Recent Wines July 2025 (Part 2) #theglouthatbindsus

Posted on 11/08/2025 by dccrossley

Part Two of my Recent Wines for July contains, once more, just five bottles. We start with a lucky leftover from Czech Moravia, followed by a cult cider from Switzerland. One might suppose neither should be aged, but this is evidently untrue. From a recent case purchased from The Wine Society we have what must be the most unusual wine in their Generation Series, a blend from Australia and the Northern Rhône. Then we return to some of my more usual natural wine fare with an Alsace blend from a domaine that followed Masanobu Fukuoka’s ideas long before most, and finally, that man I wrote about in mid-June, who is making crazy but excellent wines in Leicestershire.

Dark Horse 2022, Petr Koráb (Moravia, Czechia)

I bought three, or maybe even four, of these on release. Petr makes so many different cuvées in his cellars at Boleradice, and he is pretty much the king of petnat in his region, but I do have my own favourites. This is one of them. I had decided to save this last bottle for some nice summer weather, a red sparkling wine, nicely chilled, proving just the vibe for the glorious warm sunshine that has been almost ubiquitous this year up in East Lothian.

This is an Ancestral Method red sparkling wine blending Amber Traminer, Karmazin (one of the local synonyms for Blaufränkisch) and Hibernal, a local variety which makes some excellent still red wines in Southern Moravia. They are first aged in a mix of ceramic vessels and robinia wood barrels, robinia being “false acacia”, a local and highly popular medium here. The wine is then transferred to bottle to start a second fermentation, from which it is not disgorged, leaving the lees sediment in the bottle. Stand to settle or shake to make it cloudy, the choice is yours.

This ’22 is a bit less sparkling than the last bottle I drank in July 2024, but it is very nicely frothy. It’s still that attractive deep raspberry colour I remember, the bouquet and the palate having lifted red fruits. There’s raspberry here, and cranberry, the bouquet showing some strawberry as well. Although I’d drink any bottles you have left this summer, it’s still really nice.

I have been buying this direct from importer Basket Press Wines. I’m not sure whether you will find it at anywhere they sell it to, but if you spot it grab a bottle. It’s all gone from Basket Press, and of course you can’t expect Petr to make it again…but you never know (as happened with another glorious Czech natural wine cuvée from this man which I drank last week, a reprise of a wine he first made in 2022). £26.

“Transparente” 2018, Cidrerie du Vulcain (Fribourg, Switzerland)

Jacques Perritaz set up his cider mill in an old tile factory in Gruyère, in 2000. He had started a career as a government biologist and left that to work for a number of wine producers. Like many cider makers up here in nearby Fife, it was the old and abandoned apple trees he saw which got him thinking about cider. His apples tend to come from very old trees with low yields but high quality. Quality is what Jacques is after, making natural cider from fruit sourced in Gruyère and Thurgau.

Jacques’s interest is in ancient apple varieties which tend to be both too rare and too low-cropping for the commercial cider makers, but he also harvests pears and quince. Only indigenous yeasts are used to ferment the apples, and another aspect of “natural cider” is that no artificial carbonation takes place (which I hope should be obvious).

Apple varieties always have such beautiful names, and included in this cuvée are Transparente de Concels (originating around Troyes, France), Reinette de Champagne, and Pomme Raisin de Berne (noted for its wine-like flavour). This bottle comes from the 2018 vintage, and it is now mature, but pleasantly so. The bead of tiny bubbles is gentle and the apple flavours on the palate are soft. It is just about off-dry, with quite low acidity, but it retains a freshness you might not expect. Whereas a lot of cider attacks the palate with apple acidity, this is an altogether more gentle drink. Lest you think it might be a bit old for cider, Jacques obviously thinks not. The back label suggests consuming by the end of 2027.

This bottle came from Aeble Cider in Anstruther (Fife), £24. Newcomer Wines imports Vulcain into the UK. They list the 2020 vintage of Transparente as “Sold Out”, but they do have a couple of other cuvées online to purchase.

