Part Two of 2024’s last batch of the most interesting wines drunk at home begins with three wines which all, at the time of buying them, cost £26. Remember in Part One I suggested that £26 is the new £18? Doubtless by the time April comes along £26 will have crept to £30, but I think right now that £26 is a kind of sweet spot with natural wines. You won’t feel the earth move, but you’ll get a nice wine with personality. That said, I may be getting complacent because I’m sure that anyone drinking at least the first two wines below would sit up and notice, if perhaps for slightly different reasons.

So, those first three hail from Hungary, Rioja and Montlouis on the Loire. Next is a real oddity, a brilliant wine made by an old friend, so to speak, from other climes who has made a stunning and equally obscure wine on one of the islands off Madeira. Then comes an older vintage of the English Sparkling Riesling that was one of my 2024 wines of the year. We finish 2024’s wines with a lovely Moravian red wine which a friend designated wine of the day at a tasting we both attended in Edinburgh earlier last year.

Freiluftkino Brut 2019, Annamária Réka-Koncz (Barabás, Eastern Hungary)

I’ve had one or two bottles of Annamária’s Traditional Method sparkling wine before, but it has been a while (September 2022 my notes suggest) and I think, as much as I like her wines, I’d forgotten quite how good, and indeed interestingly different, it is.

The name means “open-air cinema”, though I have no idea of its significance, if any. It blends Annamária’s mainstay variety, Királyléanyka, with Furmint, Riesling and Hárslevelü, grown on a complex mix of rhyolite, andesite, dacite and tufa.

The grapes undergo a traditional natural double fermentation with the second taking place in bottle with the liqueur de tirage comprising must from the following vintage. It sees a year on lees in bottle before being disgorged by hand. Just 1,200 bottles were produced in 2019, sealed with a crown cap, not a cork (though to be clear this is not a petnat).

This small production does mean that the wine, like everything this producer makes, spends very little time on the shelves. Think how little comes to the UK. However, by cultivating a relationship with the importer, you can be sure to pick up some bottles of Réka-Koncz when they land.

At five years old, with a year or two in my cellar, it has become a little darker in colour but on the bouquet and palate there is a burst of freshness. Fresh apples seem to dominate the nose, minerality the palate. It’s not a wine with Champagne-like complexity, but it makes up for that with bags of personality and character.

Basket Press Wines is the UK importer for Réka-Koncz but they don’t appear to list any of this winemaker’s cuvées at the moment. My guess is that they will be shipping this spring or early summer. Zainab tells me possibly even as early as March so fingers on the buzzers, but she also told me they do have one or two bits which are not up on the web site. £26 at the time of purchase. We shall see what our import regime has done to the price next vintage.

Rioja “Rayos Uva” 2021, Olivier Rivière (Rioja, Spain)

This is a biodynamic joven-style Rioja made without oak. Olivier Rivière is, as his name suggests, originally from France, from the wider Cognac region, and he envisaged making wine there. He studied winemaking at Bordeaux but then wound up working for Telmo Rodriguez in Spain and never went back. Instead, he started his own operation, in Rioja in 2006, inspired by what Telmo has achieved. He now runs 25 hectares.

This easy-drinking cuvée blends traditional varieties Tempranillo and Garnacha off a terroir of sandstone, clay and limestone. It has grippy tannins with a fresh nose mixing fruit and a savoury twist. The palate definitely shows a savoury side as well as a mix of dark and lighter red fruits. I like the savoury element in a wine that is otherwise fairly uncomplicated. Again, at that £26 price point you get quite a bit for your money. I hesitate to say it but I just wish I could drink more Rioja in this style, saving the more oaky experience for more expensive wines bought to age for years in my cellar.

This is a wine I first tried at the Cork & Cask Winter Wine Fair in Edinburgh in 2023 and I have no idea why it took me just over a year to drink a bottle at home. If anything, I liked it even more than that first taste. Imported by Dynamic Vines.

