand it in the fridge door for a time). Floral, with red fruit (strawberry) and nectarine flavours, it matches the description of “uncomplicated” for sure, but it’s a really nice summer sparkler, 11% abv and a mere £18.

Muscadet “La Pêcherie” 2023, Jérémie Huchet (Loire, France)

This is one of three Huchet wines they sell at Cork & Cask. There is no “sur lie” designation on the bottle, but I read that this organic wine does spend six months on lees. It is definitely a simpler wine than some of the more complex and more expensive expressions of the Melon grape variety around, but it has a nice freshness and a touch of age has been beneficial. Always a good choice for fish and chips if you’re out of Champagne and good Fino Sherry. Pretty good value at £15.

Artisans Partisans (Languedoc, France)

This is a grouping of four estates between Corbières and Limoux under the umbrella of the Borie family. AP is a range of organic, natural wines. Farming involves agroforestry, winemaking includes all the usual natural wine practices, including zero added sulphur. I tasted three wines from the range.

The Chenin Blanc 2023 was waxy, tasty, though not complex. The Grenache Noir 2024 had fresh red fruits and a sappy mouthfeel with something to chew on. The Carignan 2022 was my favourite. Fruity but with a liquorice twist, and with 14.5% alcohol I’d match it with a mixed grill or a barbecue.

All three are sub-labelled Les Indigènes and cost £20 retail. I’ve spotted these on a couple of restaurant wine lists where I hadn’t expected to see natural wines, which was a pleasant surprise.

Civitas Pecorino, Lunaria (Abruzzo, Italy)

This is a Demeter certified biodynamic wine from the hills of Orsongna (Chieti). A quite pale golden colour gives a soft and aromatic bouquet with a mix of lemon and pear notes combining with a bit of minerality. Again, don’t expect complexity (though complexity is claimed), but do expect a food-friendly wine with a touch of richness from 13% abv, and a decent finish. If you are having cheese on a Wednesday night this might be the wine to go for, if you get my drift. £18

Falanghina Maioliche, Tenuta Viglione (Puglia, Italy)

This is a family producer based up near the border with Basilicata, in the highest part of the Gioia del Colle DOC, near to Matera. The Zullo family have been running it since the estate was established in 1937. Hills of 450 masl suit the white varieties, and Falanghina needs height to retain its freshness. This wine has freshness, which is retained by fermentation and short ageing in stainless steel, and a pleasant 12.5% alcohol too. Plenty of yellow fruit like apricot sits on the nose, whilst the palate adds in honey and vanilla pod. The second Falanghina of the tasting (see the one from I Cacciagalli in Campania in Part 1, from Indigo Wine), this variety is making a bit of a comeback, deservedly so.

Monika poured the Richmond selections

FUTTLE BREWERY (Bowhouse, Fife)

Futtle is based close to St Monans on the south coast of Fife. They make beer using water from a borehole on the farm. All their beers are 100% natural in terms of ingredients and lack of synthetic additives, and they are vegan-friendly and organic. I particularly recommend their Table Beer for summer, which is fresh and light and just 3.2% alcohol.

Cork & Cask stocks a good range, currently seven lines I think. If you like a Wheat Beer (they have one), maybe try the Spelt Beer, especially if you are a fan of Meinklang’s Urkorn Bier, or the same producer’s Spelt Sour. A visit to the brewery is worthwhile for the farm shop and café at Bowhouse, which also holds a renowned monthly foodie market.

Futtle also has a shop/bar in Dundee, where you will also find a small but very well-chosen selection of natural wines. It is handily about a ten minute walk from the worderful Dundee venue of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

NEWBARNS BREWERY (Leith, Edinburgh)

Cork & Cask currently lists a whopping thirteen beers from Newbarns, which is probably proof enough as to their popularity and quality. They are based in Leith, Edinburgh’s port area, where they also have a tap room (13 Jane Street, open Thurs to Sun). The whole range is good but I’d like to pick on two of their beers. The Newbarns Plain Dark Beer is a big stout with no additives and no weird ingredients or flavourings (as C&C say, no cake ingredients). It’s a solid 11% abv, and maybe not my go-to for summer, but it’s still brilliant.

What is super-summery, and really useful for guests, is the Nae Pale Ale. This is a no alcohol beer, or near enough (there’s 0.5% in a 330ml can). Finding good alc-free beer isn’t easy. A lot of people I know like the Guinness Zero. I have enjoyed Lucky Saint, which can now be found in a good number of supermarkets. You’ll pay £3 for a can of the Newbarns, but it is a quality beer made in Scotland with quality ingredients and it tastes great. But I like to serve it very cold. Others might disagree.

NAUGHTON CIDER (Balmerino, Fife)

Peter Crawford was on hand again to pour his wonderful ciders. I had coincidentally only bought a bottle of his Brut Vintage 2021 at Aeble Cider Bar in Anstruther (Fife) the week before. This was described to me by a friend who works in wine in Copenhagen, but is something of a cider aficionado, as “the most wine-like cider” they had tasted. It is remarkably Champagne-like (it’s made by the same method) but unlike many ciders nowadays, no wine is mixed in. At £26 it is not cheap for cider but trust me, it is very good value as a stunning beverage. If you want something a little less wine-like in price, Peter’s Naughton Overture, which is more overtly cidery, costs £20.

The treat at the Fair was an unlabelled, under-the-counter, sample of a new cider which will probably be labelled Overture Single Orchard. It is from apples harvested in 2021, varieties including Kingston Black, Stoke Red, Browns and Bramley, from a single orchard in Oxfordshire. This cider has spent three-and-a-half years on its lees. It combines appley freshness with considerable depth and it already has the kind of complexity you only really get from careful, long ageing (Tim Phillips in Hampshire achieves similar levels in his own way, but I can’t think of many in the UK…certainly you have to go to to Normandy for Eric Bordelet Perry and to Switzerland’s Cidrerie du Vulcain). Amazing stuff that Peter said would probably retail at around £27. I plan to get some.

FLEMING’S CIDER

I missed the other cider table where, among an assortment of producers, I would have found Fleming’s “Le Mariage”. This is a Cork & Cask stalwart which I have bought there, and at the previously mentioned Aeble Cider in Anstruther. Robbie Fleming has a small cider business at Leuchars in Fife (where you will find the closest railway station to St Andrews). Le Mariage is described as a signature blend using varieties like Dabinett, Tremletts Bitter, Tom Putt, Camelot and Yarlingtom Mill, which are fermented with wild yeasts. It’s bone dry and sophisticated compared to more commercial products. It has a bit of spice to add interest as well. At £17 this artisan cider is exceptional value, though it isn’t made in large quantities. Robbie also makes a wonderful Wild Blend from mostly apples grown wild along the local country road verges and field boundaries. I see this around less often but grab some if you do.

Those not spitting were well catered for

Genuine apologies to those tables I just couldn’t get to. Propely tasting the products is essential if I’m going to write something that stands up to scrutiny, and my palate is not as fit as it once was…sadly. Still, the Cork & Cask Fairs in Summer and Winter are as good as anything I’ve been to in the past, large and small, which I hope the three articles I’ve posted this month illustrate. As always, thanks to India, Jamie and the team for inviting me and putting on such a fabulous event yet again.

Posted in Artisan Cider, Artisan Wines, Beer, Cider, Italian Wine, Languedoc-Roussillon, Loire, Sake, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Festivals, Wine Merchants, Wine Shops, Wine Tastings | Tagged Akashi-Tai Sake, Artisans Partisans Languedoc, Cork & Cask Summer Fair 2026 Pt 3, Edinburgh Wine, Edinburgh Wine Fair, Fleming's Le Mariage Cider, Flemings Cider Fife, Fukumitsuya Kuroobi Dodo Yamahai Junmai, Futtle Brewery Fife, Futtle Table Beer, Jeremie Huchet Muscadet La Pêcherie, Kome Izayaka Edinburgh, Marussia Beverages Sake Importer, Naughton Brut Vintage 2021, Naughton Cider Balmerino Fife, Naughton Overture, Naughton Overture Single Orchard 2021, Newbarns Brewery Leith Edinburgh, Newbarns Nae Pale Ale, Newbarns Plain Dark Beer, Pecorino Lunaria Abruzzo, Peter Crawford Naughton Cider Co, Pinkpoul Petnat François Ducrot Languedoc, Richmond Wines Agency, Tenuta Viglione Falanghina Puglia, Umeshi Plum Sake, Yuzu Sake | Leave a comment

Cork & Cask Summer Fair 2026, Part 2 (Indigo Wines and Moreno Wines)

Posted on 04/06/2026 by dccrossley

For the second part of Cork & Cask’s Summer Fair coverage I’m looking at the gems on the tables manned by Indigo Wines and Moreno Wines. Both boast strong Spanish portfolios, but the range of what they import goes way beyond Spain, as was evidenced by wines here from Indigo which included South Africa, Campania, Germany’s Pfalz and Burgenland, and Moreno which included some tasty Italians, especially the Nebbiolo, alongside the Spanish wines they brought along.

