David Crossley's Wide World of Wine

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.

Recent Wines March 2026 (Part 1) #theglouthatbindsus

Posted on 14/04/2026 by dccrossley

My recent wines for March display my usual eclectic tastes. Whilst this first part contains two wines from France, albeit Jura and Loire, there’s also a bottle each from Luxembourg, Baden in Germany, Northeastern Italy and Kent in England. You can be sure to find the same scattergun approach to drinking in Part 2. The six wines here range from fully natural for four of them, with various elements of regenerative viticulture to the fore now, to two wines which are made from organic grapes with that term I don’t really like using, but I will anyway, low intervention winemaking. This is where elements of what we would call “natural winemaking” are used but it isn’t always clear how far they go with the rest.

As you probably know by now, I prefer my wine without the chemicals, but I’m not a fundamentalist. Nor, in truth, can I really afford to be. Anyone who shops for fruit and vegetables will know the dilemma all but the most privileged face when choosing what to insist is organic and what to buy within budget that isn’t. Most of the wine I have drunk over the past few years, and to be fair most of the bottles in my cellar, are natural wines which would now cost me at least £30, more often £40.

Translate these prices into a monthly wine budget and that clearly is unsustainable for most people (you’re looking at pretty much £400/month). Is that what the average young wine lover spends in London? Just putting it out there, because I have seen all sorts of nonsense written recently about why young people are drinking far less wine, especially in restaurants where the markups are…well, we all know. It isn’t difficult to see that wine, at the level you and I drink, artisan wines made by individual or family winemakers, is very quickly becoming unaffordable.

That said, there is still value out there. It can often be had from emerging producer nations or regions, and from producers who want to turn to exports for the first time to diversify their market (although exporting to the UK is far from easy post-Brexit). In Part 2 you’ll see a very decent wine from Austria for under £10. If I can find wines like this to supplement my shrinking wine budget, I shall.

A couple of the wines here in Part 1 sit either side of £20 (the Alto-Adige and Loire wines). It is notable that these are the wines here that you couldn’t call “natural wines” perhaps, but they are making an effort. With several wines here costing £30 and over, they are (for me at least) welcome additions to my cellar.

Pinot Blanc “La Source” 2022, Racines Rebelles (Moselle, Luxembourg)

You may have read about Kaja Kohv in one of my “Tips for ‘26” articles published this month. I won’t therefore spend too long on her story, but she was born in Estonia, moved from sommelier to working in Beechworth (at Giaconda), then with Abi Duhr in Luxembourg before securing a few hectares of reasonably old vines to work near Grevenmacher on the Moselle. The vines, on limestone in this part of the river valley, are worked biodynamically.

For this rather exceptional, in my view, Pinot Blanc the fruit is 50% direct press with the other 50% macerated for three days. Ageing is for eight months on lees in 500-litre oak with no pumping or stirring etc. The result is clean and precise, certainly fruity, but even more mineral. It’s not just that “mineral” texture, it’s also very much a mineral vibe all over this wine. All viticulture and winemaking is natural, though I’m not sure whether sulphur is added. If so, it must be a tiny amount.

Kaja’s production is very small and I am yet to spot her wines in the UK. Feral Art et Vin in Bordeaux old town has been the source for my bottles. If you can’t find these wines (as well as Pinot Blanc she also has Elbling and Riesling planted, and apples for cider) then remember the name “Racines Rebelles”. I’m sure someone will pick her up for UK distribution, if they haven’t already without my knowledge.

Rouge 2021, Max Sein Wein (Baden, Germany)

It’s a while since I’ve drunk one of Max Baumann’s wines, but I would usually include one or two bottles in any order from his UK importer (who I must admit I’ve also not ordered from for a while). Max makes natural wines, I think influenced very much by his time working at Gut Oggau in Burgenland.

This cuvée is a 50:50 blend of Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir. I know from drinking varietal Meunier from Max that he’s a particularly good exponent of that variety. This blend is made via whole bunch fermentation in used oak, making good use of the lees to impart real freshness, a little texture, and protection.

I’d call this light, fruity and juicy, with excellent concentration. This has had a few years in bottle now, but it has begun to shine without diminishing in fruitiness. I am sure it’s at least as good as the bottle I drank a year ago. That fruit is perhaps mostly sour cherry with a little raspberry.

It’s worth noting that Max’s wines are undergoing a bit of a rebrand, or perhaps just a “rename”. Everything was previously bottled with a French name. From the 2022 vintage this wine has become Rote Freundschaft. New releases will be available from importer Basket Press Wines. Contact them for details and availability.

Cigogne 2022, Domaine L’Octavin (Jura, France)

Alice Bouvot was one of the first Arbois artisan producers to start to make negociant wines, a useful string to her bow with Jura vintages being increasingly affected by climate chaos (hail and frost in abundance). As a result, her “gnome labels” are pretty recognisable on any retailer’s shelf, bringing joy to many of us that would lurch towards grabbing one without a second thought.

Cigogne is a blend of half Gewurztraminer and half Pinot Gris. Alice is not shy about where she sources her bought-in fruit, and these come from the impeccable source of her friend Marc Humbrecht’s vineyards in Alsace.

The fruit underwent a whole-bunch fermentation, with four weeks on skins before a very light and gentle pressing. The skin maceration brings out the colour from the skins, the gentle pressing avoids the astringency you might otherwise get. The colour is therefore a pinky-orange tinge. The bouquet is lovely, being floral and full of tropical fruits. Very perfumed. The palate, for me, seems somehow to combine peach and strawberry with a little spice and a little texture. I doubt very much I shall taste a wine that is more vibrant this year.

I think this encapsulates pretty well why I adore Alice Bouvot’s wines. It should be noted that these are proper natural wines, and this unfiltered cuvée will be cloudy unless you stand it up for a day or so to let the lees sediment settle.

Alice’s wines are imported into the UK by Tutto Wines, who usually have a good selection of them most of the time. I think Cicogne was listed for £38, but it has probably sold out. If you do happen to be in Bordeaux looking for Racines Rebelles, then you should check out what Octavin stock Feral Art & Vin has on the shelf, first checking their limited opening times very carefully.

Misto Mare 2024, Alois Lageder (Trentino-Alto-Adige, Italy)

Now this is an interesting wine. Lageder was probably one of those family producers we all bought wine from back in the day. I suppose that it was my interest in natural wines, and through that to the natural wines from Northeast Italy that (especially) Les Caves de Pyrene imported, that took me away from them. However, times change, and wine certainly has over the past twenty-to-thirty years. All of Lageder’s own vines are now certified organic, but this wine is made from purchased fruit, coming from thirty “vintner partners currently in conversion to organics or biodynamics”.

Labelled not as DOC but as Vigneti Delle Dolomiti Bianco, it is made from fourteen varieties, red and white, from the wider Alto-Adige. Pale yellow in colour (the red grapes vinified white), it has an interesting bouquet. We found apples and pears, lemon and a gentle floral note. It is medium-bodied (just 12% abv). It isn’t complex but it is a very nice, balanced, spring wine, with a little delicacy to recommend it.

At only £19 this is well worth investigating. A good choice for picnics and parties, excellent value, and a nice package as well (see photo). Imported by Hallgarten Wines, this bottle was another recommendation from The Solent Cellar.

Cent Visages Côt 2023, Domaine Mérieau (Loire, France)

This domaine is at St Julien-de-Chédon, which is close to Montrichard, east of Chenonceaux in the valley of the River Cher. Jean-François Mérieau farms a total of 4 hectares of vines, and this wine comes off 2.5ha where the vines are fifty years old, and are situated on clay and limestone. Côt is, of course, the local synonym for Malbec, which has long been indigenous here.

When I was young and more capable of cycling around Touraine, I used to come across Côt quite often, but few if any UK wine merchants were interested. A shame, because in the days when ripening Cabernet Franc was usually problematic, Côt often provided a gentler, certainly less tannic and astringent, red to glug. Gamay has also regained some interest in the region as well. In most cases these varieties can still be purchased at more affordable prices than the now lauded Francs, and the super-fashionable Pineau d’Aunis (which once used to make mostly pallid wines when it was overcropped and can now make some of the Loire’s most hauntingly beautiful wines).

A six-month cuvaison extracts plenty of colour and the bouquet shows distinctly dark and brambly fruit, but it is no Argentinian heavyweight. There’s just 12.5% alcohol here. The palate certainly shows the concentration of dark fruits, but it is also savoury and sappy, with fresh acidity lifting the dark fruit. If you think you don’t like Malbec, I would still try this. Loire Côt is very different, and it also bears not much resemblance to Cahors either.

I’m not sure what the viticulture adheres to here. All I know is that this was fermented on indigenous yeasts. It cost £22 from Solent Cellar, and I think they might import this themselves. It seems pretty well-priced to me. It’s the kind of interesting wine you might be tempted by on a restaurant wine list, as well as for the table at home.

Pinot Pinot 2023, Sophie Evans (Kent, England)

Sophie is a relatively new name in English wine, but she has been gaining plenty of plaudits. I was happy to include her as one of my “Tips for ‘26” (see Part 1 of those articles, published just a couple of weeks ago). Following her wine studies in the UK, she started working with Melanie and Michael at 2Naturkinder in Franken. This is where she made and bottled her first wine, which is still available.

Sophie has since managed to acquire a single hectare of vines in Kent, although she does hope to expand a little. She has gained attention partly for her adherence to the tenets of regenerative viticulture. I remember Tim Phillips telling me she had been to chat with him because he was one of the few wine farmers alongside Sophie who were using various herbal tisanes and tinctures to combat diseases. But this would only be a part of the plans Sophie has for the future regeneration of her land and its sustainability as a vineyard.

The thinking here doesn’t stop at regenerative farming. Sophie seems to be constantly examining her methods, and one aspect which relatively few “natural wine” producers focus on is packaging. Her labels are simple, of course (an understatement, see the photo below), but she is currently looking at recycling and reuse, for example boxes and bottles. It’s funny, but I try to recycle my sparkling wine bottles back to someone who can use them, and I wonder whether more winemakers could think about this. Naturally if you have a tiny production that must be easier.

The fruit for Pinot Pinot came from an unnamed “friend’s beautiful vineyard”, this time in England although somewhat further north than Kent. The biodynamic grapes, the “new classic” of Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris, were hand-destemmed and foot-trodden. Co-fermented, with a week macerating on skins before pressing into stainless steel, the result is pale, light, briskly acidic but with lovely red fruit which is joined by a little mineral lick rather than real texture. A delicate wine (only 10% abv), but really beguiling. It is capped-off with just a tiny addition of sulphur.

This is really nice. I can see a strong resemblance to the wine made from the same grapes in the same vineyard by the man who provided these for Sophie, but that is meant as a compliment. Sophie is part of the growing roster of English natural winemakers at Wines Under the Bonnet. This bottle cost £35 from Spry Wines in Central Edinburgh. I also have a bottle of her Rotling, made in Germany, sitting here, and that came from Ali at Communiqué Wines.

Posted in Alto Adige Wine, Arbois, Artisan Wines, English Wine, German Wine, Italian Wine, Jura, Loire, Luxembourg Wine, Natural Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies | Tagged #theglouthatbindsus, Alice Bouvot Vigneronne, Alois Lageder Misto Mare Bianco 2024, Cent Visages Côt 2023 Merieau, Domaine L'Octavin Arbois, Domaine L'Octavin Cigogne 2022, Domaine Merieau Touraine, Jean-François Mérieau Vigneron, Kaja Kohv Winemaker, Lageder Trentino Alto Adige, Max Baumann Dertingen, Max Sein Wein Baden, Moselle Wine Luxembourg, Racines Rebelles Luxembourg, Racines Rebelles Pinot Blanc La Source, Recent Wines March 2026 Pt 1, Rouge 2021 Max Sein Wein, Sophie Evans Kent, Sophie Evans Pinot Pinot 2023, Sudtirol Wine | Leave a comment

Fourteen Tips for ’26 (Part 2, 8-14) #theglouthatbindsus

Posted on 08/04/2026 by dccrossley

In Part One we explored seven of the artisan winemakers I would like to highlight for 2026. Here, we have another seven. In no particular order they represent The Jura, Crete, Alsace, Luxembourg, Jura again, Czechia and Hungary. If you enjoyed my selection in the previous article (Part 1), I hope you will like these too. As I said back there, you may know all of these, or you might not know any. One thing is certain, they are all making wines to seek out and try.

Maison Maenad (Katie Worobeck) (Jura, France)

Katie Worobeck comes from Canada. She was originally a graduate in Political Economy, but had caught the bug to grow things from her grandmother. Although she began working as an assistant winemaker making conventional wines in Canada, her real stroke of luck (dramatic under-statement) was to be accepted to work with Jean-François Ganevat. It seems a miracle because many of you will know that JF speaks little English and Katie didn’t have a word of French (she has since embraced the language). She spent five years with Ganevat.

Katie started Maison Maenad with purchased fruit in 2019. In 2022 she was able to buy three hectares of vines close to Orbagna, in Jura’s southern region, known as the Sud-Révermont. There, she has all five of the most common Jura varieties, plus co-planted unknown hybrids planted more than a century ago. First, she converted to organics, and is now in the process of a focus on regenerative farming, for which she is gaining increasing recognition.

Working alone can be hard, but Katie’s methods have attracted a host of helpers who want to learn from her, but she is also willing to learn from them. One trainee had experience of agroforestry, and so this is now part of her future plans as well.

Katie is another producer I first came across via the “finger on the pulse” range at Feral Art et Vin in Bordeaux, although my second bottle of Maenad was off the list at Noble Rot Soho a few years ago. Now, her wines are available in the UK through Tutto Wines. At first it was just Katie’s De L’Avant Chardonnay I saw here (astonishingly good from 40-y-o vines off limestone in a vineyard called Au Carré, near Grusse). Subtlety and finesse are stamped all over it.