Chenin Blanc Sec “Les Borderies” 2020, Domaine Les Terres Turones (Loire, France)

Terres Turones is run by Dominique Weiss and Philippe Ivancic from the well-known hamlet of Husseau, just east of Montlouis-sur-Loire. The retailer who sold me this bottle also has a cheaper generic cuvée with a very similar label, but at the price of this one, for £2.50 more, I’d trade up. This is from a 4ha single parcel on clay with flint over a base of tuffeau.

The domaine was only started in 2017 and was certified organic in 2022, but had been in conversion from the beginning. The vines for Les Borderies are thirty years old. Fermentation uses indigenous yeasts, ageing after fermentation is twenty months in demi-muid casks.

The bouquet is very expressive of the grape variety, showing pear, quince and a hint of almond paste. The palate has a little bit of a chalky-mineral texture, decent length and lively fresh acidity. It’s another very good value wine. I had noted that I paid £26 but checking today it appears to be listed at £24. My notes also suggest that it was if anything slightly youthful and might benefit from a little more age. I don’t mean decades, but I do see some potential. However, sometimes with a wine like this you just fancy enjoying it young.

Chenin Blanc is definitely a variety I keep telling myself to drink more of, and I’m forever failing to heed my own advice. The good thing about examples like this, thoughtfully made at a decent price, is that they do help to prod my wallet in the right direction. Same goes for Rioja with the wine above.

Purchased from The Solent Cellar online.

Tinta Negra “Dos Villoes” 2022, Vinho DOP Madeirense, António Maçanita and Nuno Faria (Porto Santo, Portugal)

Porto Santo is an island in the Madeira archipelago, just under 30 miles northeast of Madeira itself, in the North Atlantic Ocean. It’s a tiny island of only around sixteen square miles, with its highest elevation, Pico de Facho, a mere 517 masl. It has a population of around 5,000 people.

I have met António Maçanita twice, albeit quite a number of years ago now. Both times were with Red Squirrel Wines (now merged as Graft Wine), who imported his amazing wines of the Azores Wine Company, although I have also drunk his wines from locations on the Portuguese mainland. He gets around. Nuno Faria, a friend of António’s, is director and owner of the “Michelin three-star” restaurant, 100 Maneiras in Lisbon, but he was born on Porto Santo. This wine is a collaboration between them.

The grape variety is described as “the real Tinta Negra”. I’m not an expert, but I’m assured it is not the same variety as Tinta Negra Mole, that ubiquitous Madeira grape variety which replaced Sercial, Verdelho et al. It’s confusing though, because John Szabo, in Volcanic Wines (Aurum Press, 2016), uses the same name, Tinta Negra, for “by far the most important variety…accounts for 85 per cent of wine production”, here speaking of fortified Madeira.

I guess I’m digressing and it doesn’t matter exactly what variety we have, the wine is magnificent. Porto Santo boasts a mere 14 hectares of grapes today. They grow on dry, chalky soils. Grown organically with low intervention, the vines are over eighty years old and are trellised low to the ground, protected (as António’s vines are on Pico Island in the Azores) by low walls called muros de crochet. The windy slopes mean disease pressure is very low.

What interested António Maçanita here was whether a good wine could be made with a derided grape variety. The answer, certainly for me, is yes it can! The wine is ruby red with a nose of sweet cherry and a hint of liquorice. Both the bouquet and the palate have a great saline quality. Maybe there’s some thyme there too. It is slightly rustic, but in a good way.

I should also mention the bottle. It has that stencilled effect reminding you of an old Madeira. Quite astute as it does leap out from the shelf. Good marketing. Because of its origin it might need it, but not on account of the quality. This is very good indeed and just the kind of wine to interest anyone reading my blog.

Imported by Indigo Wines, my bottle was about £32 from Cork & Cask (Marchmont, Edinburgh), and I also saw it on the shelf at Communiqué Wines (Stockbridge, Edinburgh).

