After a quiet month in July, well aside from a trip to the home country, August was ram-packed with visitors. Even without writing about everything we drank, I’m still left with eighteen bottles to share with you. Some of them were off the scale (the expensive stuff is mostly in Parts 2 and 3), hardly surprising as my motto is that the best wine is for sharing. However, for some great value gems, this part might prove a happier hunting ground. So, we will have three parts for Recent Wines August, six wines in each.

We begin with a nice Czech petnat, then a good inexpensive Western Australian Chardonnay. After a special Wine Society Bordeaux bottling, we go Pfalz, Czechia again, and Tuscany to finish on a real high.

Anna 2023, Krásná Hora (Moravia, Czechia)

This is a lovely winery to visit, with a modern and light tasting room on the first floor, with a large glass wall overlooking rows of vines which trail up the hill behind the winery at Starý Podvorov, in Southern Moravia. It’s a family winery, biodynamic, but making great value wines across a wide range, which I was lucky enough to taste in its entirety in August 2022. I have a few favourites, and this is one of them.

It’s a white petnat made with low intervention from a blend of Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Blanc, bottle fermented using the ancestral method. It comes unfined and unfiltered. It’s fresh and lively with a mineral zip to the bouquet. Quite aromatic. It’s visually pale, and hazy if you shake up or gently agitate the sediment. It sees just a little skin contact, which gives it a bit of texture. It’s easy to glug, shows 12.5% abv, and is super-tasty. That is all you need to know.

Pay around £25 from Basket Press Wines.

Pedestal Chardonnay 2023, Larry Cherubino (Margaret River, Western Australia)

Larry Cherubino started out working at Tintara, then Houghton, before finding fame as one of those flying winemakers, some of whose reputations made them seem like the celebrity chefs of the wine world. Cherubino settled down, in WA’s Frankland River region, making his own first vintage there in 2005. Since then, his business has grown, achieving some commercial success across a number of different ranges.

One of these ranges is Pedestal. The fruit for the different Pedestal cuvées comes from Margaret River, the first of the WA regions to achieve a quality profile in Europe, one perhaps for wines with a degree of refinement. This bottling comes from fruit sourced in the sub-region of Karridale, in the region’s south. Although Margaret River may be more famed for Cabernet Sauvignon, some exceptional Chardonnay is grown, as several famous producers have proved. This is a good commercial example of that variety.

For a wine which doesn’t cost a lot, this is still described as being both fermented and matured in French oak, the maturation however being for just eight months. There is a rich oak influence, but it is nicely offset by apple freshness, lemon and a touch of quince. It’s a straightforward wine, more “simple” than “refined”, but with just the right amount of body and alcohol (13%) to keep it well short of cumbersome. I would say this is well-made by an experienced team.

At £16 from Solent Cellar (£18 from some sources), I’d say this is great value too. As you may know, I’m trying to stop spending £30 on every bottle I buy, and whilst my expectations may be a little lower for a sub-£20 wine, I still have expectations. This may be slightly more commercial than most bottles I drink, but it was pretty good value for the price. I’d drink it again, no hesitation. Good for the beach or a picnic, but not confined to summer by any means.

The Wine Society’s 150^th Anniversary Haut-Médoc 2019 (Bordeaux, France)

This is another wine from The Wine Society’s “Generation Series” (I reviewed their “Hemispheres White” last month). It was made by Château Beaumont, based in the village of Cussac, a little south of Saint-Julien. The haughty World Atlas of Wine dismisses this part of what some call the Central Médoc, saying “This is the stretch of the drive up the Haut-Médoc during which the dedicated wine tourist (if a passenger) can enjoy a little snooze”.

I reproduce that quote because I had been resolutely done with Bordeaux for a decade or two, before returning with renewed interest this past half-decade. I had been put off somewhat by just those wines the writers of the above sentence would wake up for, the expensive Classed Growths, which presumably they get to taste en-primeur every year, and at swanky wine dinners for wine writers held in their swanky châteaux.

This part of the Haut-Médoc is resolutely Cru Bourgeois territory, although some estates on the northern side of Cussac still hanker after a southward extension of the boundary with Saint-Julien. Château Beaumont has nevertheless always been popular in the UK. I remember being recommended it decades ago. A great part of its popularity has been down to the loyalty of Wine Society members.

Its vines sit atop a gravel outcrop rare in this part of the Médoc. Its soils are well-drained as a result. It makes wines which have something of a reputation for maturing early, but that is no bad thing when I just a couple of weekends ago drank a Classed Growth 2000 that wasn’t even fully mature, and I sure won’t be laying wines down for 25 years any more.

The mix here is 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 45% Merlot. It’s just good classic Bordeaux, with 80% of the wine spending a year in oak (30% of that wood was new), the remaining 20% kept in stainless steel. Typical blackcurrant fruit and cedar notes, with a touch of plum and some savoury herbs as well.

