The opening wine from this third and final part of the bumper April edition of Recent Wines (what we drink at home) is a well-aged Burgundy Grand Cru. You might think it’s downhill all the way after that but not a bit of it. All of the five bottles which follow it are both really good, and perhaps in some ways even more interesting. They came from Burgenland, Penedès (a different producer to that in Part 2, and Alt, not Baix), Geneva in Switzerland, Moravia (Czechia, that even older bottle I promised) and Arbois. If I had to choose a favourite, something I try to avoid, it would be hard to better the last wine of the whole month. I always profess to love sharing great wine but I am not sorry to have been able to savour that one over two nights.

Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru 1999, Domaine François Lamarche (Burgundy, France)

This is one of the benchmark domaines on the Côte de Nuits, now run (since 2019) by François Lamarche’s daughter, Nicole, but this 1999 vintage was made under the eye of François. The Clos itself is a high-walled ex-monastic vineyard totalling a substantial 50-hectares. Wines from this GC can be variable in the least, and the Burgundy mantra “grower, grower, grower” is never more important than when purchasing wines from this patch of Côte d’Or dirt.

This is a bottle I’ve cellared since purchase soon after release. As a summary I’d say it is good, certainly impressive, but not among the finest Red Burgundy I’ve drunk, but that said, it is always a joy and a privilege to drink old Burgundy. As with old Bordeaux, my stocks are dwindling and they are not going to get replenished at Grand Cru level.

This was actually not as mature as I’d expected. It opened quite closed, with savoury notes to the fore. As it developed in the glass the fruit comes into view, and nice fruit it is, gentle and soft. Aromas of Marmite and cep grow too. So, the bottle delivered more than I’d hoped, but it took a little time. There are those who will be able to explain this wine to me, the kind of folks I used to lunch with at The Ledbury and La Trompette, including Burgundy’s finest buyer, Jasper Morris. But they weren’t there to help us. It remained an enigma, to a degree, but it was nice to be reminded of flavours that were once somewhat more frequently experienced.

This bottle came from Berry Brothers, I think. You could still find a bottle today but you’d pay £100+ at auction.

Kalkundkiesel Weiss 2022, Claus Preisinger (Burgenland, Austria)

Not that I encourage people to go and visit winemakers, taking precious time and demanding free tastings, but it has to be said that the outside deck on the first floor of Claus Preisinger’s modern winery, looking down over Gols towards the reed beds and the shallow water of the Neusiedlersee, has to be one of the more pleasant places to enjoy a bottle of crisp and textured white wine. Your glasses will likely be resting on Claus’s cool surf board table, and your gaze will remind you of why this is one of the wine world’s most attractive places.

Claus started his domaine aged only twenty, and twenty years later he has been successful enough to expand to a significant 20-hectares. This includes vines in Gols, and also in Purbach, Weiden and Mönchhof, all around the top side of the lake.

Kalkundkiesel (“chalk and pebble”) Weiss is a blend of Pinot Blanc (Weissburgunder), Grüner Veltliner, Welschriesling and Muscat. The grapes spent four days on skins. As a result, the wine is zesty and “mineral”. Ageing was in barrel, eight months on lees, giving a texture that gently exfoliates the tongue, emphasis on gently, though. You get pristine fruit in a zippy white wine that, despite just 11% abv, lacks nothing in body. Nowadays this is one of Claus’s cheaper white wine cuvées, but it’s great value, a superb wine, from a guy who I’ve always considered a genius.

The importer is Newcomer Wines, from whom I purchased it online (£33). I have fond memories of my first visit to Newcomer, then in Shoreditch Box Park. I bought three bottles, one being a Preisinger Zweigelt, the wine that had led me to Newcomer, who have remained one of my absolute favourite importers. My passion for a whole raft of Austrian wines stems from Peter and his team.

Sus Scrofa 2022, Celler Pardas (Penedès, Spain)

Like the old 171 bus I used to get to work in London, wines from Penedès seem to come, after an inordinate wait, in pairs. Whilst I have been drinking the wines of Entre Vinyes (see Part 2) several times over the past twelve months, it is a very long time since I’ve had a wine from Pardas. Certainly, pre-Covid. Finding this was simply down to my preferred shopping method, browsing in-store.

