We are extra-diverse on Recent Wines February 2025 (Part 1). Six wines, six different regions and six different countries. I won’t manage that in Part 2 as I can already see two French wines creeping in there, so make the most of the variety here. We have wines from Emilia-Romagna (Italy), Kent’s North Downs (England), Moravia (Czechia), Vermont (USA), Württemberg (Germany) and Champagne (France). I hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

Malvasia Rosa 2022, Donati Camillo (Emilia-Romagna, Italy)

This is another of those wines I used to drink actually fairly often. This was back in the day when a couple of times a year I’d drive from Brighton to Les Caves de Pyrene’s warehouse at Artington and spend a morning perusing what they had on sale, sadly no longer possible as the retail bit of that lovely destination is nowadays closed. I also seem to recall this wine being a great aperitif at Terroirs on several occasions, almost certainly my most lamented London restaurant which (among several) is no more.

Camillo Donati is based at Barbiano-Felino in the Lambrusco Hills, about twenty kilometres south of Parma, and one of the most underrated sources for thirst-quenching frizzante wine in Europe. He runs a third-generation family estate of around eleven hectares, farmed both organically and biodynamically.

This wine is IGT, rather than DOC, presumably because it’s a natural wine. It is very different to the industrial Lambrusco Rosato you will find, although there are many fine artisans in these hills turning out head-turning Lambrusco, nevertheless. Direct-press Malvasia is first fermented in tank, and then undergoes a second fermentation in bottle. The result has a gentle mousse, a pale pink hue, red fruits on the nose and palate, where there is also a plummy edge, very fruity.

It comes in at 12.5% abv and most of all it’s thirst-quenching, but it’s also a lovely wine. Imported by Les Caves de Pyrene, it is quite widely available. My bottle cost just £20 from The Solent Cellar (web site says only three left). Other retailers seem to have it for £23-£24. Plenty of other choices at that particular source for a mixed six-pack.

Pelegrim NV Brut, Westwell Wines (Kent, England)

I think I could get one thing out of the way right at the start. I think this is among the best value two-or-three English Sparkling Wines you can buy.  That’s why it pops up here a couple of times a year. The name of this cuvée derives from the location of Westwell’s winery and vines, which sit below the pilgrim route along the Kent Downs to Canterbury. It is a blend of Pinot Noir (40%), Pinot Meunier (35%) and Chardonnay (25%), all grown on Downland chalk.

This is a wine which spends three years on lees during its second, bottle-fermentation and comes with 8g/litre dosage. It also benefits, which word should be underlined, from 20% reserve wines. Although the overall style is citrus-fruit-forward, there’s bags of honeyed depth, doubtless helped by those reserves. In addition, look for a nice, soft creaminess, good salinity, and even a little evolving butter and toast character.

You see, a little age and the complexity (and the autolysis) pokes its head up. The other point to note is the slightly softer mouthfeel than most English sparklers, this being down to a slightly lower level of pressure at 5-bar. That’s not a lot lower than most, who follow Champagne’s lead with around 6-bar pressure or just over, but enough to notice.

I would also like to give a shout out for the labels, both here and on all of Westwell’s wines. Adrian Pike’s partner, Galia, designs them all and I think they are wonderful, each being pertinent to the work they do at Westwell.

You can buy Pelegrim either direct from Westwell, or from their UK agent, Uncharted Wines, for £33. Sometimes it’s available at Cork & Cask in Edinburgh, where their savvy customers make them sell out swiftly, almost here today, gone tomorrow. I’m afraid a few of my favourite wine shops are behind the curve on this producer.

Westwell’s more “traditional” Blanc de Blancs retails for around £50, or you could try the Wootton Top Col Fondo (same varieties as Pelegrim but in the same style as Col Fondo Prosecco, undisgorged) for £30, both of these available at Butlers Wine Cellar in Brighton, as well as through Uncharted and direct from the estate.

Impera 2019, Dva Duby (Moravia, Czechia)

“Dva Duby” translates as “Two Oaks”. It is a six-hectare natural wine estate at Dolní Kouníce in Southern Moravia. The terroir is based on magmatic igneous rock called grandiorlite. The vines are forced to burrow deep for moisture, and even then, fruit yields are low. Of course, this is good news for quality.

This red blend is 70% Saint-Laurent with 30% Blaufränkisch, locally called Frankovka. A lengthy maceration on skins of one month in open-top fermenters is followed by ageing in a mix of acacia wood and oak casks for one year.

The bouquet is deliciously rich cherry fruit, the palate adding smoky and savoury notes. It is undoubtedly an easy drinking natural wine, but at the same time this has matured nicely since I was impressed by it at a tasting in November 2023. As a natural wine, it has good fruit acids but no volatility, being very clean. Five years is a good age for this, but there is no hurry to drink up. An excellent wine from an equally excellent producer.

I paid £22 from importer Basket Press Wines. Other availability ranged up to £26+, but the 2019 vintage may be hard to track down now. Look out for spring restocks, but not at 2023 prices.

Damejeanne Vermont Rouge 2019, La Garagista (Vermont, USA)

The wines of La Garagista are some of my favourites in the whole of North America. Although they come from a State where viticulture lacks the fame of others, exciting wines are produced, and this is partly down to an acceptance that hybrid varieties are capable of creating something quite special. Deirdre Heekin’s philosophy is at the centre of all winemaking and viticulture here, and the core of that philosophy is regenerative farming, biodynamics, a holistic environmental approach, and a focus on quality that comes from a place of love for the product, the vine and the environment.