Recently I saw eleven Maenad wines from 2021 (Gamay, purchased fruit) to 2024 on their web site, although I would be pleasantly surprised if all of them are currently available. I have seen the Chardonnay I mentioned above at Shrine to the Vine, but that may have been a one-off.

Shima Winery (Iliana Malihin) (Crete, Greece)

This might seem like a bit of an outlier here, and Shima Winery must be among the one or two least known of any wine producers I have listed here and in Part 1. But from what I have tasted, these are certainly wines to seek out. The winery is a project between young winemaker Iliana Malihin and grape grower Spyros Chryssos. They make organic, natural, wines at Rethymnos on the island of Crete, which as a source of interesting wines in general, has gone from obscure to a flashing beacon on the map of new Greek wine.

The project has a focus on the overlooked old vines planted on terraces at altitude (averaging 650 masl) in this part of Northern Crete, on a soil mix of largely clay and schist. They just happen to be ungrafted, pre-phylloxera parcels. I don’t think there is a PDO established around Rethymnos, and so the wines go under the PGI designation, but the vineyards are planted with a host of heritage varieties, some of which are very rare.

Vidiano isn’t too rare, and it’s a variety you might have heard of, or tasted. Iliana makes a young vines version which sees skin contact and then spends six months on lees. It’s a wonderful intro to her winemaking. Lots of peach/apricot flavours. Keeling & Andrew import, and Shrine to the Vine in Lamb’s Conduit Street have (or had) this for £35, along with an “old vines” cuvée for £57. That might be a big ask for anyone that hadn’t already tried the young vines, but once you have, maybe not so much (wallet size dependent, of course).

You might be able to seek out one of the wines Iliana makes from a lesser-known Cretan variety, Thrapsathiri, or possibly her Liatiko. The style usually involves some degree of skin contact, lees ageing, and an electric thrill on the palate. I only recently discovered that about 80% of the ten hectares Iliana draws fruit from at Rethymnos were sadly destroyed by wildfires in 2022. She remains determined to bring wines from these grand old vines to wider recognition, and for this, and for the quality of this young woman’s winemaking, she is one of the most talked about winemakers in Greece right now.

At my last look, Keeling & Andrew were importing four wines from Iliana Malihin’s Shima project.

Lambert Spielmann (Alsace, France)

Okay, another name from Alsace (following Yannick Meckert who footed the list in Part 1). I admit, Alsace and Jura do feature quite heavily here. However, whilst some of the glow has been taken off the Jura wine revolution by increased prices, there are still new stars rising. As for Alsace, even when the hype was on Jura wine, I always said that the most exciting place for natural wine in France is Alsace, and I think that probably still remains the case today.

There are a host of young producers working in the region, most of them somewhat further north than the established names you will find on the lips of the more conservative writers or the more establishment wine merchants. Even The Wine Society, which is bringing in wines from the furthest-flung vineyards in the world, metaphorically speaking, still resolutely centres its Alsace range in the Haut-Rhin. In fact, as we have seen, the epicentre of Alsace innovation has recently moved even further north than its one-time home around Mittelbergheim, in the Bas-Rhin.

Lambert is yet another of the young winemakers in this list who was not born into wine. Alongside other metiers like social work, he has always played in bands. In that great long Alsace tradition, he makes a lot of different cuvées, and as well as fixing them with some of the best labels in Alsace (only Rietsch comes close, for me), he recommends a song on the back label to listen to whilst drinking the wine. For any readers who have ever enjoyed bands like Manu Chao’s early outfit, Manu Negra, Les VRPs, or Les Rita Mitsouko, checking his suggestions out on whichever streaming service you can occasionally tolerate for research purposes is well worth the effort.

Anyway, too much digression…possibly. Spielmann has parcels spread around Epfig, Nothalten, Obernai, Reichsfeld and Dambach-la-Ville. He tends his vines by hand using biodynamic techniques, with one eye on regenerative farming (including agroforestry…planting apple trees from which to eventually make cider), and the other on gentle infusions in the winery to make perfumed, pure, wines of exceptional quality.

Tutto Wines imports half-a-dozen-or-so of Lambert’s wines, and of the six they currently have on their web site (though perhaps just one or maybe two on the online shop), I have drunk five with a degree of regularity. If forced to name a favourite I would be split between first, “Red Z’Epfig” (a red and white blend of Pinot Noir and Auxerrois) which is a spicy pale red that seems to hint of one of my favourite fruits, in season now happily, blood orange. Vying with this would be “Complètement Red” (Pinot Noir from a single lieu-dit in Nothalten), whole bunches fermented for ten days before pressing off into larger used oak. I’m drinking that again this evening.

But frankly, spot any Lambert Spielmann wines and grab them. Because I have drunk more of Lambert’s wines more times than any other producer in both parts of this article here, I’d say that this is the vigneron closest to being promoted to that list of all-time heroes you saw in the first paragraph of Part One of this article.

Racines Rebelles (Moselle, Luxembourg)

Kaja Kohv, originally from Estonia, is the lady behind Racines Rebelles. She worked for the great Giaconda in Beechworth (Victoria), but her introduction to Luxembourg was through working for Abi Duhr, Luxembourg’s best-known winemaker. She initially leased just less than a single hectare of 25-to-40-year-old vines on calcareous limestone, which she is converting to biodynamics. I think she now farms around 2.3 hectares at Grevenmacher and Dreiborn.

I first got to know her wines via (you guessed) Feral Art & Vin in Bordeaux, Russell being introduced to her by Jonas Dostert, who farms pretty much opposite her vines on the German side of the river.

The first introduction to Kaja’s winemaking was via a varietal Elbling called “Roches Liquide”. She submits this much-maligned variety to ultra-low cropping and long lees ageing to create a wine of total glouglou appley freshness (I paid €24 for this in 2024). I recently drank her wonderful Pinot Blanc “Les Sources”, fruit macerated for three days before being left untouched for eight months in 500-litre used oak. It’s clean, precise and mineral, yet very fruity (currently €34).

Kaja also makes an orange wine (actually two now, I think), a red wine from Pinot Noir and St Laurent, and cider. This is another individual who had no family background in wine. At first Kaja worked as a sommelier, I think. She is totally wedded to more than just natural wine. As so many of those I’ve written about here are, she is farming regeneratively, including using medicinal plants and herbs (phytotherapy), and looks to create a wider ecology of plant and animal biodiversity. Thankfully she’s making wine to match her goals.

I have yet to see Kaja Kohv’s wines in the UK, so you will have to go to Bordeaux or Luxembourg to find them, but you can read more about her on the Raisin Digital natural wine app.

Les Valseuses (Jura, France)

I need to come clean here. I have only drunk one wine from Les Valseuses, and that was made from Gamay fruit purchased in Beaujolais. However, I have been hearing a great deal of noise around this domaine, and also seeing what has been going on there via their Instagram account. I have a hunch that if I drink more of their wines, I’m not going to regret including them in this list. My finger might not be as firmly on the pulse as it was when I was hobnobbing with the great and the good of natural wine down in London, with a wallet able to take the strain of putting my money in the game, but I just sniff something here.

Les Valseuses is the tiny domaine of Antoine Le Court-Chedevergne and Julia Naar. They currently have only half a hectare at Les Planches-près-Arbois, but make a wide range of wines from purchased fruit. Antoine is from Angers and has made wine and beer in Australia and California. They met whilst he was working in Brazil, but Antoine hit upon the Jura to make wine after working for the queen of Arbois natural wine, Alice Bouvot. Alice was, interestingly, the first Arbois vigneronne I met who had started a negoce label using fruit purchased from friends (Ganevat being famous for doing the same further south, of course).

The first “Valseuses” wine was made in Alice’s cellar, but in 2019 Antoine and Julia bought an old house (built 1765) at Les Planches, which Arbois visitors may have driven or walked to, en-route to see the famous waterfall. It’s here that they make wine, with part of the property now a lovely-looking, small guest house (sleeps 4-6 people in two bedrooms, I think).

There are an enormous number of wines on their UK importer’s web site, all made in tiny quantities. Many come from fruit they harvest from friends around France. Back in the cellar they go for long, slow fermentations, no manipulations of the must and wine apart from a single racking, hand bottling and minimal sulphur.

They name each wine after music they enjoy, so the Gamay I found was called “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (Joy Division). It was a whole bunch maceration then ten months in tank. Very light (10.5% abv) but concentrated juicy fruit. Not complex, but bags of glou. The importer is Beattie & Roberts.

Mira (Mira Nestarcová) (Moravia, Czechia)

Mira is the wife of Milan Nestarec, Czechia’s best-known natural winemaker outside the country. Nestarcová is the female form of the family name in Czech. Both work out of Velké Bilowice, with Mira’s vines located here and nearby at Moravsky Zizkov. The standout feature of Mira’s wines is that the vines are more or less untended. These are, like Milan’s, natural wines, aged in a mix of wood and concrete. Each wine is a varietal, and there are currently a Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Riesling, Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir. I’ve tried all of them, some in more than one vintage.

Naturally having a famous, and indeed very talented, winemaker as your partner can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, but Mira has managed to create wines that are singular, with their own strong personalities. Not only have I been massively impressed with her wines (I think Milan was shocked by my enthusiasm when I saw him last year, I hope he wasn’t too jealous), but everyone I get to try them has been too. That’s good enough confirmation that I’m on the right track.

The minimal pruning of Mira’s vines, which tends towards the “graupert” system used at Meinklang (Burgenland), tends to result in smaller berries, creating a very different skin-to-pulp ratio. The wines are made wholly without interventions using organic grapes that also see biodynamic elements and regenerative viticulture to the fore. The labels all depict dancers (Mira was originally a ballerina/dancer).

One final thing I’d like to mention is vintage. All Mira’s wines express their vintage. Take, as an example what remains perhaps my favourite wine from the portfolio, the Sauvignon Blanc (yes, shock, unloved SB). Her 2023, which I drank in January, showed 13.5% alcohol. The 2022, made in much the same way, had just 11%. Both were wonderful wines, in fact I’d say stunning, majoring on purity. The 2022 was all pear and gooseberry, the 2023 showing peachy richness but still fresh. But all of the range is worth buying, from importer Basket Press Wines.

Annamária Réka Koncz (Eastern Hungary)

Annamária makes thrilling wines, but she makes them in the far east of Hungary. Some of her fruit admittedly comes from friends further west in Hungary (Mád, Mátra and Bodrogkisfalud), but her own vines are at Barabás, so close to the Ukraine border that some even sneak over it. This geographical obscurity is surely why her wines are not on everybody’s lips. Plus the fact that as with the previous producer, who is with the same UK importer, quantities are pretty small when spread over those markets that already appreciate the Réka-Koncz wines, and in the UK, they really do not hang around very long.

Annamária now farms around 6ha of vineyards, although a little over a hectare is only just coming on stream. The rest of the vines are quite old though, between 40-50 years of age. The old vines are Riesling, Furmint and Hárslevelu with plenty of the autochthonous Királyleányka (thought to be the same variety as Feteasca Regala in Romania, although if you delve deep some will have other ideas, but then its birthplace in Western Romania was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). The new vines add more Rhine Riesling, Kékfrankos (aka Blaufränkisch), and three interesting Piwi varieties to the ARK vineyard.

Everything is made from certified organic fruit at minimum, and this is another domaine where regenerative farming is definitely to the fore. If I need to give any recommendations I shall need to go briefly with three.

Disorder is quite old vine Furmint from Mád. The ’23 has pristine fruit and is “rocky” in texture. The ’22, which may still be available, is direct and pure.

A Change of Heart is a lovely red Kékfrankos from the volcanic soils of Mátra. Annamária layers the fruit (as some do in Beaujolais) for a more complex style of carbonic fermentation. Like all of her wines, only a tiny amount of sulphur is added (15mg/l here). Big cherries is the name of the game. Get one for now and save one for later.

Ora is an orange wine, which I guess is obvious. Four varieties, some of the fruit being fermented in eggs. Last December the 2023 was knitting together well, but I do find this cuvée shines more with a year or two in bottle…though it shines, for sure.

In December 2025 I tasted the latest arrivals in the UK. I think around half the cuvées have already sold out on the Basket Press Wines web site. But do not fear because anything this young woman makes should be excellent, whether white, red, orange or sparkling, and there are some retailers who might also have some left. Prost Wines in Liverpool (and online) seems to have stock.

That brings to a close my tips for young or new producers you might like to seek out this year. Apologies if you are sufficiently ahead of the game to have tried these. If you have tried all fourteen, then hats off to you. Apologies to those producers I haven’t included, because of space, or maybe because I only just drank one of their wines (The Lena Springer-Fischer natural wine Sekt I drank for Easter Sunday won’t be her last, for sure). Happy hunting.

Posted in Alsace, Artisan Wines, Czech Wine, Greek Wine, Hungarian Wine, Jura, Wine, Wine Agencies | Tagged #theglouthatbindsus, Annamaria Reka-Koncz, Annamaria Reka-Koncz Barabas Hungary, Antoine Le Court-Chedevergne and Julia Naar, Cretan Autochthonous Grapes, Cretan Wine, Czech Natural Wine, Fourteen Tips for '26 Part 2, Iliana Malihin Winemaker Crete, Jura Wine, Kaja Kohv Vigneronne, Kaja Kohv Winemaker Racines Rebelles, Katie Worobeck Winemaker Jura, Lambert Spielmann Alsace, Les Valseuses Jura, Luxembourg Wine, Maison Maenad Jura, Mira Nestarcova Czech Winemaker, Mira Wine Czechia, Natural Wine, Racines Rebelles Moselle Luxembourg, Shima Winery Crete, Wine, Wine of Eastern Hungary, Wine Recommendations | Leave a comment

Fourteen Tips for ’26 (Part 1, 1-7) #theglouthatbindsus

Posted on 31/03/2026 by dccrossley

Fourteen tips for ’26? Those of you who know me are doubtless aware of my favourite producers: Gut Oggau, Rennersistas etc, Alice Bouvot’s Octavin, Jean-Pierre Rietsch, Charlie Herring Wines, Florian Lauer, Kelley Fox, Westwell Wines and others. They are all very well established now. What they have in common is that you always get thrilling, electricity-filled wines made with a total respect for the wider ecology of their vineyards.

