For the second part of my Recent Wines for June we have a small, but very eclectic, selection. We begin with two Mosel producers. One is a young woman making boundary-pushing wines in tiny quantities, the other is a young man doing much the same, but here giving us a cider. Our third bottle is also from Germany, but from Franken. A classic of the region, but a wine dressed in very different clothes. There’s my first bottle of Waitrose supermarket’s “Loved and Found” series, this one from Spain, and then something of a rarity, a proper English red wine.

Sóley [2020], Katla Wines (Mosel, Germany)

Jas Swan has now moved on from the Stafelter Hof cellars of Jan Matthias Klein at Kröv, where she made wines for a couple of vintages, and I’m told she now resides, viticulturally speaking, at Wöllstein (Rheinhessen). Jas farmed Riesling near Kröv when in the Mosel (and may well still do) but the essence of her label has always been that of a micro-negociant, purchasing grapes not only from Germany but occasionally France too.

Sóley, which means “solo” or “not involving anything or anyone else” in Icelandic, is made from Kerner. It’s a variety I quite like, but most of the Kerner I drink (albeit infrequently) comes from NE Italy. In this case I think the fruit is from the Nahe Region. In Germany the establishment rather turn their noses up at the variety. Of course, as with all Jas’s wines, the grapes are organic and the wines are made naturally, additive free.

Fourteen days on skins hasn’t really added colour to the wine, which remains relatively pale. There’s a touch of bottle stink on opening but this blows away in a minute or two. What replaces it are aromas of crisp apple and mango. The palate is bone dry, the acidity good-to-pronounced. It’s a wine that is there purely to refresh, and it does that magnificently well, but if we are getting more philosophical, it is also a wine that poses questions about what we expect from alcoholic (12.5% abv in this case) grape juice. In other words, it may be a simple wine on one level, but on another it is massively interesting.

This bottle came from Made from Grapes in Glasgow. I seem so often to spot what turns out to be the last bottle (I’m a pro when it comes to nosing out such gems). Jas’s wines do require some sleuthing in the UK.

Birnen-und-Äpfelwein, Jan-Philipp Bleeke (Mosel, Germany)

JPB is another member of the team of people who have made wine with Jan Matthias Klein, and knows Jas Swan well. This pear and apple cider was bottled by Jan-Philipp, but the project involved Jan Matthias and Kosie van der Merwe, along with several of their friends. It’s a wholly “natural” cider, by which I mean that the bottle contains just the juice of apples and pears, using hand-harvested, Mosel-grown, fruit from between Kröv and Wolf. It sports a great label by Janika Streblow worthy of gracing any petnat on the planet.

The first thing I noticed on pulling this from the fridge was a use by date, 1/10/22. Ouch, I only bought it this year, in March. The retailer can rest assured that this bottle was beautifully fresh. Pear dominates the bouquet and palate but the apples add acids which haven’t significantly diminished. I’m no cider expert, but I do love to have a few in the racks and when the time is right little beats a bottle. This was lovely.

I got this from Made from Grapes again. They, through their importing arm, Sevslo, have a good relationship with Jan-Phlipp Bleeke, and I’m looking forward to trying more of his wines in the future. In the meantime, check out his “Red Aquarius”, reviewed by me three months ago (Recent Wines March 2023 (Part 1), 31/03/2023).

Sylvaner 2020, Stefan Vetter (Franken, Germany)

Stefan has become more than a respected name in Franken viticulture, definitely one of the emerging stars of the region, but he makes natural wines which are modern and look, smell and taste quite different to the albeit often very fine wines made by the region’s elites. They are also somewhat different in spirit.

Stefan worked at Nittnaus in Austria’s Burgenland before managing to purchase a little vineyard back in his native region. He now has three vineyards, mostly of Sylvaner (note his “French” spelling of the variety) plus a little Pinot Noir for both red and Rosé, and makes individual cuvées of Sylvaner from each. He also makes cider from his orchards in what looks to be an idyllic location, surrounded by nature. This cuvée is not a single vineyard wine, but it doesn’t lack terroir expression all the same.

I think the key to enjoying this wine, and appreciating its nuances and depth, is not to over chill it. Lemon and lime, peach, mango, ginger and herbs, they all come through as the wine warms in the glass. When I said depth, I really meant it in this case. Some of those aromas smell as if they are coming from deep in the glass (a Zalto Universal, of course). There’s also mineral texture and great length.