The Wine Society’s Generation Series Hemispheres White 2023 (Northern Rhône, France and Victoria, Australia)

Apparently, a wine blended from two different countries, let alone continents, could not, until quite recently, be sold as wine. I imagine the concept has only ever been considered at all for the cheapest of cheap wine, despite being a practice quite common with some agricultural products (olive oil is a good, or maybe “bad”, example). TWS has however created this blend as a quality-based experiment.

The producer for this is an obvious choice, and in fact it was Maxime Chapoutier who I am told had the original idea. Chapoutier obviously has a large operation in the Rhône Valley, and they are also stakeholders in Victoria, originally in Heathcote, after their friendship with Ron and Elva Laughton (Jasper Hill Vineyard) led to a collaboration between them in the early 2000s. Of course, Heathcote’s star grape variety is Shiraz.

This wine is not red, although there is a complementary red version which they produced at the same time and in the same TWS series. Here, we have instead Marsanne and Viognier blended together, both varieties from both sources as far as I can tell. The wines made in both France and Australia were imported into the UK and blended/bottled here, by Hatch Mansfield. The big question is could they pull it off?

The fruit on this is quite voluptuous. The alcohol sits nicely at 13% abv. The flavour profile mixes peachy stone fruit, and bitter quince on the finish. I have seen a few disparaging notes on this wine. Some show a reticence down to its whole concept, at least insofar as UK blending and bottling is concerned. Others have merely said that the wine is okay but nothing special. I don’t really agree. I found this enjoyable, not least because it was reduced from £16.50 to £12.95 at The Wine Society last month. I doubt I’d have been disappointed at the higher price, if I’m honest. As an experiment, it was well worth trying. Decent wine at a very good price. It’s another boundary duly prodded.

La Vigne est Notre Jardin 2022, Domaine Lissner (Alsace, France)

Bruno and Théo Schloegel make some remarkable wines from 10 hectares at Wolxheim. This domaine still flies under the radar a bit in the UK, yet they have been farming regeneratively for longer than most, and their vineyards, with vines almost left unpruned, are the kind of haven for flora and fauna that is now beginning to get wine press attention when introduced by the younger generation. They had certainly ingested the writing of Masanobu Fukuoka before I had read him.

The domaine name anomaly is because Clément Lissner, from whom Bruno took over, was his uncle. Pondering why these lovely wines are not as well known as they should be, perhaps it is because the wine establishment, which ignores Alsace most of the time anyway, hardly even recognises that there is viticulture up here north of Mutzig, and directly west of Strasbourg. It is also true that, with no disrespect to the young stars of Alsace natural wine, the Schloegel family have just been quietly doing their own thing here for years. That “thing” is permaculture, no-till farming, and agro-forestry (with trees used as part of the trellis system). When I said unpruned vines, nothing is pruned in summer, although you might see a bit of shoot repositioning in extremis.

I first came across Domaine Lissner at one of those all-time best tastings I have been to, one called “Alsace/Germany Celebrating Common Ground”. It took place in London in April 2019, a joint event organised by Newcomer Wines and Vine Trail, and Bruno was there to chat and pour. Since that tasting Lissner wines have been thin on the ground in the kind of wine shops I frequent, but this particular wine, which I’d never tasted before, turned up a while ago in Edinburgh.

It’s a Vin d’Alsace, a blend, which might once have been labelled as an Edelzwicker. Here is a blend comprising Pinot Blanc, Pinot Auxerrois, Muscat and Gewurztraminer. Simply made, it sees six months in stainless steel before bottling. Sulphur is not added, natural CO2 being the only protection they use. The result here is alive and fresh with zippy citrus and great salinity. Simple in a good way, direct and mouth-filling. Loved it. Maybe we can see more Lissner in the shops here?

It’s worth a note on the Lissner labels. They are lovely, and they remind me of the illuminated manuscript reproductions I once saw at the Hohenburg Abbey on Mont-Sainte-Odile, the Hortus Deliciarum (begun in 1167 by the nun Harrad of Landsberg). Sadly, these priceless manuscripts were destroyed by a fire started by the Prussian bombardment of Strasbourg in 1870, but as portions had been copied earlier that century, we know what parts of them looked like. Mont-Sainte-Odile is one of those places most tourists miss. You wouldn’t pass on Strasbourg or Colmar to see it, but on an extended visit (with a car), it’s an interesting place, if rather eerie in a mist.