I thought it would be nice to add to these by highlighting what was originally going to be a dozen young, or newly established, winemakers who have been thrilling me of late. Some of the producers on this list I’ve known and drunk for a few years, others for less time. There’s one estate here that I’ve only drunk one wine from but the buzz around them leads me to suspect it wasn’t a one-off.

Many lists like this consist of a top-ten, but as wine comes in cases of twelve bottles (unless you are buying expensive Burgundy these days), that’s the random number I initially settled on. When I came to write my list, I had fourteen young winemakers which I could not in all conscience cut down further. I could have added several more names, and to be frank I was sorry not to. I also decided to choose the people I wanted to include, so the spread of locations is narrow, with only one entry from outside Europe, and five of the fourteen from France.

I also realised that one article would be way too long to grab your attention, and that as my “Recent Wines” articles usually contain six wines in each part, perhaps I could stretch my readers to seven producers in each, splitting the original article into two. The names listed appear in no particular order at all. It isn’t a ranking.

This is just a personal selection, just for fun, so don’t hate me for my choices. Some of you might have drunk every single one of these producers, whilst it is quite conceivable that some readers might not have tried any. But as for availability, I reckon most of the fourteen should be fairly easy to find, whilst one or two might take a bit of digging around for. I wonder how many you know, and love?

Mountain People Wines (Monmouthshire, Wales)

Mountain People Wines is the label of Plumpton alumni David Morris. David used to make wine at his family’s vineyard, the well-known pioneer of Welsh natural wine, Ancre Hill. Now he has spread his wings, leasing possibly the UK’s oldest plantings, Parva vineyard. He makes several cuvées from his own fruit, which includes a Pinot Noir vineyard at Ancre Hill, and he also takes grapes from a friend at Mayland Vineyard near Frome in Somerset (the friend’s main job is growing blackcurrants).

My recommendation, from several superb wines, is called TAM. TAM stands for “This ain’t Macon”, though I’d have called it TAJ (this ain’t Jura) because it is a dead ringer for a Stéphane Tissot Chardonnay (the Patchwork comes to mind). It has a very faint touch of deliberately oxidative winemaking…just a tiny hint. I had no idea first time I tasted this that David had consulted Stéphane about making Chardonnay. There seemed to be two different bottlings of TAM, both lovely but very slightly different.

A totally different wine is a Rosé from Welsh fruit from Parva, Gwin Poble y Mynydd Rhosyn. This is a blend of fourteen varieties going back to 1979 plantings. A pretty wine in the best sense. Of course, don’t expect to sniff any sulphur.

In Scotland I’ve bought David’s wines at both Cork & Cask and at Spry Wines (distribution via Element Wines). In England contact David’s agent Carte Blanche Wines.

Jonas Dostert (Mosel, Germany)

Jonas Dostert is widely acknowledged as a rising star of the Mosel, and when you consider he only harvested his first grapes in 2018, and that is based in the very unfashionable Nittel, that’s pretty good going. Nittel is just across the river from Luxembourg, so about as far west on the river as you can grow vines in that part of Germany. Jonas farms his organically on slopes of mostly limestone, which he firmly believes shows through in the wines thanks to his belief in doing as little as possible, and adding as little as possible, in the vineyard and cellar. There’s an extra element to Dostert’s mission: to put this part of the wider Mosel back on the maps, because even in Germany it has been looked down upon.

Jonas’ wines have only fairly recently become available in the UK, and I first got to know them via Russell at Feral Art & Vin in Bordeaux. Russell has been an aficionado of cutting-edge German wines for decades and he has built up a good relationship with Jonas. Collecting the wines in person (plus not having to pay UK transport, excise and import taxes) means he can offer them at prices UK merchants could only dream of…but then he doesn’t ship to the UK. So, we are lucky that Newcomer Wines has started to ship some.

Newcomer currently has three wines in stock. Aside from a Crémant (not Sekt), they have his Chardonnay and Elbling Alte Reben. Elbling is a very unfashionable variety, but a mainstay of the vineyards of what we used to call the Obermosel. In the right hands (hint hint) it can be mineral and expressive. The Chardonnay is my favourite wine from Dostert, and it is magnificent in its own way. But the Elbling will cost you about £35 in the UK, and the Chardonnay a shave under fifty.

Not currently available in the UK is a wine called “Pure Dolomite”. I have some 2022, purchased in France. That is a magnificent blend of 60% Chardonnay and 40% Elbling. Best of both worlds. That will cost you €22 (the Chardonnay €30) as currently listed by Feral, which has a good few Dostert wines listed right now. This natural wine shop in Bordeaux’s old town is not always open so check times attentively if you find yourself down that way (I shall soon be passing through Bordeaux, but sadly outside their next opening window).

Sophie Evans (Kent, England)

Sophie Evans is a new name in English wine, but potentially the winemaker over whom there is currently the biggest buzz. Sophie has only one hectare of vines in Kent, but she bottled her first wines in Germany, having worked with Melanie and Michael of the astonishing 2Naturkinder, in their cellar. She has also made wine from purchased grapes sourced at…I’m not sure if I should say, but certainly there is an astonishing similarity between Sophie’s Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris blend and the wines of the man in question. I mean super-fruity glou.

Part of the buzz around Sophie is her commitment to regenerative viticulture. She works with teas, herbal tinctures and essential oils, and an array of other biodynamic preps, in the way that Tim Phillips of Charlie Herring Wines does (but he’s been a star to those in the know for a very long time). Sophie has managed to convert a small barn into a winery on-site. She has also taken over the care of a couple more small sites. She studied in the UK but actively rejects a lot of the formulaic learning she experienced, preferring to acknowledge that intuition guides her in most of her decision making.

At the moment I’ve only seen her German Rötling (purchased from Communiqué Wines in Edinburgh), and her “Pinot Pinot”, this new classic pale red (or is it pink?) blend from purchased fruit (which I bought from Spry Wine). Her UK agent is Wines Under the Bonnet. They had three of of her English wines and two of those made in Germany last time I looked. Although these are new, quantities are tiny so you would need to move swiftly.

Matt Gregory Wines (Leicestershire, England)

Matt Gregory first came to my attention via a roundabout route. He did a stint working with my favourite New Zealand winemaker, Theo Coles, of The Hermit Ram, in the wilds of the South Island’s North Canterbury. I later found out that he had also worked at that great Leicestershire wine importer and merchant, Bat & Bottle. B&B specialise in Italy, and it is my great regret that I have never tried the wines Matt made once out there, at Villa Giada in Piemonte.

Matt has a little more in the way of vines than Sophie Evans, around three hectares. He took over the vines in 2020, but like Sophie’s vines, they were about ten years old. Mostly the two Pinots (Noir and Gris), plus Bacchus, and a range of hybrids including Solaris, Seyval Blanc, Madeleine Angevine and Regent. The vineyard is at the highest point of the Leicestershire Wolds, in the east of the county, near Rutland. Here, the terroir is on limestone rubble with flint and quartz. A great mineral mix.

Farming is resolutely low intervention, and Matt makes natural wines, with all that entails, except for the use of low levels of sulphur if deemed necessary. Such viticulture in this part of the country is a near miracle, but although it is wet for sure, it is also windy and this does cut back the chance of fungal disease that the wet weather can bring. The wind’s big disadvantage, however, is that Matt cannot really go for organic certification because he’s in the middle of conventionally sprayed arable land. He’s the first to admit that he can only do his best to minimise any potential contamination. Cross-contamination is a topic many European wine makers prefer to ignore.

The key for Matt is soil health. He uses cover crops, and does everything he can to increase biodiversity (lately, a hedging project). In the winery he makes whatever the grapes seem to want him to, which means you won’t often find the same wine made more than once. For example, I have just drunk his “Little Sister”, a blend of Pinots from 2023 with 2024 white grapes. The result smashes it out of the park, and with only 9% abv it is just delicate and thrilling.

“Hedge Line” is one from 2023 which blends Bacchus with three of his hybrids, a wine whose complexity grows gently in the glass, but which excites with its saline twist and a citrus minerality reminding me of the Prié Blanc grape of Morgex in Aosta. I am eagerly looking forward to “Coral” from 2024 fruit. This is definitely a Rosé, though made from the PN/PG pairing Matt does love. It will come in at only 8.5%, but I’m told it doesn’t taste that low. We shall see. These are not wines with direct and immediate impact. They build gently and carress the senses, but you need to have a bit of the acid hound in your personality too if you are going to truly appreciate them (as I do).

Matt’s wines are usually available to me in Edinburgh from several sources (see Sophie Evans above), but he is one of the growing number of young British winemakers on the roster at Wines Under the Bonnet.

Domaine D’Ici Là (Bugey, France)

I make no apology for the fact that many of the winemakers I’m mentioning in this article have featured in my current drinking recently. Perhaps that is what inspired me to write this article. But I will say that although I’ve admired this producer for a couple of years, the most recent wine I drank of theirs, “Lithos Chardonnay”, was possibly my favourite so far.

Bugey is a tiny, and in the wider scheme of things, insignificant appellation sitting somewhere between the southern end of Jura and Savoie. Things are further complicated because it is a single region split into two halves. The northern half nods towards Jura in terms of style, whilst the southern makes wines which might often be mistaken for Savoie. The World Atlas of Wine 8^th edn gives Bugey a small paragraph at the end of three pages on Jura/Savoie. We shall see if this summer’s 9^th edn improves on that. Thankfully Wink Lorch in Wines of the French Alps (2019) gives Bugey a chapter of around fifty pages.

This small and new domaine is in the southern sector, in a hamlet called Groslée-St-Benoït, which is just south of the best-known vineyard in the area, its only “cru”, Montagnieu. It is run by Adrien Bariol and Florie Brunet, who met whilst working in the Rhône. They arrived in Bugey in 2018 and were very lucky to be chosen to take over the vines of local vigneron Patrick Charlin. Charlin was one of those old timers (he’d been farming here for forty years) who hadn’t really sprayed very much onto his vines, so they were in just the right condition for a couple committed to organic viticulture as the basis for low intervention wines.

The varieties farmed here do have a Savoyard ring. Altesse and Mondeuse are paired with Chardonnay and Gamay so far. Some Chardonnay goes into the still wine I mentioned, whilst the majority, I think, goes into sparkling wine, although there is also an “orange wine” made from Chardonnay (“Les Oubliés”).

Their Mondeuse is really good, although it’s the one wine I’ve had from D’Ici Là that I don’t see on their importer’s web site right now. But that importer, Modal Wines, does have a Roussette that I’ve not tried, along with several other wines which include their lovely Bugey Brut (I certainly recommend this as much as any sparkling Bugey, or Savoie for that matter, that I’ve drunk). This is currently a blend of red and white varieties aged on lees for eighteen months.

Sam Lambson/Minimalist Wines (Stellenbosch, South Africa)

Sam Lambson is only one of a host of truly exciting young winemakers now working in the Cape. I could easily find a dozen to write about, although maybe one or two wouldn’t quite qualify as “young”. Sam is certainly young. He made his first wines whilst still at the University of Stellenbosch in 2018, at the age of just twenty-one. There’s a perhaps apocryphal story of how this young man with zero wine connections fell in love with Syrah over a bottle of Jamet Côte-Rôtie whilst at High School, leading him towards Oenology as a decisive career path.

Back in 2019, just a year after his first harvest, Sam was in London with his new friend Richard Kelley MW of SA specialist Dreyfus Ashby. It was at that amazing “New Wave South Africa” tasting at Soho’s Viny Factory in September of that year. One of those tastings you never really forget. Sam only had one wine to show, Stars in the Dark, made from Syrah whole bunch fermented in large old oak, the only intervention being minimal sulphur added in the winter. I have several times been grateful to Colin Thorne (buyer at Vagabond Wines) for a nod and a wink, and this was one occasion to remember him (who I haven’t seen for some years now) for making sure I tasted it.

Sam now makes wines from Cape Agulhas, Elgin and Stellenbosch, and they are available surprisingly widely in the UK, either from some of the smarter wine merchants (Lay & Wheeler is one, and I’m sure I’ve seen them at Berry Brothers too) or smaller retailers. However, his back labels show his importer as the aforementioned Drefus Ashby, an agreement made on a handshake back in 2018. They are certainly wines to cellar, and I think of all the young winemakers featured here they are wines which need age. I am sure I read a description of Sam as a “visionary” on one web site. I think that is in no way an exaggeration.

Yannick Meckert (Alsace, France)

I first came across Yannick Meckert a few years ago when he was making wine with Vanessa Letort under the “Du Vin Aux Liens” label. By the time I tasted his wine, he and Vanessa had gone their own ways, she now making wine in Lorraine and Yannick had taken on three hectares outside Obernai. He then added to that a further two hectares at Reichsfeld. But then, unusually for a winemaker, Yannick decided to dramatically cut his production and from 2025 he planned to make 8,000 bottles, rather than the 25,000 bottles he was previously capable of.

