We begin Part 2 of June’s Recent Wines, those we drank at home, with a very rare and special Californian white. Wine number two isn’t quite as rare but it is also a remarkable and special wine.  How to follow those? A pale pink from Switzerland, and a well-aged bottle of one of Portugal’s finest wines, a Südtiroler Weissburgunder and a Sauvignon Gris from the Dordogne. When I said, in Part 1, that there’s something about June that always throws up some vinous gems, I was not exaggerating.

The Alley 2019, Christina Rasmussen (California, USA)

I’m aware that many of my readers will know Christina, and will have done for many years. She has achieved much in her relatively small number of decades, not least in being co-founder of Littlewine, and planting a very interesting vineyard in England. She had been spending time in the States with wine luminaries Abe Schoener and Rajat Parr, and that is how she wound up making her own wine there.

The grape Christina chose to vinify is Palomino, and its source, the Bridgehead vineyard in Contra Costa County. We are east of Napa and just south of the Sacramento River. The land here is a mix of suburban homes and once-prosperous agriculture, with the land scarred by industrial levels of agro-chemical blitzing. But those vineyards which have survived here contain very old vines, some one-hundred years old.

These Palomino bush vines aren’t that old, but are not far off, planted in 1935, and have been farmed organically by Cline Cellars. They were hand harvested on 13^th August 2019 by Christina with help from Megan Cline, Abe Schoener and friends before being foot-trodden, gently basket-pressed, and then moved, 90% to an old barrel in Chinatown, SF. The remaining 10% went into a demijohn for an eight-week maceration before blending into the barrel. Aged on the lees, the wine was bottled in March 2020.

One very well-known English winemaker said this on Instagram: “I love this wine”. So do I. The bouquet is pure (in both senses) Palomino. The fruit is balanced but broad, the wine is dry and long, and drinking it in June 2025, it has gained complexity without losing its mineral freshness. Alcohol is balanced at 12%. Maybe what I like most is that breadth of fruit flavour, but yet it is curtailed within walls (perhaps walls of texture). The fruit doesn’t spill out at the edges.

There were only 202 bottles made. I have been privileged to drink this twice, first a bottle belonging to Tim Philipps, and this second, shared between myself, my wife, and a wine trade friend who I rightly decided had to drink it too. The thing I’ve learned about Christina, she’s quite sharp and a quick learner. She has learnt from the best, not just with Abe and Rajat, but also in her travels for Littlewine. I’m sure she will make some more wine as good as this one day.

Wine purchased direct from CR, £40.

Kheops 2016, Les Vignes de Paradis (Savoie, France)

I was in the Scottish Borders a week ago and I saw one of Dominique Lucas’s entry level wines in a store for £44. That is probably more than, or as much as, I paid for this top cuvée from one of Savoie’s top half-dozen winemakers. Dominique makes wine in a very unfashionable part of Savoie. It’s that southern shore of Lake Geneva, or Lac Léman as the French and Swiss call it.

You may know the shore-side town of Evian-les-Bains. Few wine lovers will have tried the local Appellation wines, one of which is called Crépy. I will admit to something of a thing for Crépy back in my youth. It was often marketed as “Crépytant”, a play on Petillant. It is made from Chasselas, as are the other three appellations lake-side. So, a good quiz question is “name five French AOCs made from Chasselas” (Crépy, Ripaille, Marin and Marignan, the fifth being Pouilly-sur-Loire, of course). Dominique farms within the Crépy appellation.

Kheops is not Chasselas, and is not an AOP wine. It is made from 100% Chardonnay, at Ballaison. It is bottled as IGP Vin des Allobroges, the old name for the local Vin de Pays, taken from the people who inhabited this region in the iron age and into Roman times.

Dominique now has 7.5-ha of vines but this is another tiny production wine: 690 bottles in 2016. The regime is what I’d call “biodynamic plus”. No chemicals added anywhere, any time, but any action taken by the winemaker either in the vines or in the winery is done after careful observation of the stars and planets.

Ageing for this cuvée is famously carried out in a pyramid, a 1/100^th-size replica of the Egyptian Pyramid of Khufu, made from local materials, where the wine spends two years. Dominique believes the shape enhances flavour intensity. You might think this is all a bit ooh, wooh, but wait until you taste it!