Vine Trail imports. This bottle came from Communiqué Wines in Edinburgh, £22.

The Red 2022, Matt Gregory (Leicestershire, England)

I wrote an article about Matt’s heroic efforts, making cracking natural wines on the northeast side of Leicestershire on 13 June. If you didn’t see it, its worth a look. He’s based in the Leicestershire Wolds, where you’d think it might be a little bit cold, wet and windy, but he has managed to find a terroir that not only works for wine, but also for chemical-free farming. You can only give the man massive respect, especially when his wines are so good.

“The Red” is a wine I’d held over from last year. It has echoes of that super-cool Alsace natural wine staple, the Pinot Noir/Pinot Gris blend. Here, both varieties are blended 50:50, some of the fruit being destemmed and some Pinot Gris left as whole bunches. The fruit was very ripe. It was pressed out at four weeks and underwent its malolactic naturally, resting in stainless steel for 14 months. It was bottled in February 2024.

It is the essence of the “smashable” red, a glass of concentrated, mouth-filling, red berry fruit. This is pretty much the last bottle standing of the ’22, out of a run of just 715. At the time of drinking, I think Bat & Bottle had one left. It’s certainly still going strong. We should see a new red cuvée from the 2023 vintage released soon, or in the autumn. I’d jump on that if you see it because Matt told me there’s virtually nothing coming out from 2024 aside from a Rosé. I think things are looking much more positive for 2025.

My bottle cost £23 from Cork & Cask, Edinburgh. Matt Gregory is now distributed by Wines Under the Bonnet. His former agent, Uncharted Wines, might still have some stock.

Posted in Alsace, Artisan Cider, Artisan Wines, Australian Wine, Cider, Czech Wine, English Wine, Natural Wine, Rhone, Wine, Wine Agencies | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Recent Wines July 2025 (Part 1) #theglouthatbindsus

Posted on 05/08/2025 by dccrossley

Just ten wines form my Recent Wines from July. If you saw my “Holiday Wines” article, you’ll probably understand why. We will still go for two parts, short and sweet. Here in Part One, we have wines from Gols in Burgenland, the Adelaide Hills, Gutturnio in Lombardy, Rioja Alavesa, and, geographically at least, Achaia in the Peloponnese. We are very much riding a summer vibe with these wines, but not all summer wines are white. In fact, half of the wines across Parts One and Two are some shade of red. All of them, white, red or pink, were served chilled in the hottest Scottish July I can remember, hot but not too hot.

Puszta Libre 2023, Claus Preisinger (Burgenland, Austria)

Claus’s modern winery is on a hillside above Gols and its upper deck looks down a gentle slope towards the eastern shore of the Neusiedlersee, almost certainly my favourite lake in Europe, though also possibly its shallowest. Claus was a very young man when he began farming here, but he was the first in the new generation of natural wine makers in the region, though one where natural wine had long been a reality among certain forward-thinking producers before it was made fashionable.

I can’t remember when Puszta Libre was first released, although I know that when I first tasted it, this cuvée seemed to encapsulate absolutely perfectly the essence of what joyful natural wine from the Neusiedlersee’s shores gives us: a slaked thirst and a glass bursting with fruit. That feeling is even right down to the label design, reminiscent of a 1920s local lemonade bottle (pre-partition of Austria-Hungary).

I also read that Claus feels that in his search for perfection in the early day his wines were a little “aggressive”. Nowadays he says he’s more “laissez-faire and intuitive”. Making this wine I am sure helped him hang loose, as they say.

The blend here is Zweigelt and St-Laurent from the northern side of the lake (I think there has occasionally been a little Pinot Noir, but it isn’t listed for the 2023). The recipe is simple, ferment for fruit. It’s packed with red cherries and berries, made biodynamically. Easy drinking, chilling is a must. It’s like fruit juice. You don’t even think about sophistication, yet it takes some skill to make a wine this good. The 11.5% abv is spot on for body. I couldn’t imagine a summer without it.

This bottle came from Communiqué Wines in Edinburgh, c £25. Newcomer Wines is Claus Preisinger’s importer for the UK. There’s also a white and a “Rosza” now in this series, but I don’t think Newcomer has them (yet!) for the UK.