Ramón Perera and Jordi Arnan established Celler Pardas when they bought the Can Comas estate in Alt Penedès in 1996, but they didn’t bottle their own wines until 2004. The whole estate is sixty hectares, but much is forest, scrub and pasture. The name of this cuvée, Sus Scrofa, comes from the Latin for wild boar, which are, as you can imagine, prevalent here.

Sus Scrofa is an entry level red, but quite possibly one of the most tasty entry level wines you’ll find this summer. The grape variety is one that I like a lot and always have: Sumoll. It is grown here on clay and limestone soils at between 200-to-300 masl. This natural wine is fermented and aged for just three months in concrete tanks.

You can talk about the bitter cherry fruit, the nice bit of grip etc, but it all boils down to this being one beautiful, vibrant, “smashable” red, easy to drink in the sunny weather we’ve been having, preferably cellar-cool. We drank this on Easter Sunday when others were maybe pulling out some more “serious” wines, but we loved it. It comes very highly recommended indeed, because it will only set you back £21, from Communiqué Wines (Edinburgh). Imported by those finger-on-the-pulse Spanish experts at Indigo Wines.

Pinot Gris 2020, Domaine de la Devinière (Geneva, Switzerland)

Willy and Camille Cretigny cultivate 13 hectares of vines at Satigny, one of the main villages in the Geneva Appellation, situated on the Rhône’s Rive Droite, to the west of the city. Those who know Swiss wines may be less familiar with those from Geneva than from better-known appellations, such as Valais and Vaud. However, these gently rolling hills make some excellent wines, which at least within Switzerland are becoming more appreciated, although the World Atlas of Wine (8^th edn) now acknowledges this, pointing out that these vineyards “have changed more than any in Switzerland in recent years”.

It might also be worth pointing out that although you won’t perhaps have heard of Satigny, it is actually the largest single wine commune in the country. The village is also home to the Geneva co-operative, which is a good place to look for wines at the (relative) value end of the region’s output.

The domaine grows a total of eighteen grape varieties, using organic and sustainable viticulture. They’ve been members of BioSuisse, Switzerland’s main organisation for organic certification since 1995. In 2024 they were named “Rookie de L’Année” in Gault & Millau’s Guide Suisse.

Pinot Gris is a variety that seems to do well this side of Geneva. This one is aged in oak, though as it isn’t overtly oaky, it may well be used wood. It certainly has typicity, being very obviously that variety. It has a richness, smooth fruit (pears and quince), but a very savoury finish. Nice length, dry, it’s a lovely wine. It tastes “modern”. It reminded me a little of some of the nicer artisan PG I’ve drunk in Australia as much as any from Europe.

This was brought from Switzerland in a suitcase, a kind gift (with five other bottles) from friends in Geneva when they visited last month. Pretty much your only hope of finding Geneva wine in the UK is via Swiss specialist, Alpine Wines. If you do visit Geneva, the vineyards here make an attractive day out with some nice walks among the vines. Dardagny, the other main Rive Droite village, is my favourite. Domaine des Hutins, based there, is another good choice to visit (best to telephone for an appointment).

Frankovka 2015, Dva Duby (Moravia, Czechia)

In Part Two I promised to add an even older Moravian Wine to the two I profiled there. This wine has been aged for a decade, and it really shows how magnificent these Czech natural wines can be. Jiří Sebela is the man behind Dva Duby, making wine at Dolní Kounice in the hills of Southern Moravia.

This is an old vine cuvée, the vines being over sixty years of age. The vines sit over grandiorite, a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock similar to granite, but with more plagioclase feldspar than orthoclase feldspar present. I know my emphasis on the geology might be misplaced, even tedious, but does not grandiorite sound really cool? If you ever find a photomicrograph of grandiorite you may get some idea of my fascination with geology.

If you can’t visit Czechia (or Slovakia) to see some, you may also spot an outcrop of granodiorite near the lighthouse in the Bay of Roses, where the Catalonian Pyrenees fall into the sea (and you can then visit the oldest barrel-vaulted church remaining in Europe, high on a hill above, Sant Pere de Roda/Rodes).