I didn’t mention this in Part 1, but Cork & Cask organises two wine fairs a year in Marchmont Church, around a two-or-three-minute stroll from their shop. Both are well worth the trek for me. Tickets for the public cost £25. At the weekend there were just short of 150 drinks to taste, and even in three parts it wasn’t really possible for me to taste everything, nor indeed at every table. I’m fairly sure that some of the attendees managed it, or at least came close and so £25 (with a 10% discount on shop sales on the day thrown in) is pretty reasonable (about three glasses if you are lucky in a restaurant).

As in Part 1, prices are those charged retail by Cork & Cask.

Vanessa (Indigo) and Hamish (Moreno)

INDIGO WINES

Méthode Ancestral Verdelho Pet Nat 2025, Rebel Rebel Wines (Stellenbosch, South Africa)

Rebel Rebel Wines was founded in 2020 by Kayleigh Hattingh. The wines are all site-specific and minimum intervention. This Verdelho comes from the Bottelary Hills in Stellenbosch. Made by the Ancestral Method, it is first fermented in tank and then, secondly, in bottle. It’s young and zesty with a mix of tropical fruit and apple-like acidity. One might call it “unpretentious” but although simple it may be, it was rightly something of a crowd-pleaser on the day. £25

Falanghina Aorivola 2023, I Cacciagalli (Campania, Italy)

Much of the white fruit grown in Campania is at altitude, meaning the wines are fresher than you might expect in this southern region, and they are often very much underrated. This is bottled as Roccamonfina IGT, and hails from a 12-hectare biodynamic family estate in the north of the region, on the volcanic soils of the Roccamonfina. The estate additionally has olive and nut trees and fifty hectares of woodland. This wine sees time in amphora and is made with minimal sulphur additions. It’s lemony with a wet stone texture. A lovely example, well worth £22. One to persuade you to get involved, as they say.

Riesling 120NN 2023, Odinstal (Pfalz, Germany)

Odinstal was converted to biodynamics by Andreas Schumann around twenty years ago and since then quality has rocketed. All biodynamic preps are now made on-site. This wine is bottled as a Deutscher Landwein, and the fruit comes from the estate’s lowest-lying vineyard, a monopole site, by the river. However, the vines were actually planted in the 1980s. It is fermented and aged mostly in stainless steel with 5% going into old wood. The bouquet is rich, with lime, mango and guava scents. But on the palate, it has a nice bit of salinity to ground it. An excellent wine that I know the Cork & Cask staff are particularly impressed with. £30

Albariño 2025, Zarate (Rias Baixas, Spain)

This is a well-known family estate based in Spain’s windy and wet Northwest, vines being planted on the region’s stark granite terroir. Natural wines are made using no synthetic chemicals, and for over thirty years the vineyards have remained untilled. I am most familiar with the stunning wines made by Eulogio Pomares Zarate in collaboration with Ben Henshaw (of Indigo), Dr Jamie Goode and Daniel Primiak, called Sal da Terra/Salt of the Earth. This Albariño is made in stainless steel with three months on lees. It isn’t as saline as the aforementioned collab but it has bags of fruit and plenty of freshness. £27

Godello “El Castro de Valtuille” 2024, Raul Pérez and César Márquez, Bodegas Castro Ventosa (Bierzo, Spain)

I’ve drunk plenty of Raul’s red wines over the years but I’m not sure whether I’ve ever bought this particular white. That is probably a mistake. This is a single vineyard wine from a site at over 500 masl, called El Val. Vines of just over 20-years-old sit on stony clay. The fruit sees a 24-hour cold soak before direct pressing into 500-litre new oak to ferment. It is then aged 12 months in older oak. The bouquet is smoky with confit lemon and a bit of tropical fruit underpinned by a flinty acidity and a little texture. Excellent. £27. The red Mencia Joven which Cork & Cask list (about £18) is also really good for the money.

Naked Orange, Heinrich (Burgenland, Austria)

I am guilty of over-familiarity with the natural wines of Gernot and Heike Heinrich. They were pioneers of natural winemaking in Burgenland, and now they are joined on the eastern shore of the Neusiedlersee (they are in Gols) by several other now-famous young producers following in their footsteps. Naked Orange is a blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, and a little Traminer and Muscat Ottonel. Everything is crushed together and is macerated for two weeks on skins. Fermentation is in large wood after which it is left on lees for a year. The bouquet is uncannily dominated by orange and orange peel. The palate is a textured citrus. It’s not as refined as the Freyheit wines in their clay flagons, but it’s a super tasty, individual wine, which retails for only £22, one of four Heinrich wines sold by Cork & Cask.

MORENO WINES

Lambrusco Rosso Dolce Borgofulvia, Il Poggiarello (Lombardy, Italy)

I don’t need to say a lot about this wine, but I do need to say something. It is a simple wine, even by Lambrusco standards, but it is very fruity, like summer pudding. 7.5% alcohol, sweetish, and gently frothy. It retails for just under £10 and for summer glugging on the beach you could do worse. You could do better too…but maybe not easily for £10 (though if you want something drier then that pair of Austrians I have drunk recently (you may have seen them) from The Wine Society would offer a good alternative). There’s a Rosé version at Cork & Cask too, same price.

Palomino Balbaina 2024, Diatomists (Jérez Region, Spain)

In previous years I have tasted, written about, and purchased, the superb Sherries from Diatomists. These are artisan wines made from single vineyard sources and aged traditionally according to the style. They have now followed the modern path of creating an unfortified table wine, made from the region’s staple Palomino grape variety. Fruit comes from the same famous soils as Fino Sherry, but this wine is vinified in stainless steel, and of course is not fortified. You get an 11.5% table wine with a chalky softness and the freshness of apple and lemon, with just a little almond. Lovely balance, light but a versatile, and a very food-friendly bottle. A definite hit! £20

Rioja Nalo Meli 2024, Bodegas Bhilar (Rioja, Spain)

This is a Rioja from the Alavesa sub-region, made by American native, Melanie Hickman, and it is a collaboration with Moreno Wines. Unusually, this is made from 100% Graciano, a minor grape in the more common Rioja blends, where Tempranillo and perhaps Garnacha dominate. The fruit is organic, farmed biodynamically. Aged in concrete, with no oak, we have a bouquet of red fruits and eucalyptus. The palate is all red fruits, pomegranate to the fore for me, and a nice savoury edge to it. Very successful, I wouldn’t hesitate to try this if you get the chance. £19

Langhe Nebbiolo 2023, Camparo (Piemonte, Italy)

Camparo are based at Diano d’Alba, on the eastern edge of the Barolo zone, north of Serralunga. Indeed Cork & Cask stocks their well-priced Barolo (not on taste). This is a family estate run by Mauro Drocco, and farmed organically. This Nebbiolo is slowly fermented before ageing in neutral oak for eighteen months, but it is then kept back a year after bottling before release. The bouquet is very scented, especially of roses (didn’t spot tar, but it did take me back to old school Barolo a bit). On the palate there is something quite sensual about the smooth fruit before the tannins kick in, although they are not harsh tannins. I always look for a good “Nebbiolo” and this fits the bill, especially as it retails for £26, as opposed to £42 for their Barolo. It does pack 14% abv, but on my tasting sip it didn’t seem to be dominated by the alcohol.

I might have tasted fewer wines on the Moreno table but I would be very happy to spend £65 on the three wines above, and I would not complain if a plastic glass of the Lambrusco was thrust in front of me down at the beach.

Posted in Artisan Wines, Austrian Wine, German Wine, Italian Wine, Natural Wine, orange wine, Petnat, Piemonte, Rioja, Spanish Wine, Sparkling Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Festivals, Wine Merchants, Wine Shops, Wine Tastings | Tagged Bodegas Castro Ventosa Godello Bierzo, Camparo Diano d'Alba, Camparo Langhe Nebbiolo 2023, Cork & Cask Summer Fair 2026 Pt 2, Diatomists Palomino Balbaina, Heinrich Naked Orange Burgenland, I Cacciagialli Falanghina Aorivola, Il Poggiarello Lambrusco Borgofulvia, Indigo Wines, Melanie Hickman Winemaker, Moreno Wines, Odinstal Riesling 120NN Pfalz, Raul Perez Godello El Castro de Valtuille, Rebel Rebel Ancestral Verdelho Stellenbosch, Rioja Nalo Meli Bodegas Bhilar, Zarate Albarino Rias Baixas | Leave a comment

Cork & Cask Summer Fair May 2026, Part 1 (Element and Raeburn)

Posted on 01/06/2026 by dccrossley

Cork & Cask’s Edinburgh Summer Fair is always fun. Of course, the weather helps lift the spirit, but there is less of a wine focus in the summer. There’s plenty of wine to taste, but equally lots of beers and other drinks. For someone tasting to write (as opposed to pre-loading for an afternoon barbecue, as one couple were heard to say), having slightly less wine to get through at a busy public event is no bad thing.

I shall need to split my coverage into three articles. Part One will cover Element Wines and Raeburn Wines. Part Two will take a look at what Indigo Wines and Moreno Wines brought along. Part Three will cover Richmond Wine Agencies and a rather good selection of Sake from Marusia Beverages. We will finish that article with some very fine ciders and a few beers.