Surfer Rosa 2023, Ochota Barrels (McLaren Vale, South Australia)

After the untimely passing of Taras Ochota I didn’t see these wines for a while, but then I discovered that the journey Taras and Amber set out upon, to make natural and “holistic” wines in South Australia, is continuing, and with absolutely no decrease in quality at all. I know Jamie Goode has very recently praised the Ochota’s “Green Room” Grenache, which I myself wrote about back at the beginning of April. like Green Room, Surfer Rosa is made from Grenache sourced in McLaren Vale (Amber and the team work out of Basket Range/Adelaide Hills).

The vines are more than fifty years old in most cases, grown organically on clay over limestone. The fruit is fermented in stainless steel using wild yeasts before a short five months ageing in used French oak. The name is a double nod, first to Taras Ochota’s surfing passion and the pink hue (albeit a darker pink) of the wine, but also to one of the Pixies’ finest albums of the same name. However, it’s not a wild wine. Nor is it remotely prim and proper, but is does have a certain elegance along with its bright, crunchy, red fruits (I was getting a lot of cranberry). It’s totally dry. Someone told me there is a dash of Gewurztraminer, around 3%, in there alongside the Grenache, but I can’t verify that. It definitely has some lift to it. Only a tiny bit of SO2 was added in an otherwise totally natural wine.

This was another purchase from Communiqué Wines (£27.50). Indigo Wine imports Ochota, and I have seen it in The Sourcing Table in Peckham Rye. This producer is really hitting the spot for me at the moment.

Gutturnio Frizzante 2024, Il Poggiarello (Emilia-Romagna, Italy)

Gutturnio is one of several DOCs in the hills south and southwest of Piacenza. It is gaining a bit of a reputation for its Barbera/Bonarda still reds, but this wine blends the same varieties into a traditional frizzante red wine. I tasted it, poured by winemaker Jannet Iathallah, at Cork & Cask’s Summer Fair back at the end of June. It took about one sniff and sip to know I was going to buy a bottle.

The fruit is macerated at a constant 23 degrees, fermenting slowly. The second fermentation takes place in a pressurised tank rather than in bottle, ie the Charmat method, but the wine is packed with fruit. It smells like summer pudding, majoring on sweet but tart blackcurrant, yet it also has a savoury edge. The colour is as concentrated as the fruit, and tiny bubbles carry that dark fruit towards a bitter finish. Think artisan Lambrusco, but with different grapes. With 12.5% abv, this disappears in no time. So good! Chill right down, like you would a white sparkler.

Imported by Moreno Wines, £20 from Cork & Cask, who also stock five other wines from the same producer.

Rioja Alavesa Blanco “Solar de Randez Barrel-Aged” 2023, Bodegas Las Orcas (Rioja, Spain)

White Rioja is definitely flavour of the year for me. Raimondo Abando is the third-generation winemaker at Las Orcas, based at Laguardia, a car-free 12th century small town in Rioja Alavesa. Due to the proximity of the Cantabrian Mountains and the cooling Atlantic breeze, Alavesa is, despite being known for its Tempranillo, a great place to make white Rioja.

Las Orcas makes a zippy white wine that sees no wood, from Viura. This barrel-aged version was commissioned by their UK importer as something more in the traditional style. What we have is a wine made from the fruit of eighty-year-old bush vine Viura off chalky clay soils, up at over 500 masl. The fruit is sourced from a single site, north-facing at the top of the vineyard. The fermentation was in stainless steel, with indigenous yeasts, but ageing took place in new French oak, on fine lees, but for just four months.

What you get is tropical fruit on the nose, lots of pineapple and lemon citrus, with creaminess from the toasty oak. The oak doesn’t dominate the wine because of the fruit, but oak is integral to it. As the description says, it “adds breadth and texture”, but I would add not at the expense of definition. Only 1,150 bottles were made. I was quite surprised how much I liked this, considering it cost just less than £20 from The Sourcing Table, the importer being Indigo Wines. I think they have now moved on to the 2024 vintage.

Although plenty of White Rioja is now quite expensive, some merchants who know the region well, as Indigo does, are finding some bargains.