If most winemakers will say they strive to make the best wine they can, Yannick Meckert will say that he strives to do the best he can for the planet. In Camilla Gjerda’s wonderful Natural Trailblazers book (2024) she describes a guy who had travelled the world learning to make natural wine yet totally stopped flying in 2022 because of the impact it has on the planet. That is just one example of the principles he tries to live by.

Like so many Alsace natural winemakers, Yannick, despite coming from a family of conventional wine producers, was influenced by one of my all-time heroes, Jean-Pierre Rietsch (Mittelbergheim). Yannick is now resolutely as small-scale (relatively speaking) as he is an advocate of fully natural wines (although I have been told he has been forced by atrocious weather to go back a touch on his refusal to even use copper, and occasionally sulphur). Yannick is another of the proponents here for using essential oils though, and by allowing his vines to live beside a variety of flora, he has created a wonderful ecology in the vineyard.

When I first knew he was no longer involved in the Vin Aux Liens project I understood that by choice his only export country was Japan for his new solo project. Now, those in England who have access to Tutto Wines may find his bottles on their Tutto a Casa online shop. When writing last week I only spotted “Stupeur et Tremblement” (£36), but others come and go so contact Tutto if you are tempted to dive in.

Posted in Alsace, Artisan Wines, Bugey, English Wine, German Wine, Mosel, Natural Wine, South African Wines, Welsh Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies | Tagged Adrien Bariol & Florie Brunet Bugey, David Morris Welsh Wines, Domaine d'Ici Là Bugey, Fourteen Tips for '26 Part 1, Gwin Poble y Mynydd Rhosyn, Ici Là Lithos Chardonnay, Jonas Dostert Mosel, Matt Gregory Little Sister 23/24, Matt Gregory Wines Leicestershire, Minimalist Wines Stellenbosch, Mountain People Wines Monmouthshire, Sam Lambson Minimalist Wines, Sophie Evans Pinot Pinot, Sophie Evans Rotling, Sophie Evans Wines Kent, TAM Chardonnay 2023 David Morris, Wine Tips for 2026, Yannick Meckert Alsace, Young Winemakers | Leave a comment

Recent Wines February 2026 (Part 2) #theglouthatbindsus

Posted on 24/03/2026 by dccrossley

Remember Recent Wines? I published Part 1 of February’s wines four weeks ago, and with seven articles from two Edinburgh events in between, here is Part 2. It’s almost certainly the biggest gap between Recent Wines posts yet, but I hope the intervening pieces have been interesting and the wait for this selection has been worth it.

Here we have six more bottles, the best or most interesting/exciting that we drank at home during the second half of February. We begin in Champagne before a rare Bordeaux red, though I don’t mean like the ’58 Latour I drank a while ago, just that Bordeaux appears rarely on my table these days, but maybe that will change. Next, a fairly well-known red from The Marches in Italy, and a South African Syrah. We finish with a Bugey Chardonnay from a favourite producer there, and a Chinese wine which scores highly on many levels. It isn’t red, but that is far from being the most interesting and exciting thing about it.

Champagne Gallimard Blanc de Noirs Cuvée Réserve NV (in magnum) (Champagne, France)

Here we have a lesson in how to best appreciate what you might think is a moderately priced Champagne, which can be transformed by first, buying it in magnum, and second, ageing it in your cellar or equivalent. I bought six magnums of this Gallimard for a summer house-warming/anniversary party in the early summer of 2024. This magnum was left over and I decided it was time to open it when seven friends (ourselves plus five) got together for dinner. Two of these friends were visiting from overseas and they needed cheering up, and a magnum gave us two reasonable glasses (two-thirds in a tulip is enough) each, with our salmon or white crab on rye bread aperitif.

Gallimard are in Les Riceys, on the Kimmeridgian limestone of the Aube, which we have come to call the Côte des Bar these days. The vines average thirty years old in the ten hectares farmed by this sixth-generation family house, Didier and his son Arnaud currently at the helm.

This is definitely more golden than it was twenty-one months or so ago, and more so than a bottle of Champagne brought by one of the guests. It has a bouquet of mellow red fruits and apple. The palate has some genuine autolytic development and is quite creamy. It was genuinely impressive. Quite a few of us have known that Gallimard makes some of the best value Champagnes out there. A true family operation, yet you pay £33 for a 75cl bottle (which has only risen by £1 over the past year) at The Solent Cellar. The magnums still cost £70, which is what I paid all that time ago. You could ask Simon how long they have been in his cool storage.

Charmes de Kirwan 2019, Château Kirwan (Bordeaux, France)

“Charmes” is a cuvée made from younger vines at Margaux Troisième Cru Château Kirwan. Being made from younger vines perhaps you are not looking for the depth you expect in the main cuvée, but for those of us who have long memories, the second wines from some of the once less-exalted châteaux of the Médoc can often (but not always) give more pleasure than the first wines used to back in the day. Of course, in the past, before second wines appeared everywhere, all the fruit would go into the Grand Vin, but nowadays, even the second wines generally receive care and a quality focus that at some estates was not even reflected in their single cuvées in the 1970s.

Why was that? Bordeaux has always been a bastion of both wine conservativism and a degree of arrogance that they were making the absolute finest wine in the world. The 1855 Classification of wines, that which put Kirwan into the third tier, was set in stone and any property could live off its place in that ranking. It was undoubtedly the arrogance of the châteaux owners which has put so many younger drinkers right off the Bordeaux appellations, especially as arrogance and hype had led to grossly inflated pricing.

Those of us who taste regularly began to find both excitement and quality elsewhere, and all but the more conservative writers, or those bound up with the increasingly ridiculous en-primeur circus, began to champion better value fine wines. Meanwhile, the Bordelais sleepwalked into a less certain future where the finest estates could still reel in the obscenely wealthy, but the rest, whether lesser fine estates lacking the cachet of a Latour or a Mouton, or the small family-run Petits Châteaux, and certainly the negoces, became increasingly worried for their futures. Falling sales for some cannot fit easily with today’s increased production costs, but it is clear that complacency has no place in Bordeaux any more.

Things began to change, even back in the 1980s. Some producers looked to the biodynamics that has led them to regenerative agriculture. Biodynamics, and the use of a horse for ploughing, became celebrated at Pontet-Canet, and Caroline Frey began to work the kind of changes at La Lagune that caught the interest of many like me. Châteaux like Falfas (Bourg), Peybonhomme-Les-Tours (Médoc), Cazebonne (Graves), Climens (Barsac) and Meylet (St-Emilion) were all early pioneers of biodynamics, showing the spread of this methodology/philosophy around the whole region.

Whilst biodynamics has spread to the highest echelons, with Châteaux Palmer embracing biodynamics, and experiments taking place at some famous First Growths, the true excitement turned to natural wine, with perhaps Château Le Puy in the Côtes de Francs leading the charge. But hey, this is a major digression from the wine in hand, but it does illustrate that consumers are turning away from Bordeaux just as things start to get exciting once more. The pendulum has begun to swing back towards less extraction in the wines, and less synthetic chemicals sprayed on the vines.

We have a blend of Cabernets Sauvignon and Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot. There is more Merlot than in the Grand Vin, making this cuvée somewhat softer and less tannic, certainly at six years plus. The fruit is all blackcurrants and it has quite decent length. It will age further if you wish, but without the harsh tannins a big Grand Vin might show at this stage, it is nice on its primary fruit. There’s just a touch of the savouriness that comes (one hopes) with age. You would not think you are drinking 1970s Bordeaux, which could be brilliant or disappointing depending on the bottle (though usually more reliable than Red Burgundy from the same period), but this is a satisfying wine.

This was a gift. It seems widely available at £38/£39 (try Majestic Wine), which probably makes it quite expensive for the quality. But we did enjoy it and it certainly shows that Bordeaux has pulled back from the full-on days of Parkerisation. This has just 13% alcohol, so well done on that score.

Rosso Conero San Lorenzo 2022, Umani Ronchi (Marches, Italy)

When I was somewhat younger, and exploring Italy beyond places beginning with B or C (Brunello, Barolo, Chianti), there were some producers who were ubiquitous, and were among the main representatives of Italian wine regions that were yet to go mainstream. By coincidence next month we have another one of those appearing as well, Alois Lageder. In February we drank this wine, a total classic of its kind, and guess what? It was even better than I remember it a decade or more ago.

The current, soon to be updated, World Wine Atlas remains non-committal about Rosso Conero. Jancis et al say that “the reds of the Marches have been slower to carve out an identity”, and whilst this may have a ring of truth to it, this part of the East Coast does have some exciting wines (not least the various Verdicchios).

Rosso Conero, based around the Adriatic port of Ancona, majors on the Montepulciano grape, which we know can produce very fine wine in the Abruzzo, further south (cf Emidio Pepe etc). Umani Ronchi may not be quite in the “Pepe” league, but they have a sixty-year family history, based originally at Cupramontana in the Verdicchio Classico zone. I remember my first taste of one of their wines was a Verdicchio, back in the early 1990s (from Majestic’s late glory days).

San Lorenzo is a “selection” cuvée of Montepulciano grapes (there is no Sangiovese in this cuvée although the DOC allows for 15%). Ageing is in oak. It combines darker cherry fruit with peppery spice and tobacco. It’s quite rich and at just under four years old still has a moderate tannic structure. The tannins are quite firm but supple. Although Umani Ronchi is a large producer, with 210 hectares in total, I think, this is obviously a flagship wine made with quality in mind. I’d say that you could age it, but I enjoyed it with a rich stew. It’s both meaty and fruity.

At £20 from, again, The Solent Cellar (though San Lorenzo is pretty widely available), it is undoubtedly very good value. This is in no way a natural wine, although company does trumpet its sustainability credentials with “Equalitas Certification”. The importer is Berkmann.

Swartland Signature Syrah 2020, Mullineux Wines (Swartland, South Africa)

It’s a long time since I first met Andrea and Chris Mullineux when they sat on our table at The Ledbury. At that time one of the wine lovers who first invested in their project, which began in 2007, was a regular at our amazing monthly wine lunches in that fabulous restaurant, before a second Michelin Star took its delights out of our grasp. Halcyon days, for sure.

Later on, when the couple needed more investment, they became Mullineux and Leeu, and they have since gone on to great fame, winning the Platter Guide “Winery of the Year” five times. They are based in Reebeck-Kasteel, near Malmesbury, making organic wines with regenerative viticulture to the fore, off the mostly granite and schist of the Swartland. The range has increased quite a lot since those early days but the original wines are released as a signature red and white, along with their straw wines (regarding the latter, grab it if you find it).

2020 (the last but one year they won that Platter accolade) was a long, cool, vintage in Swartland. The Syrah here is a blend of parcels, fermented (90% whole bunches) with native yeasts in barrels. It was aged in a mix of larger 500-litre barrels and 2,000-litre foudres for about twenty months before bottling. There’s dark plum and rich spice on the nose, whilst the palate shows soft tannins so that even though you might say this is young, it is definitely both approachable and enjoyable now. But if you tuck some away and forget about it, you won’t end up disappointed. Right now, it is classy but needs rich food.

Another wine of amazing value. I get mine (I’ve had this cuvée three times since moving to Scotland) from Smith + Gertrude in Portobello (Edinburgh, also in the city at Stockbridge), where it is currently £30. They get it from importer Liberty Wines, though you may also find it at Berry Bros, where the 2020 might be a wee bit more expensive.

Lithos Chardonnay 2023, Domaine D’Ici-Là (Bugey, France)

Bugey might be a strangely split, tiny, appellation between Jura and Savoie, obscure to most, but if you want a good reason to explore it, then this domaine is surely one. Adrien Bariol and Florie Brunet began their adventure in 2017, when newcomers to the region were rare. They began with rented vines, albeit ones that had seen little in the way of chemical treatments having been farmed by Patrick Charlin until his retirement. This made it easier to pursue their intention to make natural wines with minimal intervention and low sulphur additions. They are based at Groslée-St-Benoït, just south of Montagnieu, in Bugey’s southern sector.

This Chardonnay is made from vines at 400 masl at Lhuis, not far from the winery. It is tank fermented and aged on lees. The nose, to me, is pure Yuzu. The palate is both fresh and soft, like lemon sherbet but dry. The lees texture is pleasantly mineral and adds more interest. For me this is brilliant coming from a young couple whose wines I like a lot. It has the kind of wonderful subtlety that actually gives it impact. We drank it with spicy vegetable noodles, a good match and at just 12.5% abv it is a lovely lighter Chardonnay.

Imported by Modal Wines, this came from Spry Wine in Edinburgh. It retails for £30.

“Bloom” Petnat Brut 2023, Silver Heights (Ningxia, China)

If I would recommend the previous wine without question, I would recommend this one with no less energy. It is not only very good, but it is also quite unique in the wines I have so far tasted from China, which admittedly have mostly been quite straightforward, if ambitious, reds. It is made in Ningxia, up in the north, not far from the border with Inner Mongolia.

Made by the Ancestral Method, the grape composition starts off sounding straightforward enough: 80% Chardonnay and 12% Pinot Noir. But the rest (8%) comes from Ningxia Rice Wine. Bottled two years ago, in March 2024, it is dry (Brut) with 12% abv and 6.9 g/l dosage. It is biodynamic and organic, and has no added sulphur.

Pale salmon pink in colour, the bouquet shows a floral-peachy main note with a definite hint (albeit just a hint) of steamed rice. The palate has a peachy clementine thing going on, with just so much freshness. This is a genuine find. I love it and I should get more before it’s all gone (just hanging on for a specific producer I’ve been given a hint about to appear on the list at The Wine Society before placing another order). Winemaker Emma Gao is Bordeaux-trained, not a hotbed of petnat activity, but she’s made a fantastic, interesting, wine here.