All prices listed are retail, at Cork & Cask of course.

ELEMENT WINES

Lambrusco Bianco Biancospino, Vitivinicola Fangareggi (Emilia-Romagna, Italy)

This wine comes from a 24-ha family estate with roots in the 19^th century. They farm organically and follow other low intervention winemaking practices such as indigenous yeasts. It is a “Charmat method” wine, that is tank-fermented, but one of very good quality. I’ve bought this myself a couple of times as it’s a light and fresh summer party wine redolent of yellow stone fruit. I’d rather drink this outdoors in summer than a cheap Champagne. £25

Aerobulles Sparkling Chenin Blanc, Vouvray, Complices de Loire (Loire Valley, France)

Sparkling Chenin is underrated. It can be pretty complex, or it can be fun. This is one of the fun new-style wines, but with a serious side as well. It comes from two local winemakers, François-Xavier Barc and Gérald Vallée. Vines are a decent 25 years old, off clay with flint soils. Fermentation is 90% in oak and 10% in amphora. It sees a decent 24 months on lees and is bottled with zero dosage. The bouquet is quite floral, the palate more creamy-textured, with apricot stone fruit and bags of finesse. Definitely recommended at £27, but not a lot was made so stocks will be limited.

Fuchsentanz Riesling 2023, Weingut Diwald (Wagram, Austria)

I first tasted Martin’s wines at a Soho tasting in the rather faded splendour of Black’s Club so long ago that it must have been before I began this blog. I think back then he was with Red Squirrel Wines. It was great to taste this Riesling from one of Austria’s unsung regions, which follows the Danube immediately west of Vienna. Made in stainless steel with ten months on lees, it is generously ripe with a fresh citrus acidity and a texture that hints at the gravelly soils it comes from. Biodynamic. £25

Temperss Muscat “Skin Contact” 2023, Tenuta Il Nespolo (Piemonte, Italy)

This is effectively a Moscato from Asti, but vinified quite differently to the light and grapey, low alcohol, original. Luca Amerio farms vines planted in the 1960s at Moasca. This rendition of Muscat is quite serious, and very possibly age-worthy, yet it is unquestionably easy to drink. Ageing is 18 months on lees after fermenting to full dryness (abv is 13% yet it still tastes light and fresh). Definitely a food wine, and the producer suggests options which include shellfish and grilled vegetables. £27

Steven Windsor, Director of Element Wines, with a pristine table showing it was early on in the proceedings

Cuvée Z, Les Vignerons d’Estezargues (Rhône Valley, France)

This co-operative not far from Avignon has been a bit of a well-kept secret for years, but I’m now seeing their wines more frequently. And so we should! Since the 1980s, under the direction of Jean-François Nicq, they have been making natural wines using biodynamic methods, and in quantity. The only addition here is a tiny dose of CO2 if absolutely necessary. You get raspberry, liquorice and a bit of texture. A glugging wine with a bit of bite. Barbecue is calling. You get Grenache along with a few of the new PIWI varieties bred to give protection against fungal diseases. £17. If you need a cheap quality red snap it up in multiple bottles. This should fly out the door.

RAEBURN WINES

We had Murray, as always, cheerfully pouring for the crowds at Raeburn’s rightly popular table. There were some serious crackers on show here, and I bought the Palaverga below, among the bottles I took home from the shop after the tasting. These are available at Cork & Cask, but of course Raeburns have a shop in Stockbridge if you are down in that part of the city.

Is the René Leclerc Murray Mcdougal’s favourite?

Old Vine Chenin Blanc 2023, Die Kluise (South Africa)

This is one of Raeburn’s house wines, there being a red made from Cinsaut to accompany it. The old bush vines (possibly Swartland, but I’m not sure) are farmed organically. The wine is really tasty, with a waxy texture and fresh peach fruit topped-off with a hint of almond essence and pear. Excellent value at £25.

Gavi Yellow Label, La Mesma (Piemonte, Italy)

Gavi, in eastern Piemonte, has had to work hard to get a quality reputation. When the appellation’s “G” was added to the DOC in 1998, people seemed a bit underwhelmed by these white wines, made from Cortese, but this wine is proof of its potential. The fruit comes off limestone and red clay and underwent an ambient fermentation. It’s an excellent, quite savoury, Gavi. £25

Same River Twice Orange, Heliocentric Wines (Rhône, France)

This is a brand, created by James Dunstan, to sell wines from the wider Southern Rhône, but labelled as Vin de France. All the wines are sourced from small producers with the intention of expressing their individual terroirs. They are also pretty much natural wines, and in this case biodynamic. This skin-contact wine comes from the Ventoux Region, and is made from a blend of Rolle (aka Vermentino in Italy), with some Grenache Blanc and Muscat. It sees a week on skins, long enough to give it a golden colour, but the texture is more like a gentle Darjeeling tannin rather than the full-on Georgian black builder’s tea tannin. £24

Susucaru Rosato 2024, Frank Cornelissen (Sicily, Italy)

I didn’t taste this at the table because I know this vintage and have more at home. But my wallet has spoken. This Etna pink blends both red and white varieties Malvasia, Moscadella, Insolia and Nerello Mascalese. I’d call it a Rosato that verges towards a light red. It’s a natural wine but Frank does add a touch of sulphur these days. Expect a refreshing red-fruited wine that does carry 13.5% alcohol, and goes well with food. The tasting booklet lists this at £30, Cork & Cask’s web site at £32.

Bourgogne Rouge 2018, René Leclerc (Burgundy, France)

The Leclercs are in Gevrey, and I must admit I do get confused by the Leclerc family members here. The René Leclerc domaine consists of 12-ha which are farmed without interventions and the wines are all “natural wines”. François is now at the helm. The grapes go into a very old (1951) basket press for a short and gentle three hours, and old oak is the medium for ageing. The Bourgogne Rouge is traditional in the very best sense, a chance to drink the kind of Red Burgundy I discovered in the mid-1980s, when it was on song that is. Smooth and almost silky fruit and more depth than you expect from this level. But then it is a 2018, ready now but no rush if you like “tertiary”. £37

Pelaverga Speziale, Verduno DOC 2021, Fratelli Alessandria (Piemonte, Italy)

Out of all the Piemontese wines on show, it was this rare variety I was most taken with. Pelaverga is usually a second-string blending variety, but this estate has been bottling it on its own since 1973 under its own DOC. It’s fermented in stainless steel after a short maceration and then it goes into a mix of steel and concrete. It’s fresh, with gorgeous strawberry scents. Raspberry enters on the palate and the finish has a white pepper hit. A lighter red from its flavour profile, but 13.5% alcohol could surprise the unwary. One rests in my cellar perhaps for autumn. £37

Bardolino Classico Rosso 2024, Raval (Verona, Italy)

Bardolino sits to the east of Lake Garda, with the superior Classico zone in the hills which tumble down to the lake. When I was young Bardolino came with a screwcap, which back then meant cheap and not necessarily very cheerful. Much has changed. This is a simple wine, but it has both charm and a little depth. I would actually recommend trying this to prove to yourself that prejudice is hard to erode yet it can be done. A mix of red and darker fruits are balanced by a nice crispness. £22

Saumur-Champigny Rococo 2021, Bruno Dubois (Loire, France)

There are other more famous names making Saumur-Champigny, but Bruno Dubois makes biodynamic wines which express his terroirs no less well. This is a small domaine of 3.5-ha, all old vine stock. There’s a bit of agroforestry and plenty of regenerative agriculture above the limestone tufa soils. This is a man who worked for Marcel Lapierre in Beaujolais, so he has pedigree.

Like all Bruno’s reds, Rococo is a 100% natural wine with no added sulphur. The grapes are macerated and fermented in concrete to make a wine that is smooth, fresh, with the elegance and blackcurrant fruit of ripe, old vine, Cabernet Franc. A balanced 12.5% abv makes it the complete package. £35

Kin Shiraz 2022, Alkina Wines (Barossa, Australia)

If I’d have taken a small suitcase, I’d have bought a bottle of this this, on account of the bang for your buck it gives you. Alkina is a fairly large (43 ha) estate in the Barossa (South Australia), but they make biodynamic wines from fruit dating back to original 1950s plantings. The Shiraz fruit for Kin (an “old vine” project) is fermented in concrete tulips, all but around 15% being whole bunches. Additionally, about 5% from a vineyard on clay goes into oak foudre. Everything is blended after six months. It is very Australian in its voluptuousness, but it has also got structure too. A tasty varietal which will age further, or just let it breath in a nice big glass I would say. Even in my tiny tasting glass its potential was evident. 14.2% abv, £24

It’s worth noting that I bought the Alkina Kin Field White 2019 made in Georgian Qvevri from Raeburns after tasting it at the first Clay Wine Fair in 2025. That wine was somewhat more expensive, but it was exceptional.

