I’ve been down in London for a few days, the main event being to have lunch at The 10 Cases in Covent Garden with Zainab and Jiri of Basket Press Wines, including a tasting of a few of the wines they import, but I may as well tell you what else I got up to.

First stop was Shrine to the Vine on Lamb’s Conduit Street, my first visit. This wine shop is almost opposite the original Noble Rot and is part of Messrs Keeling and Andrew’s growing empire. If you think the Noble Rot concept is good, this is quite a special wine shop too, though you probably need a special salary to shop there regularly (not a problem for the Mid-Town workers in the neighbourhood).

There’s a lot of very expensive kit in here, and you have to take a peek at their great Jura selection. With limited space in my luggage, I was focused, to say the least (they do deliver UK-wide), going for a couple of very hard to find regions: Aosta and Lanzarote, by way of Lo Triolet Fumin (a producer and a local variety which I know quite well from visits many years ago) and a wine from Juan Daniel Ramírez and Marta Labanda and their Valle del Malpaso project. More on those when I open them.

Staying just off Fleet Street it was obvious that I would hop down to Winemakers Club for a bite to eat. My choice to drink was Tom Shobbrook’s Cabernet Franc. This is a Barossa Red which I know pretty well. I have not been into winemakers for over a year, since before we emigrated, and I didn’t know anyone in there. The young lady who served this old gent did warn me that “it has more acidity than you normally get with Cabernet Franc”. Insert several laughing emoji.

Needless to say, in the cool of Holborn Viaduct’s arches it was perfect on such a hot day. John messaged me afterwards to say that he was in Australia and had just been tasting with Tom. A great winemaker. I read that Tom has had to move from Seppeltsfield and is now establishing himself in the Adelaide Hills. It does mean a bit less Shobbrook wine may reach the UK for the next year or two, but Winemakers Club is the place to grab a bottle if you are in the area.

Up nice and early next day, London was perfect at 7.00 am, but by lunchtime temperatures were pressing Thirty Degrees. Thankfully The 10 Cases bistro on Endell Street in Covent Garden has aircon, and their “by the glass” selection is kept in wine fridges.

We started off with a couple from that list, the first being Davenport Vineyards Pet Nat. This is always good. The 2022 is Auxerrois (53%) with 10% Bacchus, 27% Pinot Noir and 10% Faber (aka Faberrebe, a Pinot Blanc and Müller-Thurgau crossing created by Georg Scheu in 1929. You can guess which grape was named after Georg). A zero added sulphur wine, a little cloudy and almost the colour of Robinson’s Lemon Barley, if you order this your only regret will be that you went glass rather than bottle. At 10% abv, this is a perfect restorative in a heat wave.

Then we had to try the wine made by 10 Cases wine buyer, Alex, as a collaboration with Heidi Schröck in Rust. The single variety is Harslevelu, from three long rows of vines on the Vogelsang vineyard. The terroir is schist, and the wine was fermented in stainless steel after two days on skins. It goes under the label Endell Weiss and is exclusively available at the wine bar/bistro. The terroir and the tiny amount of skin contact are enough to ground the wine with a bit of texture, but it expands nicely on the palate. The boy done real good, as they say. It’s an excellent wine. Half has been bottled and the other half will, with a touch of age, show off another side.

The food was excellent in a busy service, especially for a Tuesday lunch time. I definitely recommend the two starters of cod cheeks, a generous portion, battered, and turbot. Not a large piece of turbot for the starter but on the day, it was cooked to perfection.

We tasted five wines from the Basket Press Wines portfolio, all served with a coravin. The notes here will be brief but they were all well chosen to show off the range from this excellent small importer (I should add that I paid for my own lunch so no freebee nosh in exchange for a good review). They were all Czech wines from Moravia, with the exception of Vino Magula, which is based at Suchá nad Parnou in Slovakia.

Carbonic for All 2021, Petr Koráb is a blend of the autochthonous Hibernal with Welschriesling, fermented under carbonic maceration, of course. I drank a bottle of this back in July, and it’s very good. My praise isn’t muted. It’s not a fine wine that you can define with points, but it’s an exciting wine which gets the pulse racing, that is, if you are prepared to have a wide-open mind about what wine can and should be. That said, you do want to grab some if your tastes in any way seem to accord with mine. It’s a perfect example of why I consider Petr to be one of Europe’s most creative and inventive winemakers. £25.

Jungberg Devín 2021, Vino Magula is a wine that engendered an interesting discussion.

Me: “I’ve never been told about this wine”

Basket Press: “No, I’m sure you have”

Me: “nope, and I’ve never seen it on your web site”

Basket Press: “Well, true, it’s not on the web site”

You might wonder why that convo ensued? Because this wine is lovely, and it also tastes quite unique. And it’s still not on the web site! It’s an unusual blend of Gewurztraminer and Frühroter Veltliner from the Jungberg vineyard. Scented and floral, and divine of course. Please, if you are reading this Basket Press Wines, you have to save me a bottle! No idea what it costs.

Solar Red 2022, Petr Koráb is a wine that not only do I have, but it is in my fridge, so by the time you read this, I will have drunk it. Three varieties here: Pinot Noir, Karmazín (a local synonym for Frankovka/Blaufränkisch) and Zweigelt. It’s a pale red, super fresh, very easy drinking but there’s a nice mineral texture to go with the beautiful strawberry scent and palate. Yes. I did say “in the fridge”. Chill it. Only £23. Only regret is that despite 20 Degree Celsius we have a Haar (which is a Scottish sea fog), not the bright sunshine this wine, and its label, deserve.

*Update – today we are, rest assured, back to our usual glorious Scottish summer sunshine and a very pleasant 19 Degrees. I see you have 27 in London!

Now you know I love music as much as wine. I posed the question on Insta which album forms the background to this wine’s photo? No answers. Come on, it’s a classic.

Špigle Bočky 2020, Richard Stavek. Richard is like a Zen Master, making wines which I readily admit I didn’t fully comprehend until a comprehensive tasting with him after a visit to his vines and cellar just over a year ago. Špigle Bočky is one of the first Stavek wines I tasted, the 2015 back in February 2018, but there’s an orange Špigle Bočky and a red version. That was the orange and this 2020 is the red. It blends Zweigelt, Frankovka and possibly St-Laurent, and how good is this! Like many of the Czech wines Basket Press imports, they are most definitely on a par with those way more fashionable Burgenland wines, from after all just over the border really.

Just Red 2017, Syfany is from a new winery on the Basket Press list. I’ve got a couple of their wines lined up to try, but not this one, a blend of Pinot Noir and Zweigelt with a dash of Frankovka (aka Blaufränkisch). It’s simple, but it’s super-juicy, packed with juicy dark cherry fruit and brambly acids, and at £19 it’s a bargain. It tastes like a fresh, young wine, but look above, it’s a 2017. It’s even seen wood ageing, from local oak and cooper. Inexpensive, yet showing a definite sense of place. This will also be on a future order.

I think that the Stavek is around £35 but the price of these wines is sometimes so low that people used to paying £30+ for decent natural wine often ask why they are so cheap. Well, I have enough experience to know that they won’t be this cheap forever. It could be time to try a mixed case, or half-a-dozen, if you are not already on board.