Malagousia Natur 2024, Tetramythos Estate (Achaia, Peloponnese, Greece)

Greek wine doesn’t get the attention it deserves in the UK, but the wines of this well-known boutique estate are quite well represented here. They have around 14 hectares of vines between 450 and 1050 masl on the slopes of Mount Helmos, a ski area in the AOP region of Achaia. We are in the Northern Peloponnese here, not far from Patras.

Malagousia (aka Malgouzia) is an aromatic variety, making often excellent dry white wines. Greek whites are not all about Assyrtiko! This cuvée is cold-macerated for thirty hours, which helps to retain all the perfume of lime juice and mountain flora when this variety is grown at altitude. The result is fresh and crisp, but also saline, with a mineral edge. You will sense a very slight nod to Riesling. The palate has more a mix of grapefruit and nectarine flavours, its finish being very much like the bergamot of Earl Grey Tea. It is not an AOP Achaia though.

As the label suggests, this is organic and, as far as I can tell, pretty much a natural wine, using “sustainable” viticulture, natural yeasts etc. I found this at The Wine Society for £13.50. The bottle has an importer sticker from Keeling Andrew, and they do indeed list a number of other wines from this estate in their Shrine to the Vine shops in London. But for the Wine Society’s price this is remarkable value. As one retailer bemoaned to me, they can’t even get it wholesale that cheap. It is currently in stock at TWS.

Posted in Artisan Wines, Australian Wine, Austrian Wine, Greek Wine, Italian Wine, Natural Wine, Neusiedlersee, Rioja, Spanish Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Merchants | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Blind Summit – Independent Whisky Bottler

Posted on 01/08/2025 by dccrossley

I’m guessing that whisky is not a drink that appeals to all wine lovers, but I think almost all of my wine-obsessed friends do appreciate it. Living in Scotland now, whisky takes on a role it never really did down in England, as much a part of life as gin and tonic might have been when the sun crosses the yard arm. The more you enter the malt whisky wormhole, the more interested and entangled you become. And the more of a challenge to the wine budget it becomes as well. Prices usually start at around £55 a bottle, and £85 can be a sweet spot for something good. Spending £100 is tempting for something a tiny bit special. Finding genuine interest and equally good value in the same bottle can be difficult, but I think I’ve found that here.

Blind Summit, it’s something you see many times on a string of roads sign if you take the roller-coaster A68 through Northumberland, towards Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders. Driving that scenic route can be a thrill or a nightmare, depending on weather conditions. Blind Summit Whisky is all thrills and, sobriety willing, no spills.

Independent whisky bottlers tend to be much appreciated by aficionados but not always very much known or understood by the occasional purchaser of a bottle of Malt. However, they have been around since the 1800s in some cases, and although independent bottling has, like Malt Whisky in general, been affected by the vicissitudes of the market, the 1980s saw a bit of a revival. Names like William Cadenhead of Aberdeen, Gordon & Macphail of Elgin, and Douglas Laing & Co of Glasgow are names that will resound with industry insiders. Blind Summit is something of a newcomer.

Blind Summit is based in Leith. There is no centre for whisky bottling quite like Edinburgh’s historic Port of Leith, the mini-Chartrons of Scotland if you like, and even today, once more home to one of the city’s new distilleries. This is where Scotland imported its Bordeaux wine, the staple fare, in magnificent quantity, of Edinburgh’s legal fraternity in their pretty debauched (alcoholically, at least) clubs in centuries past. “Claret”, Port and Sherry were bottled here before whisky, Cockburns of Leith being almost synonymous with the practice. For a long time, the famous Leith Vaults were owned by JG Thompson & Co.

The Vaults, in Giles Street, date back to the 12th century, but the current building was completed in 1787. Once a bonded warehouse, it is better known today as the home of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society and acts as a tasting venue, a member’s room, a restaurant and accommodation.

The wine and spirit trade in Scotland was never peopled by “mere tradesmen”, but was the domain of the younger sons of the Scottish aristocracy, who after all had to build sales relationships with fellow aristocrats keen to be dealt with honestly, by one of their own, when it came to the most important part of their expenditure. Anyway, enough history.

Blind Summit is what I would call a boutique single cask and small batch whisky bottler. Their bottlings are one-off products. They source their whisky from quite special distilleries and rack it into a new and different cask, or casks, to create a product which is nuanced and unique. Most releases are restricted to a few hundred bottles, or less.