A perfect pairing would have been asparagus, although it went very well with a chick pea flour omelette with black olives, mushrooms, spinach, peppers and Kashmiri chilli powder. A lovely wine, my last Vetter in the cellar. For now.

This came from Winemakers Club on Farringdon Street (London).

Waitrose “Loved & Found” Treixadura 2021, Viña Costeira (Ribeiro, Spain)

For those readers outside of the UK Waitrose is known as “the posh supermarket”. If its food has been considered upmarket, its wine offering, once clearly the best supermarket range in the UK, went a little off the boil over the past decade. Good wines, but largely playing safe. However, this relatively new range of wines are innovative and well-priced, intended to present customers with grape varieties they have probably never heard of. I bought a red, a Rosé and a white wine to check them out. All were retailing for £8.99.

Treixadura is certainly a lesser-known grape variety even in its homeland of Spain’s northerly Galicia region. I’d say that even the better-known varieties from here are pretty much unknown to many, except perhaps Albariño? Treixadura is quite common in the Ribeiro region though, especially in its heartland around Ribadavia. Viña Costeira is the bottler, based in Valdepereira.

We have a light and fairly simple bottle here, with a floral bouquet and a squeeze of lemon on the palate. It’s not earth-shattering of itself, but the combination of interesting flavours from a grape we don’t often see, certainly not at a major retailer, makes this worth a look. I’d say its definitely good value and we shouldn’t expect complexity at this price. Although unlikely to be a natural wine as such, it does state that it is vegan.

Times are getting harder for most of us and this range from Waitrose is most welcome. I also bought a Sciaccarellu from Corsica and an Albarossa from Piemonte. The range includes Sparkling Passerina, Zibibbo, Trincadeira, Loin de L’Oeil and Sauvignon Gris. I hope the wines sell well enough to expand the idea and range.

Field Blend “Drums > Space” 2021, Blackbook Urban Winery (London/Essex, UK)

Surely the holy grail for English and Welsh winemakers now is proper, ageable, English red wine? Red grapes really need warmth and sunshine to ripen and if you don’t get those then there really is nowhere to hide. But here we may be onto something.

Blackbook Winery can be found in a railway arch on an industrial site in London’s Battersea, just south of The Thames. It was founded in 2017 by Connecticut native Sergio Verillo and his wife Lynsey. The urban winery idea, born in California, has taken off in London where there are now several. Blackbook is probably the one exploring the most innovative ideas. Their original intention was to try to make wine in the image of their beloved Burgundy, and there’s no doubt that their core range expresses this. That said, they like to experiment constantly, and “Field Blend” is one result.

There is one place that crops up a lot when discussing English Red Wine. It’s somewhere that a lot of wineries in other parts of Britain use to source red grapes, not that many tell you on the label (one or two can be quite cagey). This is the Crouch Valley in Essex. Other wine regions may have greater sex appeal but Essex has more sunshine.

The specific vineyard listed on the label is “South Bank Vineyard”. I’m not totally sure, given the location of the winery, whether this is a little joke (Blackbook is situated on London’s South Bank). What we do know is that there are four varieties in the bottle, presumably co-planted and co-fermented given the wine’s name. I cannot find a single source that tells me what they are, although I know there are both red and white grapes in here.

I am going to guess that there is Cabernet Noir and Bacchus among them? Cabernet Noir (aka Cabaret Noir) is a crossing of Cabernet Sauvignon and an unspecified variety, developed by Valentin Blattner in Switzerland in 1991. It was developed for the disease resistance of the secret partner and I know it grows reasonably well as far north as Lincolnshire. Of course, I could be totally wrong, because I know they source Pinot Noir from Clayhill in Essex and that fruit can have a darker profile. Anyway, it’s unusual not to find the varieties listed, even on the Blackbook web site, but doubtless Sergio has his reasons.

The wine is well structured with tannins that just don’t fit the profile of Pinot Noir or Frühburgunder (PN Précose), for example. In fact, Sergio suggests on the Blackbook web site that we should drink this between 2024 and 2032. I wouldn’t say his optimism is misplaced, but right now I think it already tastes really very good. Fermented in small open-top vats and aged in ex-Burgundy barrels, you get cherry, raspberry, and a touch of darker fruit, plus a lick of spice. Only a little sulphur was added. Just 120 cases were made. I think it’s a real pointer for the future of red wine in England, something outside of the light red category and a wine that will age.

£30, Cork & Cask, Edinburgh.