TWS has this listed at £32, which may be the only reason they have some left, if indeed they have. I have no idea how much was imported (the importer on the back label is Vinum Eurus in Bedford). The label is pants, but it does come wrapped in an exquisite piece of tissue sporting a Chinese floral design. Is there no end to the number of new producer countries The Wine Society in bringing in at the moment? I do hope not!

Posted in Artisan Wines, Bordeaux Wine, Bugey, Champagne, Chinese Wine, Crémant, Italian Wine, Natural Wine, South African Wines, Sparkling Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Merchants | Tagged #theglouthatbindsus, Adrien Bariol and Florie Brunet Bugey, Bloom Petnat 2023 Silver Heights Winery, Bugey Chardonnay, Champagne, Champagne Gallimard Blanc de Noirs, Champagne Gallimard Les Riceys, Charmes de Kirwan 2019, Château Kirwan Margaux, Chinese Petnat, Domaine d'Ici Là Bugey, Emma Gao Winemaker Ningxia, Lithos Chardonnay Domaine D'Ici-Là, Mullineux Family Wines Swartland, Mullineux Signature Swartland Syrah 2020, Ningxia Wine China, Recent Wines February 2026 Pt 2, Rosso Conero San Lorenzo 2022 Umani Ronchi, Silver Heights Winery Ningxia China, Swartland Syrah, Umani Ronchi Marches | Leave a comment

Trade Tasting at Montrose 9 March 2026 (Part 3: Otros Vinos and La Voluta)

Posted on 21/03/2026 by dccrossley

This third and final part of my articles on the trade tasting at Montrose Edinburgh on 9 March covers Spanish natural wine specialist Otros Vinos and one of their estates, La Voluta, which is not in Spain, but in Roussillon in France. La Voluta was represented by “JB” (aka Jean-Benoït Vivequain). The face of Otros Vinos is Fernando Berry. Fernando, despite his Spanish given name, is originally from Australia if my memory serves me, but he has built up a portfolio of excellent, sometimes astonishing, Spanish natural wines, and is now adding in a selection from France.

Fernando (left) and Jean-Benoït

OTROS VINOS

I first went to an Otros Vinos tasting almost a decade ago and back then I’d have called it a small portfolio. Not having seen Fernando since we moved to Scotland in 2022, the list has grown somewhat, but it is still a selection chosen from small natural winemakers, many of whom do not add sulphur to their wines.

I have currently counted just over twenty Spanish estates, including personal favourites Vinos Ambiz (Gredos), Cauzon (Granada), Clot de Les Soleres (Barcelona), Costador (Tarragona) and Purulio (Granada). There are now seven French producers to accompany them, all located in Languedoc-Roussillon.

Because of time, plus the fact that my phone had died, I only managed notes on three of Fernando’s wines, but seven of Jean-Benoït’s, and you’ll notice the embarrassing lack of photos in this article. That is a shame because the wines here were no less good, and certainly no less exciting, than those in parts one and two.

All I can say is please try the Otros Vinos wines. They do offer something different, and some of the producers Fernando works with (especially those mentioned above, and those tasted here) are well worth seeking out. It was good to see Fernando in Edinburgh, and I hope a few retailers and restaurants liked what they tasted too.

To make up for lack of photos this is the list of Otros Vinos at the tasting

Vinyes Tortuga (Catalunya, Spain)

Tortuga is the label of Dido (a cultural anthropologist by training) and Jurrriaan, who met in Swartland, South Africa, and travelled for four years together, working for wine producers they liked. They settled in Alt Emporda, farming 9.5 hectares of vines, purchased via crowdfunding. Their first vintage was 2018. The vines are at quite low altitude (150 masl) but only fifteen minutes from the sea, in L’Albera National Park in Girona Province. The soils are licorella (a slate/graphite blend), as in Priorat, and the Tramontana wind keeps disease away from the vines, allowing for low intervention natural winemaking. Sulphur is preferably avoided completely, and they are in conversion to biodynamics.

Doolittle Rosé 2024 is something a little different. It is made oxidatively in 500-litre barrels, not topped up. Its flavour is quite unique. It’s a dry wine but with such sweet cherry fruit. And guess what, the grape variety is Barbera, very possibly the only Barbera in Spain. I loved it. It satisfied my appetite for adventure and something thrillingly different.

Doolittle Red 2020 is made from the same variety and the same vineyard. This really could be an Italian Barbera tasted blind, and I mean a very good one. Plump fruit, juicy, but with a bitter lick of savoury goodness on the finish. I should say “very” fruity.

I Loved both of these. The vineyards are planted with an extremely interesting mixture of grape varieties. Besides the Barbera, they have Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, Garnatxa (Grenache), and a recently-grafted single hectare of white varieties (Garnatxa Blanca, Malvasia, Macabeu and some Chenin Blanc for goodness sake – I want to try that one).

I’d absolutely love some adventurous retailer to grab these.

Los Comuns “Estrem” 2024 (Catalunya, Spain)

This estate is a project between Jordi Escoda and Augustí Perelló, who grew up together in El Molar in Priorat. Their vines are within the Priorat appellation but they don’t work to the rules laid down, and the wines are labelled as table wine equivalent. Their vines are on very steep, rocky slopes many fellow producers don’t want to work. Production is tiny, at around 3,500 bottles each vintage.

The wine tasted was a blend of 60% Cariñena and 40% Garnacha, off those licorella soils. It’s a young and fruity wine made in a Crianza style. A natural wine, it is fermented using local yeasts in amphora, where it spends just three months ageing. No sulphites are added. To match the style it has juicy fruit and extract, and I think the alcohol is up at 13.5%.

Some otros vinos from Otros Vinos

LA VOLUTA (Corbières, France)

This estate, of 6.5 hectares, is run by another couple who met abroad, this time in New Zealand. Jean-Benoït Vivequain and his partner Anna Rubio are based at Cucugnan, north of Maury but just inside the Aude, in the Haut-Corbières’ rugged schist hills. They make natural wines to express the terroir, as they say, and in the cellar they will only use tiny amounts of sulphur, and only when absolutely essential.

Kuntur 2024 was the only white wine here. A blend of Marselan and Muscat, it’s a zesty, dry wine with a good savoury edge to it. A simple wine, I think (though youth might disguise its potential) yet a good start. Looking back, it is that zippy fruit that seems to characterise all of the wines here, although the rancios are far more complex, certainly the last (2017) wine.

Zanza 2023 is a delicious zippy, pale, light red made from 100% Carignan. I say light…it tastes light, although I’m sure I spotted 13.5% abv. So tasty.

Bambolina 2021 is a bit of an experiment for them. Grenache and Carignan are fermented separately and then blended together when the fermentation has finished. It’s a super-zesty red bursting with fruity life.

Loro 2023 is a Syrah and Grenache Noir blend, mostly Grenache but with the Syrah berries added as an infusion. Much less zesty than Bambolina, but really beautiful fruit.

Tembo 2023 brings together Carignan and Grenache again (like Bambolina). Both varieties here are fermented separately on their skins in stainless steel and then blended for ageing in barrel (8 months). This is a smooth-fruited wine but vibrant and fresh. There seems to be a toungue-prickling lick of nice CO2.

Karaka 2022 is an amazing Grenache Noir. It ferments in barrels before transferring to glass demijohns outdoors where it ages in the traditional Maury style (but without AOP, as Vin de France). It had a bit more tannin than the local Vins Doux usually have, but it’s a unique style, well worth exploring.

If that was good, the last wine was even better, I think. Joana 2017 is again an oxidatively made/aged (rancio style) Grenache (Noir, Blanc and Gris), but this time with an extra five years in bottle over the Karaka. It is made via the same process as that wine, with the grapes being foot-trodden. It has an astonishing bouquet which you’d think might be from a very much older wine, until you notice its freshness. The palate is dry too (you almost expect it to be sweet), and the 15% alcohol is natural ripeness. They don’t use any mutage, ie no adding spirit to fortify it. Very long, it is also gaining complexity, though I imagine it will age well long-term. Perhaps almost indefinitely.

I thought these wines were pretty exceptional. I think they would retail between around £30-£40, so not cheap, but the quality is there. I don’t know these wines at all, but I’m sure someone will point out that insiders already know them well. Still, for me it was great to meet Jean-Benoït and to taste his wines. It capped-off a great tasting. I do wish I’d had more time.

I failed to taste at the Roland Wines table. Every time I looked someone was sat at a chair commanding full attention, and in the end I had to head off. I hope that Roland will once more make an appearance at one of the Cork & Cask wine fairs this year, as usual.

Posted in Artisan Wines, Languedoc-Roussillon, Natural Wine, Spanish Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Merchants, Wine Tastings | Tagged Catalonian Wine, Fernando Berry Otros Vinos, Jean-Benoit Vivequain La Voluta, La Voluta Joana 2017, La Voluta Languedoc-Roussillon, Los Comuns Catalunya, Montrose Tasting 9 March 2026, Natural Wine in Edinburgh, Otros Vinos at Montrose Edinburgh, Trade Tastings Edinburgh, Vinyes Tortuga, Wine, Wine Tastings | Leave a comment

Trade Tasting at Montrose 9 March 2026 (Part 2: Beattie & Roberts and Domaine Ami)

Posted on 16/03/2026 by dccrossley

Montrose Part 2 covers the wines of North London-based importer Beattie & Roberts and the wines of Domaine Ami in Burgundy. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I’d probably never heard of Beattie & Roberts before I discovered one of their wines last year, from Les Valseuses, a micro-domaine just outside Arbois, in the Jura. What a lovely list they seem to have, though no Valseuses on show here. They also have a wine bar near their home base of Newington Green, called Cadet. It’s a joint project with charcutier George Jephson, a small food offering provided by chef Mike Murphy. The wine bar showcases their full retail wine list for sale.

Domaine Ami was represented by Paul Perarnau, who runs this domaine with Willy Roulendes. It is based at Paris L’Hôpital, close to the southern Côte de Beaune appellation of Maranges. Both men had previously worked with prestigious names, and Paul even worked for Dynamic Vines for a while. Their wines are imported by Raeburn Fine Wines.

BEATTIE & ROBERTS

Crémant d’Alsace 2023, Christophe Lindenlaub (Alsace, France)

The first of Christophe’s wines on show was his Crémant. The grapes come from his vineyards around Dorlisheim, right up in the far north of the region (south of Mutzig and west of Strasbourg). Once ignored, this is now the wild frontier, the place to look for undiscovered natural wine gems, except that Christophe is not undiscovered. Nor is Crémant d’Alsace these days.

Much of the Crémant from Alsace is mainly Chardonnay, but this is pretty much equal parts Sylvaner and Auxerrois. It only sees 12 months on lees, so it isn’t complex. But what it is gives you clean and fresh fruit carried on a brittle spine of brisk acidity. Another wine whose time has come, judging by the sunshine and riot of yellow daffodils outside my window.

Riesling « A Griffes Acérées » 2023 was also poured. Christophe makes this by direct press juice from his highest parcels of Riesling at Mutzig. Zero additions, zero added sulphur, it is linear and fresh from ageing in stainless steel for 12 months. A nice “wet pebble” gentle texture underlies the fleshy citrus. Two very good wines.

Escumosos 3r 2022, Celler 9+ (Catalonia, Spain)

This domaine is close to the sea, just east of Tarragona in Catalunya. The varietal composition is mostly Cartoixa, a synonym for Xarel-lo, common in Cava. This is a sparkling wine with fruit off rough chalky soil, made by the Ancestral Method. It has a fruity demeanour for sure, but is made very interesting by a mineral texture and more fresh acidity. It would also make a lovely aperitif.

1r Base Blanco 2024 is a delicious still wine from the same estate. 80% Cartoixa and 20% Macabeu gets just six months in stainless steel, so the result is salty and lemony and very fresh. All of these 9+ wines are natural, with no added sulphur.

Transhumància Blanc 2024, Domaine Cotzé (Roussillon, France)

Muscat à Petit Grains was harvested at Domaine Carterole in Roussillon. Whole bunch fermentation (10 days), then ageing in fibreglass before being bottled in spring 2025. This is a very good wine. Amazing to get such tension and salinity out of Muscat. The bouquet has typical florality you’d expect from the variety but the palate has stone fruit and texture.

La Peur du Rouge 2024, Domaine Le Temps des Cérises (Languedoc, France)

Axel Prüfer was born in former East Germany, but after working in the South of France, including with Eric Pfifferling at L’Anglore, he set down roots at Le Mas Blanc, a hamlet near Béziers. This “fear of red” is a blend of Chardonnay and Clairette. A five-day maceration is followed by ageing in tank. The result is a golden yellow colour with tropical fruits and a lovely balance (12% abv shows the vines are up in the hills, away from the heat).

Premier Jus 2024, Domaine Fond Cyprès (Languedoc, France)

We stay in Languedoc, but here we are in the Corbières mountains at the village of Escales. Carignan and Grenache Noir are harvested from north-facing slopes. The Grenache goes into a large tank after pressing, and an infusion of whole Carignan berries is added to the fermentation. Is the result a dark Rosé or a light red? Whatever it is, you get a light-bodied wine with nice aromatics. I would lean stylistically to light red, only because I did detect just a little bit of tannin in what is otherwise pleasantly smooth. Another excellent 12.5% abv wine from a region where the alcohol often runs free.

Syrah de la Penède 2023 is more of a traditional red from Rodolphe Gianesini and Laetitia Ourliac at Fond Cyprès. It’s a single parcel wine from a vineyard backed by forest. They do a four-week maceration of fully destemmed grapes in wooden vats, then the pressed must goes back into oak for one year. You get deep and dark, leggy fruit, quite full and chewy even, but the fruit is nevertheless dark and smooth. B&R suggest it is similar to a Northern Rhône Syrah, and they are probably right. It needs some time, I would suggest, but I think this retails at a little over £30. As such, it’s another example of a route for exploring a grape, in this case Syrah, without today’s cost for a Côte-Rôtie, or even one of the finer Saint-Josephs. You get a wine of individual character and personality.