Posted in Artisan Wines, Australian Wine, Austrian Wine, Burgundy, Italian Wine, Loire, Natural Wine, Piemonte, Rhone, Sicily, South African Wines, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Festivals, Wine Merchants, Wine Shops, Wine Tastings | Tagged Aerobulles Chenin Vouvray Complices de la Loire, Alessandria Pelaverga Speziale Verduno 2021, Alkina Wines Kin Shiraz 2022 Barossa, Bardolino Classico Raval, Cork & Cask Summer Fair 2026 Pt 1), Die Kluise Old Vine Chenin Blanc, Element Wines, Frank Cornelissen Susucaru Rosato 2024, La Masma Gavi Yellow Label, Lambrusco Bianco Biancospino, Lambrusco Fangareggi, Martin Diwald Wagram, Raeburn Fine Wines, Raeburn House Wines Die Kluise, René Leclerc Bourgogne Rouge 2018, Same River Twice Orange Heliocentric Wines, Saumur-Champigny Rococo Bruno Dubois, Tenuta Il Nespolo Skin Contact Muscat, Vignerons d'Estezargues Cuvée Z, Weingut Diwald Riesling Fuchsentanz | Leave a comment

Recent Wines April 2026 (Part 2)

Posted on 25/05/2026 by dccrossley

For the second part of April’s wines, we begin with three very different French classics, a Condrieu, an Alsace Riesling and a Saint-Emilion. Then we repeat Part 1 with another Baden Spätburgunder (a different producer), followed by a wine from California’s Napa Valley (from a producer I like a lot but drink too little from), and to round it off, another fun wine from the Mantler family in Austria. It might not be in quite the same league as the wines which precede it, but I need to find more wines like this if I am to keep buying the odd bottle of the Californian, or suchlike, which comes before it.

Condrieu “Le Grand Vallon” 2019, François Villard (Northern Rhône, France)

I definitely had a crush on Condrieu in my twenties, largely because, having discovered the wines of Georges Vernay via Yapp Brothers, I got to spend a morning with Georges at his winery on my first visit to the Northern Rhône. Viognier usually makes wines which are rich and flamboyant, at least it did back then. Just the thing to catch the palate of someone new to the breadth of flavours out there to discover.

François Villard first came to my attention somewhat later, when he started the operation called Les Vins de Vienne, along with Yves Cuilleron and Pierre Gaillard, producing wine initially from Seyssuel, that lost enclave of viticulture north of Vienne, where the schist slopes mirror those of the Côte-Rôtie a little further south.

I moved away from Condrieu when the alcohol began to rise to a level where, by the 1990s, I felt that the wines could be quite out of balance. There were always people who made less assertive wines from the Viognier grape, but they were often entry level varietal wines like Stéphane Ogier’s Côtes du Rhône version, but I think nowadays the pendulum has swung back more generally, bringing more freshness and less flab.

Villard now farms a whopping 40 hectares in total, not bad for someone who began life as a chef, not a winemaker, finding his oeuvre in this profession in 1988. Around 7.5ha are in Condrieu itself. Everything is organic and all of his wines have a real focus, I find. Vallon is a vineyard in the south of the appellation at St-Pierre-de-Boeuf. It has an East-Northeast aspect, which makes it cooler. Granite with Gneiss gives the wine extra precision, and like it or not I’m going to say that this cuvée majors on minerality. It has a lovely poise. Thing is, this does rock 14% alcohol, but you don’t think about that. Everything is nicely balanced.

This was unquestionably a lovely bottle, which I would say seems to be approaching full maturity. This vintage will no longer be available, but for a more recent one try Lay & Wheeler.

Riesling Cuvée Frédéric Emile 2005, Maison Trimbach (Alsace, France)

This is sadly the last of a string of CFE which I bought many years ago, which had made a fairly decent horizontal. Without fail they have been lovely wines, whatever the vintage. I have a cellar which has never had so few wines from Alsace right now, and yet they are among my favourite wines from France. The reason? I think a combination of the fact that Alsace doesn’t seem to ring the bell for a lot of younger retailers who are not as enthused about the new wave of exciting growers as the old school were about the classics, of which Frédérick Emile is undoubtedly one. They used to say Alsace was the wine beloved of the trade only, but even the trade seems largely disinterested (with notable exceptions like Tutto, Gergovie and Wines UTB).

It comes from two sites within the Osterberg and Geisberg Grand Crus, both which sit above Ribeauvillé, on steep slopes once carved by the now far smaller Strengbach stream. The Riesling vines grow on a mix of marl, sandstone and limestone. The wine is mellow on the nose. We have scents of stone fruit and lime citrus, with just a faint hint of petrol. The palate is dry but with a touch of rounded honey on the finish.

This 2005 is probably at or around its peak for those who want to experience a mellow, aged, Alsace Riesling, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were capable, in a good cellar, of longer ageing. Certainly, it is showing tertiary elements and complexity but perhaps it has a little more to give.

If you are tempted to look for some ’05 try Hedonism in Mayfair (£110). All my CFE has come from Berry Brothers so check them out too.

Virginie de Valandraud Saint-Emilion Grand Cru 2016 (Bordeaux, France)

It’s funny how nostalgia grabs you as you get older, listening to music from your teens or re-reading books you read back then. I wasn’t exactly drinking Saint-Emilion in my teens, but I guess you could say I drank a lot of it in my “wine teens”. My first visit to the town and region was probably around the age of twenty-four, maybe twenty-five, and it was already a red staple at home by then. Oddly enough, a lot of it was labelled as “Grand Cru”, despite the relative meaningless statement that is, neither denoting a specific vineyard as in Burgundy, nor even a specific level of quality.

This wine is altogether different. Château de Valandraud was the original Saint-Emilion garage wine, created from a 0.6 hectare-plot and made in a shed, at a time when Parkerisation was at a peak and the “va va voom” of souped-up Merlot was highly sought after. At the time it was easy for those brought up on the savoury qualities of 11% Haut-Médoc to turn our noses up. Yet…

The Valandraud estate today boasts a little under nine hectares of vines across Saint-Emilion. Jean-Luc Thunevin created what is effectively Valandraud’s second wine in 1992, with help from the late Michel Rolland, and naming it after his daughter, Virginie. It is mostly made from Merlot (around 65% in 2016), with the remainder Cabernet Franc (25%) and Cabernet Sauvignon (5%). This vintage the final 5% was 4% Malbec and 1% Carmenère. Since 1997 all the grapes have been sourced from Valandraud’s own vines.

It is a wine, true to type, aged in 100% new French oak. It is velvet-smooth, fruity and rich (with 14.5% abv). The fruit is dark (Blueberry and blackberry) and is lifted by the scent of violets. From a very good vintage here, at ten years old this tastes rich, but elegant, if perhaps a little linear. It has had good reviews. Generally, people would say that it is still young, though drinking it now does reveal an attractive wine and perhaps it was not too young to enjoy it. Another decade will doubtless reveal more nuance, but then again, that Merlot fruit is tasty. À la récherche du temps perdu for me, and in that respect, I enjoyed it very much.

Hedonism sells the 2019 for £42 and the 2015 for £130. Vinatis lists this 2016 for £45. This bottle came, via a friend, from Lay & Wheeler. I can’t see the ’16 listed, but the 2009, right at the end of its drinking window, is online at £50/bottle.

It’s worth stopping a moment to think about those prices. A lot of Bordeaux is greatly over -priced, yet £50 or not far off is what you can pay now for some brand new but very hyped natural wines from winemakers who arrived at a winery only yesterday. Natural wine is usually priced according to the economics of a tiny production, along with demand (even if that demand is somewhat dictated by hype). This particular wine isn’t what I’d call cheap, but it only goes to illustrate how confusing wine prices can be.

Oberrotweil Spätburgunder 2022, Peter Wagner (Baden, Germany)

Peter Wagner is based at Vogtsburg-Oberrotweil, where he farms eight hectares at the heart of the Kaiserstuhl. This is a famous outcrop of volcanic terrain which sits above the Rhîne near Freiburg im Breisgau on the German side of the river, and broadly opposite Colmar in Alsace. A decade ago, Wagner started out with just one hectare of vines, and he has been able to grow because of the success and reputation he has achieved through his careful biodynamic methods.

He is now an unashamedly natural winemaker in a region where such methods were slower to take off than in some others. This is a “village wine”, made using 40% whole bunches in the fermentation. Ageing is in oak for around sixteen months on the lees.

It has a genuine freshness, but also structure which suggests it may be a few years away from maturity. That said, what you get now is delicious cherry and raspberry fruit, smooth and sensual, but kept on the track through good acidity. There’s also a tasty twist on the spicy finish. In many ways, Germany seems to do so well at this level and Baden is well capable of providing more for your money than Burgundy now in the £20-£30 range.

This bottle came from Feral Art & Vin in Bordeaux. Ripleys is the UK importer and last time I looked they had it for £28. It seems increasingly rare to see wines comparably priced in the UK and France. Shocking almost.

Yount Mill Vineyard Pinot Meunier 2019, Keep Wines (California, USA)

Keep Wines may be based in Oakville, right in the centre of the Napa Valley, but they do not make typical “Napa” wines. This isn’t really surprising. The team here is Jack Roberts, who worked at Matthiason, and his partner Johanna Jensen (ex-Scholium and Broc Cellars). These are minimal input natural wines. Frankly I’d recommend anything they make, but I have a soft spot for their Pinot Meunier. Mind you, it’s a while since I’ve had one.