Two guys sit behind Blind Summit. Jamie Dawson and James Zorab. I met Jamie originally through Cork & Cask, my intro into the world of indie wine merchants in Edinburgh, for whom he is buyer. James previously worked for Edinburgh Whisky Ltd as a site operations manager, but the pair met in 2007 and became friends whilst working for good old Oddbins in Edinburgh, and (it says here) bonding over Drum & Bass. I can’t say “who’d’ve thought?” because people are usually surprised at my own past if I tell them.

Jamie sources casks and looks after post-production, whilst James sources and matures the whisky that goes into them, overseeing the Glenrothes cask maturation warehouse (when not snowboarding and watching rugby).

What of the whiskies? It’s probably worth mostly telling you about the newly bottled batch of whiskies (labelled just last week), as most of the previous batch may already be sold through. That said, if you find any, jump on them, as I know that my own local whisky retailer might still have some on the shelf.

My first introduction to Blind Summit was via the entry level Lochend Blend. This bottle, from the previous edition (Vol I), was a blend of six different single malts married in an Australian Tawny cask. It includes the smoky/peaty Ledaig (pron “Led-chig”, from Mull’s Tobermory distillery), Caol Ila, Ben Nevis, Brackla (a forgotten gem produced by Dewars, usually only available overseas or at Dewar’s Aberfeldy Distillery, where you should try an older bottle), Macduff and the brilliant Highland Park (Orkney). The latest releases include a Highland Park 7-year-old.

Lochend Blend Vol I

This Lochend Blend, like all the Blind Summit editions, is in a 50cl bottle. This has two advantages. First, there’s more to go around, but even more importantly, it is cheaper per unit. Just under £35 for the latest edition (Vol II), this time matured in a Saint-Emilion barrique. For me it is stupendous value for a nice drinking malt.

My second taste of Blind Summit came through a sample (a very generous one, if I might say so) of the Secret Islay. This is an 8yo Single Malt originally distilled in the south of Islay. That narrows things down a bit. Out of Laphroaig, Lagavulin and Ardberg I would plump for the latter, stylistically. But I can’t be certain. It’s a secret. Initially seeing a bourbon refill cask (bourbon is always matured in new wood), it was first transferred to an ex-rum, ex-cider cask and was then finished in virgin oak supplied by Futtle Brewery in Fife.

It is Islay with elegance. The nose has complex notes of bruised apple, bonfire smoke and sea air, the palate is complex and long. It is bottled at 56.7% abv, but for me, it doesn’t require a splash of water unless that’s the way you take your medicine. Only 160 50cl bottles were produced. Definitely highly recommended. Cork & Cask has this for £85, but only three bottles left.

The photo below shows the recently released editions (all 50cl):

  • Glencadam 14 yo in bourbon cask (178 btls) £75
  • Linkwood 10 yo finished in Aussie PX cask (168 btls) £55
  • Highland Park 7 yo, Oloroso hogshead (190 btls) £60
  • Lochend Blend (Vol II), St Emilion barrique (320 btls) £35

Just a brief note on the labels. I think they’re excellect. Whisky isn’t known for colourful labels, most sticking to describing what’s in the bottle. I’m sure a lot of older whisky drinkers much prefer it that way, but as a wine buyer and retailer, Jamie will be aware of how important it is to get a younger demographic interested. He’s doubtless seen the revolution of colour in modern wine labels and very possibly taken note. These labels, and the smaller bottle size, definitely make these Blind Summit releases attractive for those keen to explore something more than the brands.

Cork & Cask (Marchmont, Edinburgh and online) still has Lochend Vol 1 and Dailuaine 8 yo bourbon cask (£55) alongside those three bottles of Secret Islay, plus all four new releases. You will also find a wealth of other independently bottled whiskies on the shelves, including Woodrows of Edinburgh, Pintail, James Eadie, Thompson Bros, and the intriguing Fragrant Drops.