This is nothing short of electrifying (our guest had asked for something “electric” and I hope she got just that). Dry mineral texture, but soft, lemon citrus acidity and complex fruit, where the flavours really do swirl around on the palate like Van Gogh’s starry night. It’s a wine I can’t compare to any other and some of what I experienced drinking this was truly unique. And I have another bottle left! Thank you, Doug for spotting Dominique early. My bottle cost £45 from Solent Cellar, I think (now long gone). Contact importer Les Caves de Pyrene for other sources.

Oeil-de-Perdrix 2022, Domaine de Montmollin (Neuchâtel, Switzerland)

This wine usually comes around once a year for me, along with one of this ancient domaine’s Chasselas wines, preferably the unfiltered “nouveau” version. Oeil de Perdrix (partridge eye in English) refers to a very pale but striking pink colour. You’ll find wines thus labelled occasionally in France, perhaps made in the Loire from Pinot Gris (a speciality once of Reuilly, there called Malvoisie for some reason). You will find similar wines made in Italy from Pinot Grigio, but there the focus is on the colour’s coppery side, being called ramato.

This cuvée is made from Pinot Noir, and whilst other Swiss wine regions used to make oeil de perdrix from Pinot Noir, most notably Geneva, the name has now been reserved for the northern region of Neuchâtel. Domaine Montmollin, at Auvernier on the shores of the Lac de Neuchâtel, dates back to the 17^th Century. Today, Benoît Montmollin and his sister Rachel run the estate, assisted by winemaker Christelle Delamaison.

The vineyard is large, 50-hectares over eight lakeside villages, but they were all converted to biodynamics between 2016 and 2019. This wine has a lovely aromatic delicacy, and the crispness of a white wine (you will be surprised that the alcohol is 13%), but you also get the fruit, and a little of the structure, of a red wine.

The producer counsels keeping it for two-to-three years from the vintage. I know we often get “old” Rosé in the UK, last year’s vintage, so to speak. That doesn’t help when a pink-ish wine will age, and many of them do, from Rosé des Riceys (ageing essential) through to Bandol Rosé, or good Tavel. This wine does take a bit of age, and drinking it at almost three years old, it was lovely.

I really like this wine, enough to try to buy it every year, though finding a retailer who stocks it gets harder each vintage. I guess wines from places like Switzerland and Japan, even Czechia and Greece, are a hard sell these days, which is a crying shame. My bottle came from Solent Cellar (£27) but it is now all gone (this was their last bottle). Oxford Wine Company has stocked this vintage in the past as well. The importer is Alpine Wines, who currently have it priced online at £28.68, and you can of course buy direct from them.

Batuta 2004, Niepoort (Douro, Portugal)

Dirk Neipoort made this classic, age-worthy, Douro red wine from very old vines (some over 100 years old), since 2003 taking the fruit from Quinta do Napolès. This Niepoort property lies south of the Douro between Peso-da Régua and Pinhão, the vines up at between 350-750 masl. The blend is Tinta Roriz, Tinta Amarela (aka Trincadeira) and Touriga Franca. I hope I’m not exaggerating in calling it one of Portugal’s finest red wines.

It’s a wine which requires some age, to be sure. Before Covid I remember asking someone who knew and worked with Dirk Niepoort whether this bottle would be a good shout for a wine dinner I was going to. He said no, keep it. Sage advice. Opening the bottle last month, this was inspirational. A blend of Dirk’s flair and open mind, plus his wide experience, doubtless contributed, but he still required top class fruit and found it at this Port property. With it, he was able to wave the batuta (conductor’s baton).

The bouquet is a haunting fruit-drenched party, the palate is silky dark fruits, blueberry especially, with real depth. There is a mineral edge, but the silky fruit clothes it but doesn’t smother it. There are now no appreciable tannins. Their absence allows more tertiary notes, slightly earthy, to come through, but it is unquestionably the fruit that dominates.

After twenty-one years in bottle, more-or-less, this is as sensational as any Red Bordeaux (and anyway, with a few exceptions 2004 was just a “good classic” vintage there). With wines like this, from the depths of my cellar, recalling their source is impossible unless I have a specific memory. It might have come from Butlers Wine Cellar in Brighton, because I know I bought other Niepoort wines from them, like Redoma and Charme. Today, the same wine can be found for maybe £160-£170 a bottle.