I doubt that Meunier is abundant in Napa. The grapes come from a well-known site (Yount Mill) on alluvial soils. It’s made with 20% whole clusters, gently pressed into neutral oak. Natural here means all the usual restraints (no fining or filtration etc), and just a tiny addition of sulphur.

It’s an undeniably gentle wine which would surprise many, although the 12% on the label is a big clue. The acidity comes by way of delicious fruit acids which are very concentrated with raspberry, redcurrants and sweet ripe cherry. That’s all set off with a bouquet of violets and lavender. Stunning, seriously so. I’d recommend serving it cool.

The UK importer for Keep Wines is Nekter Wines. I was lucky to be able to pop into the new Nekter Deli not far from Liverpool Street Station last October, where I grabbed this for £37. Not cheap in real terms, but pretty well priced for a quality Napa wine. I can highly recommend this bottle, and also the great range they have in the deli, both to drink in with food, or to take away. Plenty of wines you’ll be pushed to find elsewhere. Nekter has a focus on mostly what people used to call New World wines, but their Californian range is especially worth mining.

Dry Rosé 2025, Familie Mantler (Niederösterreich, Austria)

And now for something completely different, as they say. In March I tried the Mantler Family Gemischter Satz blend, and it was pretty tasty, despite a few raised eyebrows from parts of the wine fraternity, who mostly wondered what they had to spray the vines with to knock out a wine like that for under a tenner. Someone working for the importer, however, suggested I try this Rosé as well, and I could hardly refuse. I’m not afraid to admit that anything remotely pleasurable at that kind of price is most welcome in my house in the current economic climate.

So, does this pink match expectations based on that white blend? I’d say it more than does. It’s a varietal Zweigelt made from fruit grown across Northeastern Austria, although the family’s base is at Ebersbrunn, near the eastern border of Kamptal. It is labelled as a simple Qaulitätswein, and makes no claims to be in any way a natural wine. This might make all the difference to some readers, which is fair enough. But it notably does state “vegan-friendly” on the bottle.

Let’s not go overboard here. It is crisp with a little bit of a CO2 prickle. It does seem to burst with very nice and pretty concentrated strawberry fruit. Not complex, of course, but it gives the kind of pleasure you’d expect from a Vinho Verde or a Txacoli from the Basque Region. Or indeed a Gemischter Satz supped at a Heuriger on a long summer’s evening on the edge of Vienna. I will never forget a simple but appealing Zweigelt Rosé supped with lunch on the terrace of the Gasthof Prankl, overlooking the Danube at Spitz. I’m no wine snob, and wouldn’t be even if the wine budget were bigger. This is just what you want for a picnic, and at only 11.5% it has other advantages too. You can drink a bottle each.

This cost me £9.50 from The Wine Society and right now it’s still in stock.

Posted in Alsace, Artisan Wines, Austrian Wine, Californian Wine, German Wine, Natural Wine, North American Wine, Rhone, Rosé Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies | Tagged #theglouthatbindsus, Alsace Riesling, Baden Spätburgunder, Baden Wine, Condrieu, Condrieu Le Grand Vallon 2019 Villard, Familie Mantler Dry Rosé 2025, François Villard Condrieu, Jack Roberts & Johanna Jensen Keep Wines, Keep Wines Oakville Napa Valley, Maison Trimbach Alsace, Mantler Family Wines Niederösterreich, Oberrotweil Spätburgunder 2022 Peter Wagner, Peter Wagner Baden, Pinot Meunier in Napa Valley, Recent Wines April 2026 Pt 2, Saint-Emilion, Trimbach Cuvée Frédéric Emile 2005, Virginie de Valandraud 2016, Yount Mill Vineyard Pinot Meunier 2019 Keep Wines | Leave a comment

More from Paradise Lost – Alex Diggins’s Article in The Observer

Posted on 21/05/2026 by dccrossley

Back in June 2021 I wrote an article called Paradise Lost, about the deaths from suicide of two highly regarded winemakers in France. The article was difficult to write at the time. Both men were favourite producers of mine, and one of them I had seen not so long before it happened.

Journalist Alex Diggins got in touch with me (along with others including Doug Wregg of Les Caves de Pyrene) earlier this year to talk about that article, and the wider crisis affecting especially French winemakers. The article he was writing has now appeared in The Observer Newspaper. It’s a very interesting article, if somewhat sad to read for anyone who has any connection with some of those individuals Alex talks about, but it also throws yet more light on the crisis facing winemakers in France, which is one of weather, bureaucracy, and economics. It is also a crisis of culture as well.

As Alex said I can share the article “far and wide”, I thought I’d put it up here for all to read.

The link is here.

I have also written about wine lovers and their expectations when visiting a producer. This article can only further reinforce my pleas to respect their time, their immense workload (and that’s just on the computer), and their diminishing production (every bottle opened to taste is a chunk of their profit). If you truly love wine, consider giving the small producers a break, much as a cellar visit no doubt enhances that passion.

Posted in Artisan Wines, Jura, Natural Wine, Savoie Wine, Wine, Wine and Health, Wine Writing | Tagged Alex Diggins Death Among the Grapevines, Alex Diggins Journalist, French Wine Crisis, French Wine Culture Crisis, Problems Facing Winemakers | Leave a comment

Recent Wines April 2026 (Part 1) #theglouthatbindsus

Posted on 19/05/2026 by dccrossley

April does seem such a long time ago now. Maybe it has something to do with the weather. I left Scotland towards the end of last month feeling it was quite warm, and London, and then Southwest France were even warmer (t-shirt weather!). Now winter seems to have returned, and those balmy spring days when the garden was blooming and the birds were singing, have hidden themselves away. Hopefully not for long.

If travel has relaxed me, perhaps that’s why I’d pretty much forgotten what we drank at home in April, but they do seem like “springtime wines” on the whole. Here, in Part 1, we have a Baden Spätburgunder, White Rioja, a stunning German Sekt, a sappy light red from Alsace, an English Chardonnay and, to mark the month’s half way point, a rather fancy Champagne.

Talrain Blauer Spätburgunder 2021, Ziereisen (Baden, Germany)

I guess most people, when thinking of Baden, conjure up the vineyards around the Kaiserstuhl, near Freiburg-im-Breisgau, but the region stretches a long way north and a long way south. In that latter case, right down to the Swiss border. Here, we are in Markgraflerland. Hanspeter Ziereisen is based at Efringen-Kirchen, just kilometres from the borders of both France and Switzerland.

Hanspeter makes glorious wines, including in my humble opinion, the greatest Chasselas in the world (here called Gutedel). But it is his Pinot Noir reds which are the summit of his winemaking. Here, we have an example of why masters like Hanspeter make exemplary entry-level wines to sit alongside the greats.

Pinot Noir is grown at around 500 masl, below the forests, on iron-rich soils of limestone and clay. The forests are important for the terroir. They provide both a wind break and create a slightly warmer microclimate. This natural wine spent twenty months in oak and is of course bottled with no manipulations. The pure cherry red colour is beautiful, almost translucent. It is effectively a velvet cherry juice, with added richness, and the underlying oak gives almost a hint of sweetness. Yet we just have 12% alcohol, and it has more freshness than you’d expect from a wine nearly five years old.

I am a very big fan of Ziereisen, as many probably know. Hanspeter and Edel are such a fantastic couple that it would be hard not to like their wines, but they do happen to be one of my favourite German estates. Although the top wines are a lot more expensive than they were, one can be happy to find entry level wines as good as this. Ziereisen is imported to the UK by Ripley Wines but this bottle is from a selection I purchased from The Wine Society, where it cost me just £21.50.

Rioja Blanco “Mi Lugar” 2021, Dominio de Queirón (Rioja, Spain)

This wine is also from 2021, as is the next. This, in fact, is a perfect example of the benefit of listening to a recommendation from a wine shop. When I was younger, I was a little wary of a recommendation from the shop floor. I perhaps cynically thought that sometimes there was a desire to shift a wine. As I’ve got older, I’ve come to know whose palate I trust, and in this case the wine was purchased in one of the half-dozen shops I can say has never given me a bad one.

Mi Lugar is 100% Tempranillo Blanco, which the label suggests was actually discovered, as a mutation, on the Queirón estate, run by Gabriel Perez in Rioja Oriental. This sub-region is always portrayed as being at lower altitude and warmer than the other Rioja sub-regions, but Queirón’s vineyards are at around 640 masl. This allows slower pipening, and the fruit is picked at dawn to retain the white grapes’ acidity.

Fermented using indigenous yeasts, the grapes see one week on skins and then one week as just free-run juice. Around 85% of the wine stays in barrel, ageing six months on the fine lees. The remaining 15% sees six months on lees in clay Tinajas. It is given a further six months in bottle before shipping.

Stone fruit aromas mingle with herbs (fennel and thyme for me). The palate has a lovely touch of honey with a bit of nuttiness. The oak is present but gentle. I liked it a lot, enough to buy it again for definite. £24 from The Solent Cellar via importer Boutinot.

Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut 2021, Sekthaus Singer-Fischer (Rheinhessen, Germany)

It has been said a lot lately that there is something of a Sekt revival in Germany. It isn’t led by the big old sekt houses, but is rather being driven by winemakers, hence “Winzersekt”, the parallel to Grower Champagne. The similarity is perhaps accentuated on a number of levels. One being the use of some French labelling, the other in the number of these wines which focus on Chardonnay. Here, Chardonnay is blended with 20% Weissburgunder (aka Pinot Blanc).

Lena Singer-Fischer (aka lena-macht-sekt for Insta devotees) makes her sekt at Ingelheim, on the Rhine. This wine is dosed at just 2g/l and has spent a little under two-and-a-half years on lees (from bottling in August 2022 to disgorgement in January 2025), following a spontaneous fermentation.

This is frankly superb, an absolute joy to drink and very fine. It has a perfect balance of salinity and fruit, with a developing autolytic character. It is steely and dry, but will mature for sure. It is a natural wine, with no chemical inputs. It also has a boldness to it, perhaps because of its natural production with nothing to mask it. Lena has been described by friends who know German wine as a “rising star” and although this is my first of her wines, I have no reason whatsoever to doubt it.

Also from Solent Cellar. It cost around £32, but may now be out of stock. Whether they feel able to get more will largely be a reflection on their customer base, because I know Simon and Heather thought as highly of this as I did (and indeed a few writers on German wines who contacted me after it appeared on IG). Boutinot is once again the importer, perhaps worthy of note.

Complètement Red [XXIII], Lambert Spielmann (Alsace, France)

I have had to cut back on my Spielmann purchases…sadly. His wines are becoming as relatively expensive in the UK as olive oil has become in UK supermarkets in relation to its shelf price in Italy (cf recent comments on this subject by Luciano Berio). Still, when I see a bottle it’s hard to resist. Lambert’s Domaine in Black is very much at the cutting edge of the exciting Alsace natural wine scene.

This particular cuvée is 100% Pinot Noir, coming from 25-year-old vines on sandstone at Nothalten (west of Epfig, a part of Northern Alsace once derided by English writers). The grapes are whole-bunch fermented for ten days and pressed into demi-muids and vats.

One thing stands out in this wine, wild cherry. Lambert’s regenerative farming means his vines are surrounded by nature. The fruit is bright and concentrated, but the whole vibe of the wine, from bouquet to palate, says “wild”. There are a few more earthy notes and it remains just the right side of the volatility fence, but you would probably call it edgy…as well as thrilling.

Lambert uses zero synthetic chemicals, zero additives, including zero sulphur. For me, this is as wonderful as its bright label. The winemaker always recommends a track to listen to when drinking the wine (look for “à boire en écoutant…”). I wouldn’t say it will change your perceptions of what’s in the glass, but it’s fun and I always enjoy discovering new music, usually with a punky bent. This time it’s a track called “Creatures of the Night” by Canadian psychobilly band, The Creepshow.

Kindly purchased by Cork & Cask in Edinburgh, the next vintage (2024) is around £40 via importer Tutto Wines.

Salt Éire MV (2022/23), Sugrue South Downs (Sussex, England)

This is another collaboration between the Three Musketeers of Dominic Henshaw (Indigo Wines), Dr Jamie Goode and Daniel Primack (Zalto UK), their first with Dermot Sugrue at his new solo base in Sussex. It’s a multi-vintage Chardonnay, taken from a solera which I’m guessing will one day help create a remarkable future icon of English Sparkling Wine to rival Champagne’s finest, if I know Dermot.

Around 60% of this cuvée is from 2022, the other 40% from 2023. It comes from the Home Vineyard, which is near Wivelsfield (close to Hayward’s Heath, up over the South Downs). The colour is a pale yellow-gold. The nose has remarkable finesse, both in its fruit and lifted salinity. It’s the mineral salinity on the palate that hits first, but then the concentrated fruit comes in. Lemon-lime, nectarine, pineapple. It’s alive, vibrant, exciting and irresistible. It’s young, with a tautness I like, but it will mature, of that I am sure.

This cost me £30 from Communiqué Wines (Stockbridge, Edn). The agent is Indigo Wines and the current edition (which may be a second release) is listed by The Sourcing Table (Peckham Rye) for £31.

Fleur de Passion 2006, Champagne Diebolt-Valois (Champagne, France)

Jacques Diebolt is very much admired in Champagne as one of the original “Growers” whose wines established the idea that artisans could make wines every bit as good as the Houses. The family farms around ten hectares of vines based at Cramant, on the Côte des Blancs. In fact, records show them farming at nearby Cuis in the fifteenth century, and at Cramant since the late 1800s. Jacques is now joined by his children, Arnaud and Isabelle, who continue his work.

For some, the Diebolt-Valois hallmark is elegance and finesse, yet with the prestige cuvée we have a different approach. Stainless steel gives way to small oak for fermentation, and malolactic is avoided. The grapes themselves come from top sites within the estate. Although they will vary, lieu-dits such as Goutte d’Or, Bouzons and Gros Monts, and perhaps Pimonts, are usually present. All are fermented separately before final blending is decided.

The wood doesn’t make this a powerful wine. I’d say it retains elegance and finesse, although I’ve drunk a lot of wines from this vintage from the Côte des Blancs, and most started off so steely they needed a good time in the cellar. Among the subtle notes I found in this bottle were lemon, orange, honey and peach, and certainly complexity. Yet even at twenty years old, it will still age further. I found it fantastic, but then I am not drinking the shed loads of prestige Champagnes I perhaps once was, and I don’t doubt a certain nostalgia crept in for a different time (on the drinking front, I should stress).

This bottle was actually a replacement for a bottle that Feral Art & Vin (Bordeaux) was unable to supply last year (a generous replacement). If you want this vintage look at folks like Seckfords or Justerinis. In bond you might find a later vintage, I saw 2014 for about £100 a bottle (plus duty and tax).

Posted in Alsace, Artisan Wines, Champagne, English Wine, German Wine, Natural Wine, Rioja, Spanish Wine, Sparkling Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Merchants | Tagged #theglouthatbindsus, Artisan Sekt, Baden Wine, Champagne Diebolt-Valois Cramant, Dermot Sugrue Sussex, Diebolt-Valois Fleur de Passion 2006, Dominio de Queiron Rioja, Lambert Spielmann Completement Red 2023, Lambert Spielmann Domaine in Black, Lena Singer-Fischer Sekt, lenamachtsekt, Recent Wines April 2026 Pt 1, Rheinhessen Sekt, Rioja Blanco Mi Lugar Dominio de Queiron, Sekthaus Singer-Fischer Rheinhessen, Singer-Fischer Blanc de Blancs 2021, Sugrue South Downs Salt Eire MV, Talrain Blauer Spatburgunder 2021, Ziereisen Baden, Ziereisen Markgraflerland | Leave a comment

A Holiday, A Producer, A Wine – Discovering La Voile from Domaine Jeandaugé in Gascony

Posted on 11/05/2026 by dccrossley

There is no denying that France has more than its fair share of profoundly beautiful regions. I guess that’s why they call them La France Profonde. Poor jokes aside, there are many regions that match the Gers for scenery, architecture, food and other elements that make up what they do so well in France and perhaps far less well in the UK: Patrimonie. That said, not many do it noticeably better. Part of the cultural landscape of France is wine (well, cider in Brittany and Normandy and beer in the north, of course). Like Charentes to the north, Gers, is well-known for alcohol, but we are talking brandy, not wine.

Specifically, we are in Armagnac country. We were staying in a village near the town of Condom, which has caused me a few issues when telling people where I’ve been who have never heard of the place. Hardly surprising because I do remember way back as a teenager that the odd friend who passed through thought it would be fun to send all their mates a postcard with the town’s name emblazoned across the front.

In truth, Condom is an historic town, famous for its connection with the Three Musketeers (there’s a statue of them along with their buddy, D’Artagnan, by the Cathedral), and it is also on one of the main Pilgrim routes which wind through France towards the Pyrenees and on to Santiago de Compostella. As an aside, I was quite surprised at just how many “pilgrims” we saw along the route and although I’m not religious, it is quite a tempting option for someone who loves walking as much as I do.

Well, D’Artagnan is definitely the one second from the right, and Porthos far right, but as for the others?

The vines which surround Condom are not all for Armagnac (here we are in its Ténarèze sub-region), nor indeed for the equally popular, at least in these parts, Floc de Gascogne (think Pineau des Charentes, Ratafia de Champagne or Macvin, it’s the same idea). We also have some wine of which most goes out under the Côtes de Gascogne IGP. To be fair, the Plaimont Co-operative is making some excellent and underrated wines under this designation, and there are other family domaines doing the same. But there are, even down here, natural wine pioneers.

One of them is making a wine so good I took an unusual step of devoting an article to him on the basis of just one bottle. I did try to visit Sébastien Fezas but with just a couple of days of the trip left we could not find a mutually compatible window.

Sébastien runs the family Domaine Jeandaugé, at Courrensan, just a short drive southwest of Condom. He inherited a good 28 hectares, which have belonged to the family for well over a century, back in 2012. He has done what is common now, and often the only way to make a living, which is to end sending grapes to the local co-op and to bottle his production. That said, Sébastien feels that 28ha is way too much for him to process working the way he does (he thinks 15ha might be his optimum according to the article I mention at the end of this piece). He has therefore become something of a prize source for any bio producers in the wider region wishing to grab the odd batch of fruit.