Riptide 2024, Domaine Cotzé (Roussillon, France)

More Roussillon from Domaine Cotzé here, a blend of four varieties: 40% Carignan and 20% Morvèdre with a two-day maceration, plus 30% Muscat of Alexandria and 10% Syrah, given a slightly longer five-day soak on skins. The wine when blended is in no way heavy, and it’s perhaps surprisingly light until you notice it weighs in at only 11.4% alcohol. Yet it does combine a floral bouquet and a mix of red and dark fruits with a deeper earthy, savoury quality. Lightish but far from weedy. A modern Roussillon wine in the best sense, in that it’s not at all ponderous or jammy, nor is it too chewy..

DOMAINE AMI

Domaine Ami is, as I mentioned in my introduction, a relatively new domaine near Maranges at the southern end of the Côte de Beaune. When I started going to Burgundy in the mid-1980s Maranges was a backwater. The appellation was granted here in 1988. Two friends who had studied together, Paul Perarnau and Willy Roulendes, managed to join to create Domaine Ami, initially as a negociant, but now with five hectares at Paris L’Hôpital (3ha rented, 1ha owned, 1ha owned by investors).

Willy had worked at Domaine de Montille, learning about biodynamics with Etienne, before managing the Clos du Moulin aux Moines in Auxey. Paul started in finance, then worked at Dynamic Vines in London, before joining Willy at Clos du Moulin, gaining further experience with Dominique Hauvette in Provence. His final job before Domaine Ami was as Sales Director for Bruno Paillard in Reims. I think Paul has a famous sister, AthénaÏs de Béru (Château de Béru, Chablis).

I tasted eight wines. The style seems to be to make fruity cuvées but which are also savoury and food-friendly. They also say they aim to make affordable wines, if Burgundy can truly fit that description generally, but certainly within context they are less expensive than many.

I say the wines are fruity, but they do aim for slightly longer fermentations, and only punch down the cap in the small tanks they use just a little in the second week, to, as Paul said, “release the sugars”. They also believe this method helps instil a bit more depth of character. If they add sulphur at all to these wines, it will be below 20 mg/l.

Bourgogne Blanc La Tête dans les Nuages 2021 really surprised me. It comes from the bottom of the slope at Maranges and is an easy-going wine with depth. This was the white “Nuages”, a Chardonnay (there’s a red from Pinot Noir too). This is actually a lovely wine if you don’t want to climb the appellation ladder with its concomitant costs. Organic grapes, no sulphites added, apple and pear fruit notes, quite delicious. It is Chardonnay, with occasionally a little Aligoté in some vintages. It undergoes one of their longer, slow, fermentations and is aged on lees (usually in older oak) for 12 months.

I actually tasted the reds first, Paul going the way I am used to tasting in the Jura. There was a Saint Albin Rouge 2019 (not Aubin) off limestone, a Maranges 2020 called “Ou Maranges”, a Volnay 2017 and a 2015 Pommard, the latter their first vintage, literally a garage wine. All showed increasing levels of fresh fruit purity tamed by a savoury depth with age. The Volnay was slightly atypical because the vines are at the bottom of the slope where there is more clay. It was an attractive wine right now, but if one were generalising, I think 2017 is seen as a vintage for early drinking despite good quality.

Overall, it was nice to taste wines with some bottle age, enough to see them in a positive light.

After enjoying the “Nuages” I was looking forward to the white wines. The Côte de Beaune 2018 comes from a plot between Beaune and Pommard close to some Giboulot vines (apparently…well it might mean they are getting less chemical overspill). We have lemony depth, good length, amplified warmth but acidity too.

The Saint-Romain 2022 is perhaps a step up, but ex-VAT prices here rise from £26 to £33, with another £4 plus VAT for the admittedly lovely Santenay Premier Cru Clos Rousseau 2018. Amplified fruit, mineral but not all that acidic, and drinking well.

This is a good young domaine making good wines and with a dynamic outlook. I think the “Nuages” is excellent value despite being far from the cheapest Bourgogne Blanc around (around £24+ VAT, presumably Trade). Contact Raeburns for further information.

Posted in Artisan Wines, Burgundy, Languedoc-Roussillon, Natural Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Merchants, Wine Tastings | Tagged Beattie & Roberts Wine Merchant, Celler 9+ Tarragona Spain, Christope Lindenlaub Dorlisheim Alsace, Domaine Ami Paris L'Hopital Burgundy, Domaine Ami Raeburn Fine Wines, Domaine Cotzé Roussillon, Domaine Fond des Cyprès Languedoc, Domaine Le Temps des Cérises Languedoc, Edinburgh Trade Tasting, Edinburgh Wine Tasting, Montrose Tasting 9 March 2026, Paul Perarnau Domaine Ami, Wine, Wine Tasting, Wine Tasting at Montrose Edinburgh | 1 Comment

Trade Tasting at Montrose 9 March 2026 (Part 1: Wines Under the Bonnet and Wayward Wines)

Posted on 12/03/2026 by dccrossley

Montrose has become one of the venues that hosts some of the most exciting trade tastings in Edinburgh since it opened in November 2023, in a former pub near the top of Easter Road. Being under the same ownership as the city’s renowned Michelin-starred Timberyard, it already matches exceptional food with a wine list to enthral even the most picky of Londoners, and other visitors, who seem to head here. They have an exceptional team as well.

On Monday 9 March Montrose was invaded by a selection of small importers and I managed to taste from Wines Under the Bonnet, Wayward Wines, Beattie & Roberts, and Otros Vinos. I also tasted wines from two winemaker guests, Paul Perarnau from Domaine Ami, based at Paris L’Hôpital near Maranges in Burgundy (imported by Raeburn Fine Wines), and JB (aka Jean-Benoît Vivequain) from La Voluta, a natural wine domaine at Cucugnan in Corbières. La Voluta is imported by Otros Vinos.

Three parts will, as briefly as possible because of the number of wines tasted, cover:

Part 1 – Wines Under the Bonnet and Wayward Wines

Part 2 – Beattie & Roberts and Domaine Ami

Part 3 – Otros Vinos and La Voluta

*prices were either not given, or where they were they were trade prices ex-VAT, so I have not included any pricing information, except in a few cases.

All of the wines mentioned were bottles I’d be happy to drink. Those I would like to buy most are only subtly distinguished in the text, and I only refrained from listing my favourites because that list would be pointlessly long. I hope that at 2,300 words, this article isn’t.

WINES UNDER THE BONNET

2Naturkinder (pron. ZweiNaturkinder) is the natural wine domaine of Melanie and Michael Völker, based in Franken, which seems nowadays to be a happening place for a new generation of young winemakers. They have around six hectares near Iphofen. I tried two wines. There used to be a range of wines here labelled “Vater & Sohn”, from Vines Michael shared with his father. Now there is just one per year and this was #6, apparently from the same vineyard as the former “Fledermaus White”. Vater & Sohn #6 is a blend, but mostly Müller-Thurgau with a tiny bit of Pinot Gris and Sylvaner. It’s a non-vintage cuvée blended from 2024 fruit with some from 2023. You get a fruit-filled bouquet with a savoury twist.

That’s a lovely zippy wine, as you expect from this couple. Their second wine comes under the Brutal!!! label. This is made from 2023 vintage Pinot Gris (aka Rülander locally). Apparently, it is the first wine from this Bar Brutal-inspired label to be released in Germany (official Brutal!!! releases have gold lettering which the unofficial releases with white lettering lack). We have fruit off a single steep slope with poor soil, and it goes into 600-litre old oak. It’s fully natural (zero-zero, no added sulphur). Very dynamic stuff, but with depth and concentration.

Complémen’-Terre 68 Ares 2024 is a Folle Blanche (Muscadet’s forgotten variety) made by Manuel Landron and Marion Pescheux at La Haye Fouassière, east of Nantes. It is a different and larger parcel than the original 68 Ares in current vintages but it has kept the name. It’s alive and tasty, and less overtly acidic than many versions of this variety.

Tribute 2024 is a bottling made from Melon vines on sandy soils, shared with Manu’s father, Jo Landron. It’s quite ripe with pear and lemon, but also mineral and has a really nice savoury element. You’d not usually get such spice in a Muscadet. A very good natural, biodynamic, terroir wine from a producer always worth a punt if you don’t know the wine.

[Oops! No Photo]

Peltier-Ravineau is a domaine set up by two friends who studied together at Beaune, who since graduating in 2019 have worked with names such as Pacalet, Hervé Villemade and Tue Boeuf. They are based at Valaire, near Cheverny (close to Blois, in the Loire). These were really nice natural wines, three of them.

La Marnière 2024 is bottled under the Cheverny appellation and is mainly Sauvignon Blanc blended with Menu Pineau. It sees 6 months on lees in fibreglass and is genuinely good, not like your typical “Touraine Sauvignon”. Les Bois on t’ Brûle 2024 is a Vin de France that blends Chardonnay with Sauvignon Blanc, a surprisingly good mix across some of the Loire’s eastern vineyards. It’s rounded and creamy. Last of the three, Balle dans le Pied 2024 (also VdF) is a Gamay-based blend with a little Côt (aka Malbec) and Cabernet Franc from purchased organic grapes. It’s a fruity red with cool acids, light and fresh with a mix of whole bunch fermentation with a little direct press (the Cab Franc). Loved all three of these.

Mataburro Otium [2023] is one of those “the hits keep coming” wines. Laurent Roger and Melissa Ingrand are down in Rivesaltes (Roussillon). Here, they make this delicate red from Grenache Noir with some Grenache Gris, Macabeo and Carignan (so red and white grapes). Pretty old vines being around 70 years of age are on a clay/limestone mix of soils. A short maceration goes into stainless steel. It’s clean and fresh with red fruits, but I don’t think they add any sulphur. I do think this retails around £30, and is worth every penny.

Xavière Hardy is a potential new star of the Loire. She’s another Anjou producer making a name at a domaine called Les Terres Bleues. Her vines, at La Chapelle-Glain, are not located in a traditional location for vines and it took Xavière several years lobbying to get planting rights, for just 1.5 hectares on blue schist. We are northwest of Angers, almost as close to Rennes as to that city. The vines are all on stakes. Winemaking is distinctly artisanal, and she has needed to adapt her techniques in wet vintages, but basically her wines get a direct press into old barrels and when I say “low intervention”, here this does mean zero added sulphur too.

Three wines again. Baraka 2024 is delicious Grolleau, allegedly a Rosé but if you know this underrated variety, you will expect more of a super-refined yet earthy, delicate pale red. But it’s also saline and rich. Ma Garance Voyageuse 2024 is also made from Grolleau. It undergoes three different macerations to give a wine with concentrated red fruits, juicy but not lacking tension. XH2 (XH squared) is made from hand-destemmed Pinot Noir which sees a seven-day maceration, going into old oak. Again, zero sulphur is added. The importer calls this “nimble”, which is pretty apt. It weighs-in with just 11% abv, and is a subtle wine with charm. I can believe the assertion that these are Xavière’s best wines yet. I was very much impressed.

We finish off at WUTB with one of the famous family names of Gaillac, near Albi in France’s southwest. 2P Production is, I think, the correct name for the operation of Romain Plageoles and Fanny Papelard. Romain is one of the sons of a family who were among my first experiences of natural wines, both via Paris and Artington (the latter, of course, from Les Caves de Pyrene). This is a Merlot and Gamay co-fermentation from the same region, sub-titled Mix 2.0. A short, four-day, fermentation in what was a hot year (2022) has produced a well balanced, fruity wine with a restrained alcohol content of 12.5%, but as you might expect, no restraint of glouglou fruit.

WAYWARD WINES

É Festa Cerreto Sannita 2022, Antonio Gismondi (Campania, Italy) is a traditional method sparkling wine. It is refermented on must from the following vintage (2023), and there’s no disgorgement (ie Col Fondo style). As with Campania’s still whites, this is clean and quite mineral, the kind of brilliant simple summer wine you will soon be looking for, but the traditional method, rather than it being tank-fermented, is probably what gives the good definition.

La Pente de Chavigny 2024, Mikaël Bouges (Loire, France) is a Sauvignon Blanc from vines on gravelly limestone. I don’t know this producer but I was told this is Wayward’s “house wine”. I just thought it was nice to find a SB which is so savoury and mineral, and I think if it retails in the mid-£20 range it would be worth a punt.

Le Rayon Blanc 2023, Thomas Puéchavy (Loire, France) comes from Nazelles-Négron, which I know, it being on the right bank of the river, just above Amboise. Being vaguely east of the Vouvray appellation, this wine is Chenin Blanc. The vines are between 25 and 40 years old on limestone and clay. The site is a windy one, cool but protected to an extent from disease. This is a natural wine and has no added sulfites. Rounded lemony direct-press fruit and a bit of saline minerality makes for a beautiful Chenin.

Il Était Une Fois 2024, La Vrille et le Papillon (Ardèche, France) is another zero-sulphur wine made by Géraldine and Meryl Croizier at Valvignères in the Ardèche. Grenache Blanc is the variety, a tasty wine from two partners who, as with so many winemakers here, left the Co-operative to go it alone.

Pietre 2024 is the second wine from Antonio Gismondi at the tasting. This time it’s a still wine, a blend of Falanghina and Malvasia di Candia, also from Campania. Made without temperature control with a fast, six-day, fermentation it is mouthfilling and textured, and very representative of a region of Southern Italy which, because of altitude, perhaps counter-intuitively makes excellent whites. Chiaro 2024 from the same stable is labelled as a Rosato and is a very pale, direct-pressed, wine with wafts of nice red cherry and berry fruit. Both wines have no added sulphur and have a lightness of touch you are pleased to find for what seems relatively inexpensive.