Deirdre began the project with Caleb Barber back in 2010. This Cuvée comes from two hybrid varieties, Marquette (90%) and Crescent (10%), planted in the Champlain Valley, on a west facing slope oriented towards, and just a few miles from, the freshwater lake, “Lac Champlain”. This lake straddles the border between Vermont and New York State, but also extends over the Canadian border into Quebec. The large body of water has an ameliorating effect on the microclimate which is positive for viticulture.

Foot-crushed into open-top fermenters, the grapes spent five weeks on their skins. Next, ageing took place in 25-litre demijohns, which are of course made of neutral glass. The name of the cuvée is much more likely to follow the ageing method rather than the nevertheless entertaining story on the back label. This is almost a zero-intervention wine, just a tiny addition of sulphur taking place.

The colour is quite deep red, with fresh bramble fruit and decent acidity driving the fruit around the palate. It is often described as an “Alpine” red, and it very much is, several similarities with Mondeuse and perhaps Trousseau, being apparent, but this wine is generally endowed with more fresh and zippy acids. I’ve said before that Deidre and the team are very creative people and also sensitive to nature, and I’m sure that’s what makes this, and their other wines, feel so alive.

Imported by Les Caves de Pyrene, I actually bought this back at the Real Wine Fair in summer 2023. Scotland is bereft of many of Les Caves’s finest wines retail, because of the distribution agreement they have up here (which seems to my untutored gaze like one that works for nobody, certainly not those who want to buy these wines locally in Edinburgh). Contact Les Caves direct for stockists, or to see whether the wines are available via their online shop. As such a major importer of natural wines into the UK, it seems only right that the growing Scottish natural wine scene has greater access to wines like these.

Lemberger 2019, Weingut Roterfaden (Württemberg, Germany)

I first met Olympia Samara and Hannes Hoffman in April 2019, during the growing season from which this wine comes. They were young and enthusiastic, but above all their vision was impressive, as were these two very young individuals themselves. I last saw Olympia in summer 2023 at Real Wine, and her spirit had not dimmed. Nor had that of the wines I tasted.

Lemberger is the German synonym for Blaufränkisch and, hailing from their Württemberg vineyards, but made as a natural wine, this is designated a Schwäbischer Landwein. In Germany, Lemberger has suffered in the past from a poor reputation, one as a cheap co-operative red. Its reputation is now being resurrected mostly by young producers like Hannes and Olympia. As we know from Austria, the variety lends itself well to natural wine methods.

Olympia and Hannes know Lemberger/Blaufränkisch well because they not only worked with Dirk Niepoort, who doesn’t as far as I know grow the variety, although his ex-wife does, but with Claus Preisinger at Gols, who certainly does grow it. They have about half-a-hectare of Lemberger among their two-hectares of vines. These vines sit on blue limestone terraces, and are farmed biodynamically with Demeter certification.

The bouquet opens with dark cherry, subtle blueberry notes following. The palate has dark cherry with that slightly tart edge the variety often shows when grown on limestone, something both mineral and slightly (if fancifully) ferrous. There is great tension and purity, down to sensitive winemaking, allowing the grapes to speak freely. This is a wine with just 11.5% abv. £32 from Newcomer Wines, a recent purchase so every chance of there being some left.

Chevry Cuvée Fût Dosage Zero, Champagne Petit Clergeot (Champagne, France)

Paul-Bastien Clergeot started this 8-hectare domaine based on his parents’ vines in 2017, with plots at Les-Riceys, Balnot-sur-Laignes and Polisot (where the winery is based) in the Côte des Bar/Aube. Farmed organically, the philosophy here is one parcel, one grape variety, one vintage. In this case, it is a Pinot Noir plot called “Chevry” planted in 1975 at Polisot. The vintage is 2020. Vinification and ageing are in used barriques sourced from Burgundy, and the wine sees thirty months on lees during its bottle fermentation. It was disgorged in January 2023, with no dosage, of course, so we have a couple of years post-disgorgement ageing to add complexity.

The overall impression initially is of freshness, but as it warms up a little you would definitely say it has more depth, definitely a cuvée gourmande. There is that vinous taste. What I mean is that it has some of the qualities of a still wine sometimes lost in the bubbles. That said, it never loses its mineral edge, like fine crystals in a block of stone. Impressive, from a producer wholly new to me.

Only 654 bottles of “Chevry” were produced. This will age further and become even more of a food wine, but it’s lovely now. 44€ from Feral Art & Vin (Bordeaux, so French prices, I’m afraid). Russell at Feral has decades of experience of Grower Champagne, including the very finest, and I trust his selection of new (to me) Growers, like this one, implicitly.

Explore Feral’s excellent Grower Champagne list if you are able, as quickly as you can. You can find a return from Edinburgh for £80, probably cheaper from London, but you’ll need to add in some hold luggage for the bottles. A couple of UK sources list this cuvée for £52.50. But seriously, if you plan to visit Feral, as I know one or two of you have, keep an eye on their Instagram. Their opening is now restricted, currently to about one week per month, but those dates will always be up on IG and updated for Google Maps.