Promised Land Riesling Brut Nature 2014, Charlie Herring Wines (Hampshire, England)

If you are fresh from reading my wines of the year article you will have noticed that one of those chosen was the 2017 vintage of this wine. Some explanation is needed. The 2017 is young right now (though certainly very tasty), but it will blossom into a remarkable wine, another step on Tim Phillips’s journey towards his goal of making the best sparkling wines in the world.

The 2014 is more evolved. Perfectionist that Tim is, he wasn’t really all that happy with his 2014. Personally, and I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Tim, sometimes a winemaker can have a bit of an inward-looking focus on a particular vintage. It’s easy to see the things you don’t like. For me, this wine was extremely enjoyable, all the more so for being a decade old. I dare say the 2017 will be the better of the two vintages by 2027, but I suspect it may still warrant more time than that, ideally, to reach true greatness.

To recap, this is 100% Riesling grown inside the walled clos just inland from the bit of Hampshire coast that faces the Isle of Wight, west of Lymington. Traditional method from organic fruit, minimal intervention, four years on lees and another six years pda. The freshness level is still amazing for a sparkling wine of this age, albeit Riesling, with a balanced alcohol level of 11% abv. The fruit here is richer than currently showing in the ’17. If anything, that fruit is slightly broader than is usual in this cuvée. You get lots of citrus and very good length, to be sure. I think it’s gorgeous and was lucky to get what I think might be a rare bottle.

We opened it for an aperitif and then drank it with a vegan roast dinner (with vegan haggis) with a big storm brewing outside. It was comforting rather than bracing, as one might have said of a younger vintage. Perhaps I can say that it has an almost sensual quality that is rare in a Sparkling Riesling.

The 2014 may be unavailable, mine coming direct from the winery. Do ask Tim, or Les Caves de Pyrene. I grabbed a coffee with Tim about a week ago. He told me he is planning some vinification changes which will make his sparkling wines less available for a couple of years (reminds me of when Raphael Bérêche stopped Reflet d’Antan for a while to increase the age of the  perpetual reserve). Makes sense to hoover up anything going sooner rather than later.

Cabernet Moravia 2021, Vykoukal (Moravia, Czechia)

Zdenek Vykoukal is one of those perhaps under-the-radar Czech producers…hang on, aren’t almost all of the Czech producers under the radar? Well, he does make magnificent natural wines off terroir which once saw the horrific Battle of Austerlitz of 1805, known as the battle of the three emperors. The town of Austerlitz, under the Austrian Empire, is now in Czechia and was renamed Slavkov u Brna. Napoleon won a victory that at least led to the Peace of Pressburg and a brief respite in conflict.

I have no idea where the 24,000 dead from the battle ended up, but the terroir on which Vykoukal has his vines located is limestone. Cabernet Moravia, a 1960s crossing of Cabernet Franc and Zweigelt, seems to do especially well on these soils and in this climate, relatively warm and dry.

The wine ferments naturally and sees ten months ageing in used neutral oak followed by six months to settle in stainless steel tanks. This 2021 is gently maturing, by which I mean drinking nicely now but no hurry to drink up. It shows some peppery qualities, reminiscent of Cabernet Franc, but also expresses itself now as nicely rounded and smooth fruit.

You also get some darker bramble fruit acids, surely the Zweigelt/Rotburger element showing. I really like this slight tartness as it balances the smoother fruit which might otherwise come across as more simple-natured. There’s medium weight and I mustn’t forget the hint of dark chocolate on the finish.

My friend Alan March (some time Coutelou denizen) is the one I mentioned in my introduction who declared this his wine of the day at an importer tasting last year. He has a very good palate and appreciation of natural wines, and I think you can take his word for this wine’s quality. It has that chewy fruit, concentrated but not at all dense, which makes it highly versatile. A very satisfying Czech/Moravian natural wine, and not too challenging for anyone new to the region.

The importer is Basket Press Wines. I paid £30.