Grubersbuckel 2023, Martin Hirsch takes us to the village of Kitzingen, in Franconia (Germany). It’s one of a growing number of newer, exciting, producers from this sub-zone of villages east of Würzburg (Iphofen, the home of 2Naturkinder, tasted above, is just down the road). The variety is Pinot Gris (often called Rülander here). I think this is new to Wayward, and it’s another young producer who, on the basis of this peachy, smoky, textured wine, is going to be much better known, at least to me. A definite “hit”.

Camaleonte 2024, Fabio Ferracane (Sicily, Italy) is a Rosato wine coming from the Marsala zone, and is a blend of Catarratto, Grillo, Nero d’Avola and Merlot. It’s a fruity summer wine, not super-pale but with a pleasant macerated chalky texture grounding the fruit. The blend changes every vintage, but the ’24 has more red grapes. The result combines cranberry and cherry with a lick of salinity. The wine does, after all, come from the Sicilian coast.

La Tangente Ostara 2023, Patricia and Rémi Bonneton (Ardèche, France) gives us an interesting blend of Grenache, Syrah and Cinsault. It is made from grapes purchased in the Gard, to the south of this couple’s base at Étables in the Ardèche. It is nevertheless made from organic fruit with native yeasts and zero additives (no added sulfites). It’s a mix of direct-pressed grapes with an infusion of whole berries added as the fermentation gets going. Cherry and rhubarb notes add freshness and a touch of complexity.

Beaujolais-Villages 2024, Elisa Guerin (Beaujolais, France) is made by a young grower in Chénas, where she has taken over a small domaine. You need to listen up here. According to Nat Hughes in her 2025 “The Wines of Beaujolais”, Elisa is becoming one of the most sought-after winemakers in the region. She did research on the impact of global warming on viticulture at the UK’s Plumpton College before, eventually, returning to her family’s vines in 2018.

She makes natural wines without ever playing on this, and uses mostly concrete and carbon dioxide for her fermentations, but this wine is made in stainless steel. This entry-level “Villages” is from a parcel she rents in Quincié. It is packed with zippy and glossy cherry and strawberry fruit, but still has a little texture. I like this a lot. I think it retails around £24. Wayward brings in four of Elisa’s wines at the moment, and this Villages is additionally available in magnum.

Back to the Ardèche again for our penultimate wine. This is a jump in price (a little over £40 retail, I think). Pauline Maziou began her Petite Nature label in 2019 with just a half-hectare of vines at Quintenas, in the north of the region. This may be why Sorcières 2024 majors on 50% Sérine (a Syrah clone of the Northern Rhône), along with Cinsault (around 20%) and Viognier (30%), the latter grown in the Gard.

The result is indeed a little “Northern Rhône-like”, but with its own personality. The vintage conditions were cool and the wine is pure and elegant, very perfumed, perhaps enhanced by Pauline’s zero intervention/zero sulphur approach, and the wine’s 11.5% abv. It’s one of those wines undoubtedly worth the money yet it must be hard convincing others of that worth. I dread to think what it would cost in a restaurant. I’d definitely love a bottle but wines at this price are becoming rarer additions to my cellar these days.

Finally, a wine from a producer that many people scanning a retail shelf or restaurant list will know, Olivier Cousin. Olivier hopefully needs no introduction. He calls himself a “Paysan Angevin” and his back label motto is “Aimer, Observer, Cultiver”. He makes electricity-charged biodynamic wines in Anjou, and this one, Le Franc 2022, fits that bill.

Old massale selection Cabernet Franc vines, grafted by Olivier’s grandfather in the 1940s, are macerated and aged in old oak barrels for 18 months, a somewhat longer time than most of his cuvées. It’s packed with quite dense pure fruit but even with a few years in bottle it still has a tannic structure. You could age it, ideally, or just go crunchy. This is going to retail at around £40 but I’d like to give a shout-out to his “Qveveri” cuvée, also Cabernet Franc, also sold by Wayward Wines, and I think about a fiver cheaper.

That’s all for Part One. The quality doesn’t diminish when we head to Parts Two and Three, but we have seen a consistently high quality and excitement level here from these two importers, the first whose wines I’ve known for some years, the second who is new to me.

Posted in Artisan Wines, Italian Wine, Loire, Natural Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Merchants, Wine Tastings | Tagged 2 Naturkinder Brutal!!! 2023, 2Naturkinder Franken, 2P Production Wines Gaillac, Antonio Gismondi Campania, Complémen' Terre 68 Ares, Edinburgh Wine, Edinburgh Wine Tasting, Elisa Guerin at Chénas, Elisa Guerin Beaujolais-Villages 2024, Fabio Ferracane Marsala Sicily, Géraldine and Meryl Croizier Ardèche Wine, La Tangente Ostara 2023, Manu Landron and Marion Peschaux, Martin Hirsch Kitzingen Franken, Mataburro Otium Rivesaltes, Mikael Bouges La Pente de Chavigny, Montrose Tasting 9 March 2026, Olivier Cousin Le Franc 2022 Anjou, Patricia and Remi Bonneton Ardèche, Pauline Maziou Sorcières 2024, Peltier-Ravineau Cheverny, Petite Nature Pauline Maziou Ardèche, Romain Plageoles and Fanny Papelard, Small Wine Importers Tasting Edinburgh, Thomas Puéchavy Loire Wine, Wayward Wines, Wine, Wine Tasting, Wines Under the Bonnet, Xavière Hardy Anjou Loire | Leave a comment

Clay Wine Fair 2026 (Part 4)

Posted on 10/03/2026 by dccrossley

This Part 4 is the final part of my coverage of the Clay Wine Fair 2026. Here, we have some of the wines presented by Woodwinters with special guest Shota Natroshvilli of Teliani Valley/Ibero Winery in Georgia, and by Slonk Selections. Woodwinters is an importer that is very well known in Edinburgh, with a shop on Newington Road, about a twenty minute walk from Waverley Station and the city centre.

Slonk is an international wine consultancy run by Edinburgh-based Isobel Salamon, who is also the organiser of the Clay Wine Fair. It covers branding, sommelier services, wine education (trade and consumer), team and business development and more. Australian native Isobel has a legal background but has a host of wine qualifications from WSET to regional wine certification. Anyway, you can find out the whole list of what Isobel does at www.slonkwine.com . She deserves a plug for organising such and important, instructive, and fun event in Edinburgh.

WOODWINTERS

Altos de Guarilihue Semillon 2023, Ana María Cumsille (Itata Valley, Chile)

Itata is towards the south of Chile in wine terms, just north of Bio Bio, and close to Chillán. It is colder and wetter this far south, with less protection from the ocean, but wine regions on the edge can often thrill. The main variety here, with very old vineyards, is País, but this wine is made from 80-year-old Semillon. Ana María Cumsille is chief winemaker of the well-known Viña Carmen, but she had previously worked in the Itata Valley and fell in love with it. She makes single parcel wines where she buys fruit, acknowledging the grape grower on the label.

This Semillon was grown at altitude (well, around 300 masl) about 20km from the Pacific by Ariel Sandoval. The fruit goes partly into amphorae and partly oak. Skin contact and amphora give this wine some texture, but it is not at all overwhelming. Loads of purity in the fruit and not tannic. Delicious. I really liked this. At £26 a cert next time I’m down Newington way.

El Litre Cinsault 2022, Ana María Cumsille (Itata Valley, Chile)

The grower here is Charles Rodriguez and this Cinsault parcel is 100 years old, sited at Guarilihue Alto, head-pruned vines on granite. The grapes go mostly into amphorae, a small batch being aged in older oak. Ripe fruit gives 13.5% alcohol. It has a fruity yet savoury richness but a nice linear acidity and grippy texture (but not harsh). I liked this too and would buy it, but I did prefer the Semillon slightly. £25. NB, despite what the name suggests this is a 75cl bottle.

Rioja Tinaja 2022, Peña el Gato, Bodega Juan Carlos Sancha (Rioja, Spain)

This is a family producer from Rioja Alta with vines at 650 masl which were planted in 1927. This cuvée is made (I’m told) in small amphora, although generally their wines are made in large oak or granite vats. This is a natural wine with very low sulphur addition. The result is dense and dark to an extent, but the Garnacha fruit (100%) is beautiful, with smoky blackberry mixed with black pepper and a mix of tannic structure and richness that verges on voluptuous. Despite the high-altitude vines, the alcohol does hit 15%. £27.

Next were several wines from special guest Shota Natroshvili of Teliani Valley Winery and Ibero Winery, in Kakheti, Georgia. I tasted three wines.

Kakhuri Mtsvane 2024, Ibero Winery (Kakheti, Georgia)

About four-to-five thousand bottles of this wine are made. It’s fruity and, for Georgian wine, quite zippy, made with six months buried in qvevri. It has some texture, but far from overwhelming for anyone reticent to buy the full-on orange experience. Very user-friendly. The art on the label is also by the winemaker. No price listed, but the red with the same label (last of the three, below) is £21.

Glenkhuri Kisiskhevi Saperavi Qvevri 2022, Teliano Valley Winery (Kakheti, Georgia)

Kisiskhevi is a village in Kakheti where the fruit is grown. This is a cuvée of around 6,500 bottles. Deep garnet coloured, it has red fruits (cranberry) and a bit of something darker, but it is definitely fruit-forward, despite the traditional qvevri ageing. It is also quite intense and structured, so it’s very much a traditional Georgian red, yet fruity more than tannic. No price given.

Saperavi 2024, Ibero Winery (Kakheti, Georgia)

This is a lighter Saperavi, just 12.5% alcohol. It is very fruity with good acidity and it is very easy to drink. It saw just a couple of weeks on skins and six months in qvevri. The fruit is sourced from the village of Vachnadzion in the Central Kakheti Region’s Mukuzani PDO. £21.

That’s a brief description of three very nice and, I think, quite inexpensive Georgian wines (if the retail prices are correct). Shota was a nice guy, which also makes a difference, so long as the wines are good. I’m not sure whether this is correct, but someone told me that Waitrose has a Teliani Valley Saperavi? I couldn’t find it on their web site.

SLONK WINE SELECTIONS

For stockists contact isobel@slonkwine.com

Circum Solem 2020, Labara Wines (Imereti, Georgia)

Tsolikouri is a major white variety of Western Georgia, mostly found in Imereti. It usually produces wines with lively acidity, and the qveveri tradition here (where the vessels are often called churi ) is for less skin contact than in Kakheti. But here we do have a full six months in clay. The fruit is nicely rounded and I was getting greengage notes with quince and pear. There’s a little texture. The vintage is 2020 so there’s some nice bottle age, and 13.5% abv adds a little food-friendly richness. A nice wine, especially for £19.50.

Tïn 2019, Montesecondo (Tuscany, Italy)

This is a very interesting IGT wine made from Trebbiano in the Val di Pesa (San Cascino). The fruit is grown at 300 masl. It is fermented in amphora with indigenous yeasts, and aged for ten months on skins (sulle bucce). This adds tannin and structure as well as colour. The wine retains a classy freshness but has a lot more depth than most Trebbiano. It’s an example of how amphora and skin contact can enhance all sorts of grape varieties (as we saw with amphora Bacchus in Part 3, with “Artefact”). Pretty good for Trebbiano, and at £42 it reflects this, and its age. Still cheaper than Valentini though.

Le Anfore di Elena Casadei 2021, Castello del Trebbio (Tuscany, Italy)

This is part of Elena’s Anfore project. More Trebbiano, aged in amphora because Elena believes that the clay best shows the wine’s terroir. You don’t find a lot of people believing in Trebbiano as a terroir wine, but wines like this suggest they should. This is an attractive wine which clearly shows the life in the soil from where it came, in this case close to the winery at Pontassieve, near Florence. £34.

Elena also makes several more wines from her Anfore Project, one being Migiu 2022. It’s labelled Isola dei Nuraghi Bianco IGT, from Sardinia and is made at the Olianas Winery (see below). Here we have perhaps my first taste of a wine made from the autochthonous white variety, Semidiano, grown at just under 400 masl. It’s an “orange wine” with a bit of texture/structure, both interesting and delicious. £34.

Olianas Cannonau di Sardegna 2023 (Sardinia, Italy)

Although it doesn’t bear her name on the label like the previous two wines, this is also made in Sardinia by Elena Casadei. It’s a vibrant red, quite dark in colour for the variety (Cannonau is a synonym of Grenache, of course), but with nice lifted fruit, very clean with a bit of grainy texture which gives it a nice edge. It hits 14% but not in a bad way as it’s a lovely wine. It also retails for £34

Akhoebi Saperavi 2022, Alexander Mtivlishvili/Alazani Wines (Kakheti, Georgia)

It’s always good to end a tasting on a high note and this wine was one of a handful of favourites. Grapes come from the Akhoebi “micro-zone” in Kakheti, which I admit I couldn’t find on my map, but it appears to be in Kardenakhi, which is at the southeastern end of Kakheti. This is quite a powerful qvevri red wine, dark, with good acids balancing a mix of fruits and savoury elements. It has a big mouthfeel which blends the fruit with a bit of tannin from the qvevri maceration. But the alcohol is balanced at 13.5% and the palate is super-fresh. It was bottled in April 2024, so it has had a good period to mature a little in bottle. The label is very Georgian, isn’t it. No price given.

This brings to an end a mega-set of articles on Clay Wine 2026. It deserves the coverage because aside from being a great concept for a wine fair, it always throws up some brilliant bottles that you might otherwise miss on the shelf.