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A Few Germans at The Solent Cellar (July 2025)

Posted on 28/07/2025 by dccrossley

I was otherwise engaged a week last Friday when Solent Cellar in Lymington had a German tasting in the shop. We had been invited to go out sailing on The Solent, over to the Isle of Wight. We came back on a stiff breeze in racing mode, very exciting, and too good to miss. However, I did get the chance to taste some of the wines, five of them, which had been pumped as air-free as they can be, on the following morning.

As I mentioned in my last article, the tasting really did highlight the diversity now on offer from Germany. Only one bottle here at all resembled an older perception of the off-dry white. None were made from Müller-Thurgau, although you will know I can find a lot to enjoy in those, if made by a young natural wine winzer(in). I tasted a Chardonnay from Rheinhessen, a dry Silvaner from Franken, an exquisite Sekt from Rheinhessen, a Mosel Feinherb, and finally a Mosel “Pinot Noir”.

Chardonnay “R” Steingrube 2023, Weingut Seehof (Rheinhessen)

In my last article (Holiday Wines, 24/7) I included the Weisser Burgunder which Florian Fauth makes at this Westhofen estate. I also mentioned that Florian is Klaus Peter Keller’s brother-in-law. That wine came from the famous Morstein site. This Chardonnay is from Steingrube. It sits between Morstein and Kirchspiel, but is merely classified as “excellent” rather than “exceptional” in Hugh Johnson’s vineyard classification. No matter.

Chardonnay in Germany? Have you been picking up on the buzz? Most German Chardonnay, or at least the ones which are getting people talking, are a bit more elegant than this, but here we have something which is fantastic value. It has broad Chardonnay fruit and 13% abv. The bouquet is creamily toasty with vanilla, but there’s nice citrus acidity too. Now, it tastes a little voluptuous, even sensual. It will settle down with a little age but doesn’t need a lot. With food it is very tasty indeed (I’ve drunk it before). £25.

Silvaner Eschendorfer Lump 2023, Horst Sauer (Franken)

Sauer used to be most famous for scintillating sweet wines from this most famous Franken “Erste Lage” site, but his dry wines are surely among the very best expressions of dry Silvaner anywhere. Horst was joined by his daughter, Sandra, in 2004 and she is now looking after their 37 ha of vineyards. The Lump is a steep, south-facing slope on limestone. Around 10% of the fruit sees a two-week maceration in stainless steel, and ageing is on the fine lees for five months.

Vibrant is how to describe this. Peachy stone fruit is held together by a steely backbone with great acid balance. It’s a wine for scallops. It has the zippiness of youth (despite 13% abv), which I like. You could age it, but I love acids, and anyway, it’s not too expensive. It is now back up on the shop’s web site for £26.

It comes in the region’s traditional bocksbeutel. Many growers in Franken have moved to Burgundy-style bottles. Personally, I like the tradition of the bocksbeutel (which can be translated as book-bag or goat’s scrotum, depending on the author). It’s usually a pain to cellar, with a shape wholly unfit for any wine rack, but this dry wine is sealed with a screwcap, so it just stands on the floor in a safe corner of the wine room.

Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut 2021, Lena Singer-Fischer (Rheinhessen)

I’d never heard of Sekthaus Singer-Fischer before, but I have now. The winery is at Ingelheim, on the Rhine, between Bingen and Wiesbaden. This is a bottle-fermented blend of Chardonnay (80%) with Weissburgunder, dosed at 2g/l. It’s one of 3,738 bottles which began its second fermentation in August 2022 and was disgorged January 2025.

This is pretty much a “natural” Sekt which shows a lovely balance between lively freshness and a bit of depth in the fruit. Drink or keep as you wish, but right here I’ve found another excellent sparkling wine from Germany that is just half the price of a good entry-level Grower cuvée from Champagne. £32. You may come across this wine under the label “Lena Macht Sekt”, which reminds me of Max Baumann’s “Max Sein Wein” label. A little German helps.

Im Pfarrgarten Feinherb 2024, AJ Adam (Mosel)

Andreas Adam is based in Dhron, the river of the same name sitting in a valley which is a west-flowing tributary of the Mosel, northeast of Trier. The next well-known wine town down the river is Piesport. The Hoffberg sits above Dhron as its best known site, and Im Pfarrgarten is part of that hill. Andreas works with his wife, Barbara, who like Andreas is a Geisenheim graduate. They use low intervention methods, including indigenous yeasts (despite what they were taught at Geisenheim). Andreas began making wine in 2000, age 21, scooping up abandoned sites over the years. Now, in his forties, he is at the top of his game.