Back to Moravia…this Frankovka, or Blaufrankisch as it is perhaps better known in its Austrian iteration, is aged in a mix of oak and acacia. Maybe you are getting used to this split between barrels in Moravia, where acacia is very popular. All of the Dva Duby wines are natural wines. This is a wine smelling of intense red fruits, mostly red cherries. At ten years old, however, it has taken on a paler colour than any bottle of this wine I’ve had previously, a pale brick red. With wild mushroom, truffle, and autumnal notes, it is sedate.

It makes a strong impression. It has elements somewhere between aged Pinot Noir and, perhaps even more so, aged Syrah, more than what we might expect from a younger Blaufrankisch. It is a genuinely gorgeous wine, and very fine, yet if you buy this on release it will only cost you a little over £30. How many people here in the UK would think to age it a decade? Something to ponder. The importer is Basket Press Wines.

Savagnin Amphore 2016, Stéphane & Bénédicte (Domaine A&M) Tissot (Jura, France)

Domaine A&M Tissot was far from the first Jura producer who I bought wine from when we began visiting Arbois in the later 1980s, but I was beginning to get to know the wines of André and Mireille in the mid-1990s when their son, Stéphane, returned from overseas to get stuck in. In three decades he has transformed a good domaine into a great one.

For me, it is one of the finest in France, though it pains me that UK Jura lovers tend to appreciate some of the more fashionable names. This is surely because Stéphane, aided by his wife, Bénédicte, farms 50 hectares. Nevertheless, the multitude of innovative wines he makes are all biodynamic, natural wines (around 25-30% receive no added sulphur) which range from merely excellent to genuinely world class.

Mireille Tissot passed away in 2023. She was a lovely, warm, lady, though it is very many years since I last saw her. At first, Stéphane’s parents were somewhat nonplussed with what he was doing at what was already the clear leader of all the various Tissot domaines around Arbois. It was a kind of mix of perfectionism and rampant experimentation. We had his sensational hors classification sweet wines, ignoring appellation rules where they impeded quality and excitement. Then some very adventurous manipulations of Crémant du Jura. Later came some terroir-specific Vin Jaune, and a host of different Chardonnays.

Perhaps his greatest innovation was the introduction of amphorae, which were very rare in France back then. A line of them was the first thing you noticed on approaching the winery, down to the left side of the church in Montigny-les-Arsures. It was an approach we most often made on foot after one of my favourite vineyard walks, which also happens to pass beneath the famous 8-ha vineyard Stéphane revived below the Tour de Curon, from which he makes a genuine “Grand Cru” of a Chardonnay.

Both Savagnin and Trousseau are made in Amphora versions. The Savagnin sees five months in these clay vessels on full skins, without the addition of sulphur at any stage. This 2016 was opened perhaps a year before I intended, but it still delivered as much as I wanted. The key for this kind of wine is not to be tempted to open it too soon. It takes time to achieve perfect balance.

The colour is full-on orange, the nose is unmistakably marmalade. Why do so many orange wines smell of oranges in some way? The palate is dry, this accentuated by the texture, but there’s smooth fruit and it doesn’t taste tannic or dried-out. It has rounded-out nicely and is long and impressive, yet it is also lip-smackingly delicious as well. That’s not always the case with skin-fermented white varieties.

I suggested in my intro that this was my Wine of the Month, the best of the eighteen wines presented here over April’s three parts. That’s something I usually refrain from saying until my Review of the Year around Christmastime. It really was a pleasure to be able to enjoy it over two nights. It’s worth noting that the alcohol sits quite low, at 12%. Lower than one might expect. It is well-judged for a wine so in balance.

I purchased this at the domaine’s shop on the Place de la Liberté in Arbois. I’m not sure what a bottle will cost from Arbois today, but Berry Brothers in the UK will sell you a 2020 for £73. Over my budget, but very tempting as I could easily keep that for another five years, tucked away. Berry Bros say that the 2020 is “youthful”, so there you go.