Slonking (To slonk: Scots/Northern dialect, to swallow greedily, devour or gulp down)

Posted in Amber Wine, Amphora Wine, Artisan Wines, Georgian Wine, Natural Wine, orange wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Festivals, Wine Merchants, Wine Tastings | Tagged Akhoebi Kardenakhi Georgia, Akhoebi Saperavi Alazani Wines, Alexander Mtivlishvili Alazani Wines Kakheti, Ana Maria Cumsille Itata Parcels, Bodega Juan Carlos Sancha Rioja Alta, Chilean Wine, Clay Wine Fair 2026 Part 4, Edinburgh Wine Fair, Elena Casadei Anfore Project, Ibero Winery Kakheti Georgia, Ibero Winery Mtsvane, Isobel Salamon Slonk Wine, Isola dei Nuraghi Bianco IGT, Itata Valley Wine, Labara Wines Circum Solem Imereti Georgia, Montesecondo Tin 2019 Trebbiano, Pena el Gato Rioja Tinaja, Qvevri Wine, Saperavi, Sardinian Wine, Semidiano Grape Sardinia, Shota Natroshvili Winemaker, Slonk Selections, Teliano Valley Wines Kakheti, Wine Tasting, wine-tasting-edinburgh, Woodwinters | Leave a comment

Clay Wine Fair 2026 (Part 3)

Posted on 06/03/2026 by dccrossley

In Part 3 of my coverage of the Clay Wine Fair 2026 at Sotto Restaurant in Edinburgh on Sunday 1 March we have the wines presented by Astral Wines and Passione Vino. Astral Wines also showed a couple of wines from Enrico Rivetto from the Langhe/Barolo. Enrico was due to be there, but he hadn’t arrived by the time I tasted his two delicious wines. Passione Vino was, as is usual in the northern reaches of the UK, represented by Greg Turner (of the Wild Wine School). Greg is great friends with Luke Harbor, who alongside his role as Group Beverage Director of the Pig Hotels down south, collaborates with Castlewood Vineyards in Devon to make a wine I’ve written about in previous vintages, Artefact. The new 2023 vintage was also on show at Greg’s table.

Passione Vino is a London-based merchant specialising in Italy, specifically “small, independent, and authentic Italian winemakers”. They have bars with food in Shoreditch and Exmouth Market in London, an online wine shop, and a twenty-year history of supplying their wines to the trade. Astral wines is a new name on the Edinburgh wine scene, founded by Ed Almond in August last year. They don’t yet have a web site up and running, but they are on Instagram. The wines Astral showed were, as far as I can tell, all Les Caves de Pyrene lines. Les Caves don’t sell directly in Scotland, using L’Art du Vin as a distributor.

ASTRAL WINES

“Phaunus” Loureiro Vinho Verde DOC 2023, Aphros Wines (Minho, Portugal)

Aphros is a 20-hectare estate, run by Vasco Croft (a veritable Portuguese wine name) since 2004. The estate is fully biodynamic, with a very strong focus on biodiversity and regenerative viticulture, and they use clay and concrete in the cellar. This branco (there is a lovely Vinho Verde Tinto from Aphros that is among the very best of its type) spent eight months in clay. It’s super-vibrant with mineral notes, with citrus (lemon and even tangerine) on the palate. Light and refreshing but with depth too. It’s a rare Vinho Verde which, within reason, will improve with age. £29.

Orgo Rkatsiteli 2023, Teleda Wines (Kakheti, Georgia)

Teleda is a premium producer based near Telavi in northwestern Kakheti, in the Tsinandali appellation. They naturally specialise in the qvevri tradition, and this Rkatsiteli was fermented and aged six months in qvevris buried underground. The bouquet has apricots and spices, and the palate is complex. You get rich dried fruits and nuts, very savoury and also showing some tannins. But the clay makes for a wine with bags of freshness too. For those of us who like the style, it’s a very good example. Winemaking is low intervention using indigenous yeasts etc. They recommend pork as a match…they have the right idea. £25.

Elevate 2022, Mersel Wines (Bekaa Valley, Lebanon)

Mersel is one of the new names in Lebanese wine, introduced to the UK by Doug Wregg and Les Caves de Pyrene. They have some of the highest vineyards in the Bekaa Valley, their vines reaching between 1,700 and 2,400 masl. These are very old head-trained vines on limestone. This wine (it’s white but there is a red version of Elevate as well), is made from grapes growing at the lower end of that range (but still very much high altitude).

The white cuvée is 100% Daw Al Amar, an autochthonous variety. It is fermented in stainless steel and then aged in a mix of older oak and Georgian qvevri. No sulphur is added to this wholly natural wine. The bouquet is both nutty and appley, with a palate showing confit lemon and a nice lick of acidity. It is both subtle and complex in equal measure, but not hard to drink at 12.5% abv. It tastes like a high-altitude wine, maybe imagine The Valais or Aosta. It’s hard to write about this producer without being aware that the Bekaa is right in the firing line once more and maybe they deserve our support, especially as the wines are good. £31.

Zibibbo in Pithos 2023, COS (Sicily, Italy)

I can remember what now seems an age ago when this cuvée was first released, in magnums. Zibibbo, aka Muscat of Alexandria, is a variety very well suited to amphora, and COS is just the right winery with the expertise (founded in the 1980s) to do it justice. This is an IGP from one of the first natural wine producers I ever drank, from Les Caves of course. They are based outside Vittoria in the southeast of the island. The bouquet is, for me at least, iconic. Oxidative, almost smelling of its six months in amphora on skins, along with floral notes (blossom) on top. The palate is very fresh, very vibrant. There are hints of honey riding smoothly above a saline texture which also speaks of apricot stone, with gorgeously complex phenolics for the variety. I always adore this wine. £34.

Creta Pinot Noir 2021, Beckham Estate (Oregon, USA)

Ceramicist Andrew Beckham founded his estate, with his wife Annedria, in 2004. His former career is of relevance because it led him to follow what Elisabetta Foradori was doing with clay vessels in Northeast Italy. Andrew cites the longer and cooler fermentations you get in amphora as the main reason he began to favour their use. Viticulture is regenerative with sheep and chickens among the vines, and they try to encourage pollinators through wild flowers and a varied ecology. Winemaking here is pretty much natural, including native yeasts, which I think really make a difference when fermenting in clay. Minimal sulphur is added.

This is a wine from the Creta vineyard’s “Jory” volcanic soils, high in the Chehalem Mountains, fermented and aged in amphora which I believe Andrew made himself. The Creta wines stay in clay for both fermentation and ageing (Lignum is the label for wines aged in oak). Red fruits are layered over an earthy bouquet. The fruit is textured but rounded on the palate, and there is also that texture I used to call “iron filings”. By coincidence, iron filings (okay, in my imagination) is exacctly what I used to find on the amphora reds from COS (see above), especially their Cerasuolo di Vittoria. This Pinot is long and very fine. Actually, that undersells it. It’s brilliant! It deserves a bit more bottle age though. £53.

RIVETTO, LANGHE (Piemonte, Italy)

I could easily write a page on the Rivetto philosophy, but perhaps the illustration below gives an idea of the regenerative methods employed on the beautiful Lirano Hill (Vigna Lirano), a ridge between Serralunga d’Alba and Sinio, or between Alta Langhe and the Barolo Hills. Enrico calls it a magnetic hill, a complex ecosystem which he farms biodynamically (possibly the only certified biodynamic producer in the Langhe?). Two wines from Vigna Lirano were on show and poured by Ed of Astral Wines in Enrico’s absence.

Langhe Nascetta DOC 2022 is an example of a fairly rare autochthonous white variety which has been known in the region for centuries. This is a version which combines the grape’s natural aromatics with a bit of heft (13.5% abv). It saw 30 days, one-third in amphora and two-thirds in stainless steel, with three days on skins. The palate has nutty depth and is quite savoury with just enough pithy texture. Lovely, and super-interesting. £28.

Nebbiolo d’Alba DOCG Vigna Lirano 2023 is classic cherry-packed Nebbiolo, biodynamically produced and with the freshness and brightness to prove it. Fruit is harvested at 400 masl. Fermented in amphora it is pretty young right now, but the tannins are more lightly-grained than hard. Wild herb and violets are slowly appearing on the nose. Sulphur additions are very low. It needs time but it will do for me against most Barolos. £38, but looking at comparable Barolo prices, this is definitely a bargain.

I tasted the 2022 at last year’s Clay Wine and gave it high praise. This 2023 is even better, and will blossom with age, I am certain. It is quite sought after. But it’s an impressive wine for a Nebbiolo d’Alba, a biodynamic beauty with a remarkable sense of terroir.

PASSIONE VINO

“In Amphoris” Langhe Arneis DOC 2023, Ronchi di Giancarlo Rocca (Piemonte, Italy)

It has taken a while for Arneis to make a name for itself. Much used to be pretty dull, with a few exceptions, and of course this is a region far better known for red wine, where for some producers a white wine might be an afterthought.

This one, from a family estate in Barbaresco, is nice and this is because it manages to retain acidity and freshness alongside its 14% alcohol. In fact, the nose is fresh with zesty citrus and apple, along with the classic white flowers you expect. The palate has quite crisp acids and more pear than any other fruit. The fruit is direct pressed into stainless steel, then moved to amphora, where the fermented wine spends eight months. £30.

Vermentino Toscana IGT 2024, I Mandorli (Tuscany, Italy)

This is an estate in the Suvereto sub-region of, effectively, the Tuscan Coast, but it lies inland from Val di Cornia and Bolgheri. Although Vermentino used to be better known in Sardinia and Liguria, it has found a home in this part of Tuscany. I Mandorli is a family estate farming biodynamically on mostly stony clay and marl soils.

This Vermentino is an “orange wine”, made from vines on hills of around 300 masl close enough to the sea that you can imagine that’s where its salty tang comes from. This is clean, lemony, with the added texture of skin contact in amphora adding plenty of interest. It’s a wine suited to seafood (especially with its salinity), and maybe a cheese platter. I also think it will perform even better at the table than at a tasting, where its subtlety (at only 11% abv) could be lost. Use a fine glass, not a clay cup, for this one. Not cheap at £40 though.

“Zino” Zibibbo Bianco 2023, I Mandorli (Pantelleria, Italy)

I Mandorli make this wine from Muscat of Alexandria (for which Zibibbo is a synonym). Zino, founder of I Mandorli, fell in love with an abandoned parcel of very old Zibibbo vines on the island of Pantelleria off the south coast of Sicily. I first came across the remarkable wines of this island via the passito wines of Marco di Bartoli, but this is a dry wine with a super-clean directness, only a little texture, and real concentration. However, small production of an immaculately made wine isn’t cheap. £55.

« La Quinta » IGT Toscana 2021, Podere Giodo (Tuscany, Italy)

Podere Giodo is an estate in Montalcino where consultant winemaker Carlo Ferrini crafts fine Brunello. La Quinta, made with Carlo’s daughter, is a 100% Sangiovese from younger vines (7-to-10 years old) aged in a mix of amphora and oak. It takes the place of a Rosso di Montalcino in the estate’s lineup.

It has the classic red cherries and berries you’d expect with a nice touch of spice. The amphora gives it a nice earthy grounding along with a little bit of texture. Not too much, but enough to make this wine a whole lot more interesting than a lot of “afterthought Rosso”. Definitely more bright and pristine fruit than is the norm. It’s just a shame that you used to get good Brunello for the £67 this wine retails for. But then again, this wine is at or around that level of quality for half of today’s prices for the big B.

Artefact 2023, Luke Harbor and Castlewood Vineyards (Devon, England)

This is the third vintage of Artefact I’ve tasted. It’s a Bacchus, grapes harvested in October ’23, fermented on skins in large Tuscan amphorae. There it stays, on lees, for eleven months [so says the blub I read], or 18 months according to Greg Turner whilst pouring the wine.

Greg told me that Luke is always pushing towards lower intervention, with one result that this is now fermented with native yeasts. What I love about this wine is that it combines the freshness of the grape variety (citrus, apple, zippy acids) with the depth and texture of the long time spent in amphorae. It brings out a lot more than your average tank-aged Bacchus. I’ve not yet seen the ’23 on any shelves yet, although AJ Mellis, the cheesemonger where I usually find this up in Scotland, still had a few bottles of the 2022 in Stockbridge last Sunday. £28. I always make a big effort (and a big effort is often required) to get a couple of bottles, and maybe one or two to give away to convert those who are not in the know.

So, just one more part to come. Part Four will cover Woodwinters and Slonk Wines Selections.

Posted in Amber Wine, Amphora Wine, Artisan Wines, Italian Wine, Lebanese Wine, Natural Wine, orange wine, Piemonte, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Festivals, Wine Merchants, Wine Tastings | Tagged Amphora Wines, Aphros Phaunus Loureiro Vino Verde, Astral Wines, Beckham Estate Creta Pinot Noir Oregon USA, Bekaa Valley Wine, Castlewood Vineyards Artefact 2023 Devon, Clay Wine Fair 2026 Pt 3, COS Vittoria Sicily, COS Zibibbo in Pithos 2023, Daw Al Amar Grape Variety, Elevate White 2022 Mersel Wines, Enrico Rivetto Langhe, Georgian Wine, I Mandorli Vermentino Toscana, I Mandorli Zino Zibibbo Pantelleria, Langhe Nascetta Rivetto Langhe, Lebanese Wine, Luke Harbor Artefact Collaboration, Mersel Wines Bekaa Valley Lebanon, Nebbiolo d'Alba Vigna Lirano 2023 Rivetto, Passione Vino, Podere Giodo La Quinta IGT Toscana, Podere Giodo Montalcino, Portuguese wine, Ronchi di Giancarlo Rocca Arneis In Amphoris, Teleda Wines Kakheti, Teleda Wines Orgo Rkatsiteli, Wine, Wine Tasting | Leave a comment

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