Weissburgunder 2024, J Hofstätter (Alto Adige/Süd Tirol, Italy)

I have confessed to liking Pinot Blanc before, and it’s not just me. I have friends who do as well. It always surprises me that it isn’t more popular as plenty of it is inexpensive and it is usually a better bet, quality-wise, than similarly priced Pinot Grigio in Italy. It’s often a good bet on an otherwise dull lunchtime wine list.

Weingut J Hofstätter is based at Termino (when speaking Italian). They were established in 1907 and now farm 50ha, specialising in Gewurztraminer and Pinot Bianco/Weissburgunder (depending on your linguistic proclivity). Viticulture is increasingly low intervention and as a project here they have introduced bee-keeping, which of course means they won’t use pesticides. They don’t claim to make natural wines but do claim to totally respect the environment. The winemaker is Markus Heinel.

This 100% Weissburgunder is bottled under the equally bi-lingual DOC of Alto Adige/Süd Tirol. The grapes, off light marl soils, got into the winery swiftly for an immediate gentle press before a temperature-controlled cool fermentation. The wine was then aged on lees in stainless steel.

You get a very typical cool-climate mountain white wine where winemaking is all about fruit, purity and precision without taking away some weight. It has that expected crystalline structure, with peach and herbal notes on the nose. The palate is fresh, but has a bit more body than the bouquet suggests, and this is another wine from a mountain region that shows 13% alcohol (though when I say “shows”, it doesn’t grab you and shake you in any way). That alcohol, I suspect, will enable the wine to age a year or two, but I’ve no regrets at popping it open now.

This bottle came from The Wine Society and cost £15. It is available quite widely, but more in the price range of £22 to £24 at other retailers, as far as I can make out.

Sauvignon Gris “Nasturtium” 2023, Ferme L’Apogee (Dordogne, France)

Ferme L’Apogee describes itself as a “Permaculture garden, restaurant and natural wines in the heart of the Dordogne”. No-till, biodynamics and sustainable, regenerative agriculture are the name of the game and worked into this is natural winemaking, with everything that entails, to include zero added sulphur.

The couple behind it, Vincent Lebon and Millie Dominy, relocated to Sainte-Croix in the bastide country of Bergerac from Plateaux, Brighton’s exceptional natural wine bar and restaurant, post-Brexit. If you have ever driven down the D660 from the Dordogne to the beautiful and most famous of the bastide villages, Monpazier, you will have passed pretty close.

I have counted nine wines in the range here, five of which are currently being listed by Basket Press Wines. Jiri and Zainab have always been good friends to Plateau, and vice-versa. In a former life, Jiri mixed cocktails there, and Basket Press tastings at Plateau were some of the best wine evenings I spent in Brighton. We used to be more or less Plateau regulars, and I’m sure it’s still the best place for natural wine in Brighton, even if the wines of Pierre Overnoy and Emmanuel Houillon are probably long gone from the list. I’m pretty sure they still make a fine negroni too.

Nasturtium is made from Sauvignon Gris. With all the Sauvignon Blanc in France and New Zealand we tend to forget it comes in grey, and indeed green, as well. Nasturtium spent two months skin contact followed by ten months ageing in amphora. The result is distinctly orange in colour and a bit cloudy (unfiltered, of course). The scent is of blossom (I can’t be more specific here). The palate is very exotic, lovely amplified orange flavours with hints of more tropical fruits. There’s a little of that typical amphora texture. With zero added sulphur there’s a little volatility, fine by me, it comes with the territory. It doesn’t detract from the pleasure of a lovely natural wine with a distinct personality.

I did over-chill it. As it warmed up a lot more was released from the glass, both bouquet and palate. Almost all of that volatility dissipated, leaving just enough for an edge. It is on the Basket Press Wines list at £30. All five cuvées are there or just under the thirty pounds mark. I grabbed a red, “Scribbly Gum” (Merlot and Cab S) in the same order. I know there’s a pétnat as well. I believe they are available at Plateau if you are down in Brighton.