Of course, Sébastien is going much further than merely bottling his crop, as you no doubt deduced, with a concentration on biodynamics alongside regenerative farming, including bees and sheep, and a future interest in agroforestry. He is totally behind natural winemaking, so that as far as I know none of his cuvées now have any added sulphur alongside all the other non-interventions you would expect. He grows local stalwarts Colombard, Ugni Blanc, Gros Manseng and Tannat along with Chardonnay and Syrah, plus small quantities of what Sébastien calls other Gascon heritage varieties.

The wine I found so spectacularly good was called La Voile. It is pictured above. As you will have guessed from the name, it’s a wine made in an oxidative style without any topping-up of the barrels. It comprises 100% Chardonnay. I’d call it lightly oxidised, certainly not a “vin jaune” in a literal sense. The only other oxidative Chardonnay I have drunk regularly is Brad Hickey’s amazing “Bloom” (Brash Higgins Wines, South Australia).

It is a touch lighter than that. More saline and mineral, and fresh as it’s possible to imagine despite one-and-a-half years on lees, although it does have an underlying but not very obtrusive nutty element. Of course, there are other sous-voile wines made in France outside the Jura region, Domaine Plageole’s Mauzac version over in Gaillac being perhaps the best-known, but I will need reminding if any are made from Chardonnay, which Brad Hickey has already demonstrated adapts well to the process.

Naturally I had the advantage of downing a bottle with the freshest roasted vegetables, going long on both colours of in-season asparagus, from the markets of the local bastide towns (there is literally a market worth a detour on every day within a twenty-minute drive of the village where we were staying).

I thought this was one of the most profound wines I’ve drunk so far in 2026. I went back to the wonderful wine shop which had recommended it, De La Terre au Verre in Lectoure, three days later but they had sold out. So, I brought back Partie Fine instead (this 2023 is 100% Colombard, some previous vintages have contained 20% Ugni Blanc). I was travelling very light and even one bottle was hard to stuff into my sac, but I’d have grabbed a Tannat (made by gentle infusion to avoid the variety’s usually ferocious tannins) as well had there been space.

A few of Sébastien’s wines are available in the UK. Whether they have them now, I’m not sure, but Les Caves de Pyrene certainly had three cuvées back in 2023 (Doug wrote about them on the “Doug Decants” blog in September that year). Sipp Wines also lists three on their web site, although one is sold out. The problem as always is the cost of wine in the UK, post-Brexit. “La Voile” is unavailable here but cost me 24€ in France. The Colombard “Partie Fine” cost me just 12€ at De La Terre au Verre in Lectoure (a great shop, with a wide selection of local and other bio wines should you be passing close to Lectoure), but Sipp lists it for £24.75. I’m afraid that’s the Brexit benefit you voted for down in England because paying double the French price here is pretty much par for the course across the board now.

That said, I’d be very happy to pay £24 for the Tannat, which Sipp lists, were I able to find it on a retail shelf. La Voile would, if retailed for twice the 24 Euros I paid, be out of my price range these days, I’m sad to say.

Christina Rasmussen visited Sébastien a few years ago for Littlewine, and wrote a far more detailed article about that visit. She was definitely as impressed as I was, and with the advantage of a visit to the vines and winery, and a tasting. If you are moved to read more about a man who I am pretty sure makes an amazing range of natural, zero-sulphur, wines, search on littlewine.io. It probably won’t be too long before that bottle of Colombard appears in one of my Recent Wines articles. Of course, the Chardonnay will make an appearance in June.

Of course, the moral of the story? Several. First, it is still possible to make stunning new discoveries on holiday, even in a wine region where you might not be expecting to. Second, listening to the advice of a wine shop owner holds good for when travelling abroad as much as when buying wine in the UK. Independent retailers (wines, books, records, they’re all the same) are usually passionate about what they sell. Oh, and thirdly, take a bigger suitcase.

De La Terre au Verre (Romain Bourlot) is at 25 rue Nationale, 32700 Lectoure.

Best Markets: Lectoure (Fri), Auch (Sat), Fleurance (Tues).

In Lectoure do not miss the “Village Brocante” at the bottom of the hill on the rue Nationale.

Village Brocante, Lectoure

We ate in several nice places during our week in the Gers but the best, very highly recommended, is Racinette (the new version of Racine) at 6 rue Fontélie, Lectoure (by the Cathedral). The food is marked by a delicacy that does not always come with Gascon cuisine. Exceptional. Booking absolutely essential.

Racinette Selection Lunch (3 courses) with wine and coffee 86€ for two

Lectoure, Auch and Fleurance, a delight for the lover of a French market

At the other end of the scale to our 24€ La Voile, Domaine de Mirail makes organic Côtes de Gascogne retailing for around 9€, or around 5€/glass in a couple of restaurants we dined in. Clean and tasty, good value in its French context.

Posted in Artisan Wines, biodynamic wine, Natural Wine, Regenerative Viticulture, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Shops, Wine Travel, Wines of Southwest France, | Tagged De La Terre au Verre Lectoure, Domaine Jeandaugé Courrensan, French Sous Voile from Gascony, Gascon Wine, La Voile Chardonnay 2021 Gascony, Littlewine on Domaine Jeandaugé Gers, Natural Wine, Natural Wine in Gascony, Romain Bourlot Wine Merchant, Sébastien Fazas Gers, Wine of the Gers, Wine Shop Lectoure | Leave a comment

Recent Wines March 2026 (Part 2) #theglouthatbindsus

Posted on 22/04/2026 by dccrossley

Finishing off March, we have a selection that you may be hard pushed to call boring, unless you are getting fed up with the way my drinking pings around like a pinball machine. Except that all of these six wines here are from Europe. Come to think of it, so were all six wines in Part 1. I must try to rectify that. Although I can’t promise to do so in my next Recent Wines article, it has been duly noted.

Here we are heading to Burgundy’s Côte d’Or, Niederösterreich, Moravia, Valtellina, Leicestershire and Lublin (which you are forgiven if you don’t know that Lublin is in Poland). After my lengthy introductory waffle in Part 1, let’s head straight in…

Savigny-Lès-Beaune Rouge 2015, Le Grappin (Burgundy, France)

I was lucky to get to know Andrew and Emma’s wines from their first vintage, and I managed to get to their tastings quite regularly when I lived in England. I am sad that I can no longer get to these because I have a very strong attachment to the wines on many levels. I still buy their less expensive wines when a retailer is astute enough to stock them, but the Côte d’Or wines are just a bit out of my price range now, although in a Burgundian context you wouldn’t call them expensive. The cellar still contains a few, but is very much depleted.

This is actually a single site wine. It was made from sixty-year-old vines from “Aux Fournaux”, which is a vineyard adjacent to the edge of Pernand’s “Les Basses Vergelesses”, although inside the Savigny border. This swathe of land is a good hunting ground for quality allied to value. The grapes are fermented in wooden vats using native yeasts, then they go into a basket press for a gentle pressing into (in this fine vintage) seven oak barrels.

Its red-fruited scents are gentle. The palate shows the fruit as still velvety even after over a decade in bottle. It remains smooth and is not in the slightest bit dried out. After a time swirling in the glass, it gives up some more autumnal leafy notes which add a savoury, tertiary, complexity which makes it food-friendly. Exceptional stuff, honestly. I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed by, or found any faults in, any of Andrew’s top wines, something that I would have found hard to say about much of the Côte d’Or’s output twenty years ago. I guess that at least backs up why this Le Grappin is such good value, even today.

Newcomer Wines now has Le Grappin on their books and the 2022 vintage will set you back £65 for a bottle.

Gemischter Satz 2025, Familie Mantler (Niederösterreich, Austria)

The Mantler Family are based at Ebersbrunn in Niederösterreich (Lower Austria, which may sound confusing as it is more north than south). This is a catch-all region covering all of Austria’s northeast, encompassing everything north, east and west of Vienna, with Weinviertal DAC the largest part…but wines labelled Niederösterreich are not DAC. I am unsure whether Ebersbrunn is geographically inside Weinviertel or Kamptal. It’s close to the border with both.

This is a Gemischter Satz, a style of blend famed as the local wine of Vienna but made all over Austria. The name signifies a blend, usually of co-planted grapes, which are co-fermented. Different grapes ripen at different times each vintage and the gemischter satz blend was a kind of insurance policy for small farmers. Some are made from many different varieties, both white and red. Here we have one based on 80% Grüner Veltliner, to which is added 15% Müller-Thurgau and 5% Muskateller.

Very few Gemischter Satz wines will give you complexity (though there are exceptions). That isn’t the name of the game here, although a few of the Viennese producers are extremely skilled in fashioning gemischter satz wines with a very high thrill factor. What you want is something with lightness, delicacy, and a spring in its step.