This says drink to 2030, and TWS are known for underestimating drinking windows on occasion, but this is drinking quite nicely now. Sadly, it is sold out, but I got a few bottles for just £12.50 on special offer (I think reduced from £16.50). Compared to what you can find in most supermarkets for this price…well, there’s no comparison.

Weissburgunder vom Kalk 2023, Weingut Jülg (Pfalz, Germany)

When I first visited Schweigen, at the very southern end of the Pfalz, just above Wissembourg, it was a trip from Andlau in Alsace, where we were staying, in order to visit Fritz Becker. I hadn’t at that time tried any of Johannes Jülg’s wines, but after our visit Fritz directed us to the Jülg Weinstube, where we had a wonderful lunch in a room full of locals all tucking into hearty food washed down with excellent wine. I have this vague memory that it was Weissburgunder we ordered. Later, I got to know these wines through Howard Ripley (more recently Ripley Wines). Ripleys still sell a top end range from Jülg.

I’ve been enjoying a few nice Pinot Blancs this summer, and this wine fulfils the brief very well. Johannes took over the estate from his father in 2011, and a sign of the progress he has made is that Weingut Jülg is now a member of the VdP group of estates.

Made organically, this is yet another good example of this variety’s versatility. It’s a good, fresh, mineral wine. Apple and lemon citrus on the nose, with some herbs drifting in, the palate is creamy, but there is a brisk mineral bite in the texture on the finish.

As I said, head to Ripley Wines for a Jülg selection between £30 up to £105 (for top Spätburgunder), but this came from The Wine Society (again), and cost £16. More superb value. I really do think I might buy this one again.

Solar Red 2024, Petr Koráb (Moravia, Czechia)

I find myself drinking Petr’s wines more in summer than winter. Many of them lend themselves to sunnier weather, whether petnat or, as in this case, chillable reds. In July I wrote about his Dark Horse sparkling red. This is a still red, paler in colour but just as good.

I often find myself drinking and then writing about wonderful wines from this Boleradice producer after they’ve sold out, and he has a habit of making a wine once and once only, but I first drank Solar Red as a 2022, and it has reappeared. That ’22 was listed as a blend of Frankovka (aka Blaufränkisch) and Pinot Noir, but if what I read is correct, this 2024 blends in Zweigelt as well.

Whatever the grape composition, it is smooth and fruity. Its colour is a luminous paler red, but erring a little towards crimson in the right light. Whole berries were pressed and after fermenting, were matured in robinia barrels, a favoured medium among many of Southern Moravia’s natural wine makers. This is indeed a wholly natural wine. It’s also one of the most exciting cuvées to come out of the Koráb cellars. Not that many fail to excite me.

A pure and beautiful summer red, as enticing as the label makes it. I really do not know how these lovely wines have remained relatively undiscovered for so long. £29 from Basket Press Wines. Now sold out, of course, but they do have some of Petr’s delicious Carbonic Petnat (£28) listed…last of the summer wine for me, I have a bottle. Solar Red has been spotted in Winekraft, Edinburgh, and The Sorting Table, Peckham Rye.

Primo Fuoco Bianco Toscana IGT 2023, Fattoria di Sammontana (Tuscany, Italy)

This is a fourth-generation family estate, the family originally from the Polish nobility, which is at Montelupo Fiorentino, on the east side of the Arno, about 20 kilometres from Florence. Their vineyards total thirteen hectares, which they cultivate biodynamically alongside three-thousand olive trees. Their red wines have passed my lips a number of times, being generally available in Edinburgh (see below). However, even though I have been to several tastings put on by their UK importer, I’ve never had this bianco. I was quite blown away.

The wine is described as “very small production” and it appears to cost a bit more than the Sammontana wines I’ve had before (there is also a “Primo Fuoco” red and rosato). They are all three more “experimental” wines, vinified in clay amphora. Trebbiano Toscana grapes see three months on skins for this white wine, and then another six months without skins in the same clay vessels.

Orange in colour, the bouquet mixes tropical fruits and ginger spice. The palate is quite structured and firm, textured but not abrasive. It has great salinity. It may be structured but it was very food-friendly, paired with koftas, baba ganoush and a lovely salad of tomatoes, walnuts, pomegranate seeds and a dressing made with pomegranate molasses. It just seemed a lovely match.

An exceptional wine, all the better for being a gift from our son. When your kids buy you cracking wine (and whisky) you know you did something right as a parent. Modal Wines imports this and sells it for £34. I think this bottle came from Smith & Gertrude in Edinburgh (though their web site suggests they are selling the 2020 for £26). The Sammontana reds I’ve bought have come from Cork & Cask. They currently have four Sammontana wines listed, but not this one. In any event, this estate is making some lovely wines so have a chat with Nic at Modal if you are a retailer looking for some interesting Italian delights.