You expect the acidity to be there, often quite linear, but you don’t want too much, so that it dominates the falling petals of its florality and the lightness of its fruit. You don’t expect too much alcohol and neither do you expect flab, nor too much weight. In essence you want something to make a perfect end to a walk through the woods and the vineyards, sampled in the courtyard of a pretty Heuriger, like Mayer-am-Pfarrplatz, where Beethoven wrote his Eroica, on the edge of Vienna.

That’s what you get here. At 11.5% abv it is light and juicy, very zesty with lemon citrus, but with a floral bouquet of spring flowers. It’s ripe and ready, although it’s not going to fall off a cliff any time soon (unless you choose your picnic spot unwisely). This won’t win any trophies for quality and complexity, but it’s a remarkable wine that is so tasty, so gluggable. And 2025 was a really good vintage in the region. The truly remarkable thing about it is that it will cost you less than a tenner (£9.95) if The Wine Society has any left. There’s a pink version which should be on the van tomorrow.

Milerka 2021, Jaroslav Osička (Moravia, Czechia)

It’s been a little while since I have drunk one of Jaroslav’s wines so forgive me if I introduce him to anyone who doesn’t know him. He is one of the founders of the Moravian natural wine movement, having taught many of the young and radical protagonists of the movement at wine school. He makes exemplary natural wines from his winery at Velké Bilowice in Southern Moravia. He now has his able son, Luboš, on board.

Moravia does have a reputation for making commercial wines, one that goes back to the era of Soviet domination. This is why many of the older wine writers, certainly those not versed in the potential delights of artisan natural wines, have never really woken up to what is going down here in Czechia’s southern regions. I guess the success of Milan Nestarec has woken a few of them up now.

I’ve written extensively on Moravia, and visited the region, and whilst I’m always banging on about Alsace as a centre for natural wine experimentation, an equally exciting, if smaller, natural wine movement exists here in Moravia. This producer sits among the top four or five artisans.

Milerka is a blend of Müller-Thurgau and Neuburger. It sees a bit of maceration on skins and is aged in used oak. It is bottled without adding sulphur. I was lucky enough to taste this 2021 with Jaroslav in his cellar in summer 2022, before bottling. Now it has developed an attractive floral bouquet. The wine is a deeper yellow now, but it is still nice and fresh. You get lemons and apple on the palate along with a gentle pebbly texture. The finish isn’t short either.

It’s quite easy going, as you might expect from the M-T, but as you’d also expect from this producer, it’s tasty, characterful and far from ordinary. The importer is Basket Press Wines. I’m not sure how their stocks of Osička stand at the moment so best check online or message to see when more stock is arriving.

Rosso 2021 IGT Alpi Retiche, Barbacàn (Valtellina, Italy)

Valtellina may not be widely known to perhaps the majority of Italian wine drinkers, but it produces an increasing number of cracking wines, especially those made from the Nebbiolo variety. Nebbiolo here may go under a different name, Chiavennasca, but it is often called Mountain Nebbiolo in the marketing these days. To emphasise the mountain location of the Valtellina, which sits almost hard up to the border between Switzerland and Lombardy, it has vines growing on slopes, usually steep ones, up to 2,000 masl. Those slopes can be hot. Some readers will know that one of the Valtellina Superiore subzones is called “Inferno”.

Alpi Retiche is an IGT you may never have heard of, and you will still read in several sources that the crus, to quote one such source, “make infinitely better wine”. You and I know, or suspect, that such statements are both conservative and out of date.

Barbacàn is the label of the Sega family, Angelo with sons Matteo and Luca. They farm 7 ha of Chiavennasca, of which this Rosso consists 100%. They do farm other autochthonous varieties, used in some of their other cuvées. This 2021, made primarily in concrete and aged nine months, has a cherry-red robe with just a tinge of brick red. It is beautifully scented, with violets and cherries with some redcurrant in there as well, whilst the palate has the kind of freshness and purity that you should expect from a natural wine made from mountain grapes. The finish has something peppery, maybe slightly herbal, and the texture of a little tannin kicks-in there too.

This ’21 is alive, multi-layered and refreshing. At 12.5% abv it is also lighter than many of the “cru” and DOCG wines. Sulphur is very low, less than 10 mg/l. I’m pleased to have some 2022 as well. If it matches this 2021 it will be very good indeed. This came from Communiqué Wines in Stockbridge (Edinburgh). The importer is Raeburn Fine Wines. Distribution throughout the UK seems pretty good.

Little Sister 23/24, Matt Gregory Wines (Leicestershire, England)

Matt makes wines in an inhospitable part of the country, because Leicestershire can be wet and windy, though sometimes the famous east coast sunshine does creep this far inland. You’d kind of be prepared to give him a little bit of leeway as a result, but you don’t need to at all. Matt has worked with some winemakers I consider geniuses, in New Zealand and Tuscany, and whatever the vintage throws at Matt he seems to ride it with confidence and skill.

Matt Gregory’s output is tiny, and as a result you don’t often see the same wines appearing every year. He’s flexible, looking at what the grape gods have given him and devising wines to go with that flow. It’s a testament to his skill that he can do this. It must be a lot easier going into the harvest knowing you will make a Côte-Rôtie or a Soave.

Because of those challenging conditions Matt made this particular wine from a blend of 2023 and 2024 fruit. Hoping I’ve got this complicated blend right, there was 2024 Bacchus (47% of the cuvée) aged in stainless steel. This was blended with co-fermented Regent and Seyval Blanc. Then, a barrel of Matt’s classic Pinot Noir/Pinot Gris from 2023 was blended in after the winter. This was all bottled with minimal sulphur, requiring very clean, organic, fruit and impeccable cellar hygiene.

The result looks like a light and pale red, but the flavour profile is closer to a white wine in some respects. You do get a haunting perfume of red fruits, and also delicate red fruits on the palate, but remember that you can get that in a white wine such as a Blanc de Noirs Champagne. There’s a prickle of carbon dioxide, and overall it has the freshness and acidity you’d get with a white wine.

Alcohol here is only 9%. This can be shocking to anyone used to 14.5% reds, with everything that goes along with that kind of wine. Delicacy and subtlety are not everyone’s bag, which is fair enough. Think of this wine as poetry compared to a silver screen action film. Matt’s Rumi to your Marvel Universe, perhaps. To me it’s merely delicious. But he only made 823 Little Sisters.

This was £28 from Spry Wine (Edinburgh). Matt is with Wines Under the Bonnet in the UK now.

Riesling 2023, Kamil Barczentewicz (Lublin, Poland)

This is my second wine from Polish producer Kamil Barczentewicz this year, the previous wine being his Dobre Modre (Blaufränkisch), featured in Recent Wines January 2026, Part 2 (pub 16-02-2026). The wines are made in the Lublin region where Kamil has farmed 12 hectares of vines on limestone soils since 2017. Lublin is in the east-central part of Poland, and Kamil’s vines are around three kilometres from the Vistula. Like most of the Polish wines I get to drink, generally few and far between yet more and more as time passes, this is a natural wine producer, and the wines so far have been very pure and clean.

The Riesling is made in stainless steel, where it is aged twelve months on lees. Some other wines made at this estate go into wooden vats and concrete eggs. There is, as the importer’s blurb says, plenty of “texture and tension” here. Undeniably so. The bouquet? Smells like Riesling. The palate? Very clean and mineral, taut, steely. Floral notes on the nose (I’m thinking cherry blossom, but I’m undoubtedly being swayed by the wonderful Sakura we are always treated to in Edinburgh and around at this time of year), are contrasted with citrus and peachy stone fruit on the palate. It went well with a mild (for me) dhal, and equally with that exquisite Swiss soft cheese with a vein of wild garlic running through the middle, pictured next to it (Bärlauch La Bousse from the Emmenthal Valley).

Someone suggested to me that this Riesling isn’t as good as the Dobre Modre and Pinot Noir. I’ve yet to try the Pinot Noir but whilst I might agree the former red is drinking a little better right now, I think perhaps this Riesling is merely a little young. I certainly liked it a lot. I appreciated its directness cutting through the food. I’m not of the “sweetish wine with curry” school. The importer is The Wine Society, who sell it for £19.50. They also have a Gewurztraminer, making four wines in total from this producer, who I believe also grows Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc. The other source, local to me, is Spry Wines. They had a tasting just this past Sunday with the winemaker present.

Posted in Artisan Wines, Austrian Wine, Burgundy, Czech Wine, English Wine, Italian Wine, Natural Wine, Polish Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies | Tagged #theglouthatbindsus, Barbacan Valtellina, Emma & Andrew Nielsen Le Grappin, Familie Mantler Niederosterreich, Gemischter Satz Familie Mantler, Jaroslav Osicka Moravia Czechia, Kamil Barczentewicz Winemaker Lublin Poland, Le Grappin Burgundy, Le Grappin Savigny 2015, Little Sister 2023/24 Matt Gregory, Matt Gregory Wines Leicestershire, Milerka 2021 Jaroslav Osicka, Moravian Natural Wine, Polish Natural Wine, Recent Wines March 2026 Pt 2, Riesling 2023 Kamil Barczentewicz, Rosso Alpi Retiche Barbacan, Sega Family Barbacan, Valtellina IGT Wine | Leave a comment

David Crossley's Wide World of Wine

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