This Feinherb exhibits all the off-dry seductiveness of the style without losing acid freshness. Classic green apple crispness, some lime zest and grapefruit play on a tightrope with the sugar and 10% alcohol. Although it will mature a little, I like this style fresh and thrilling. It is a style AJ does so well. Just £20. Solent Cellar does have Adam’s Dhroner Hoffberg Kabinett 2021 from the Grosser Ring Auction for £50 if you want to see what Andreas can really do with Riesling. I am yet to ascend that mountain.

Pinot Noir Vom Schiefer 2023, Weingut Daniel Fries (Mosel)

It used to be blandly stated that the wider Mosel (including Saar and Ruwer) wasn’t much of a source for Spätburgunder, but a long time ago, those who began to enjoy the likes of Maximin Grüuhaus’ red knew different (not to mention the smashable reds from other varieties made by Rudolf and Rita Trossen at Kinheim). This is a new producer for me, but that may just be because the estate is based at Winningen. We are in the lower reaches of the Mosel here, as the river approaches Koblenz and the Rhine.

These vineyards have really seen a revival of interest, and at Winningen, of course, the vineyards of Heymann-Löwenstein stand as a beacon to younger and adventurous winemakers. But aside from that famous estate, there are new growers to explore. Daniel Fries certainly appears to be achieving a fine reputation among the newer growers of the Terrassenmosel, as this stretch of the river is known, although his family have been growing grapes here for generations.

The aforementioned Heymann-Löwenstein are famous for their wines off the slate (schiefer) soils here, wine names like “Schiefterrasen” and “Vom Blauer Schiefer” giving the game away, but Pinot Noir off slate can be both exciting, and a very German expression of the variety. It helps that summers here are noticeably warmer than they once were, aiding dependable ripeness.

Again, we have a spontaneously-fermented wine made in open-top vats, hand punching-down, malolactic and then sixteen months ageing in used barriques. Bottled without fining/filtration. It’s silky with strawberry fruit, but black tea notes hug some texture beneath. Good acids, grippy, a wine that maybe needs a year of two to settle but with food you can drink it now. Cool-climate but it has ripeness. I was impressed. £25.

In summary, I’d be happy to buy all of these wines. In fact, among the wines I purchased from Solent Cellar following my visit I included the Seehof Chardonnay, the Horst Sauer and the Sekt. I’d have been happy to buy the other two as well, but you know me and my need for variety.

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Holiday Wines July 2025

Posted on 24/07/2025 by dccrossley

In a brief diversion from the “Recent Wines” theme (the wines we drink at home), these are ten of the wines we drank on a week’s holiday on the South Coast. Actually, these were merely consumed by four of us over three days of the week, Friday to Sunday, with a few more wines on Thursday and Monday not covered here so, arriving home on Tuesday evening we are now on a three-day detox.

The wines were mostly new to me, the exception being the last. I own a bottle of this and someone said keep it a little longer, but the bottle we drank here was singing. You will notice that many of these bottles come from Lymington’s Solent Cellar. It remains one of my absolute favourite wine shops. I always spot things on the shelf I miss online, though co-owner Simon Smith is very good at pointing me towards more wines to empty my wallet with. Some of the wines here are by no means “obvious” choices, especially as some I’d never heard of. All the wines here, both from this shop and elsewhere, were exciting.

I also got to taste some German wines at Lymington’s Solent Cellar which had been preserved after a German tasting there the night before. Those bottles will follow. It was a reminder not just of how good German wines are, but also the diversity available.

A couple of the wines were drunk at The Gun in Keyhaven, just outside Milford-on-Sea. It has been a couple of years since we’ve been but I can still highly recommend this transformed former pub, built in the 1600s and a pub since 1783, it is now owned by Chris and Kitty Cecil-Wright (Kitty being Hugh Johnson’s daughter). The menu is local and the quality of food is, I would say, higher than the reasonable prices suggest.

Où Que L’on Soit, Max & Friends (Champagne, France)

This is a Coteaux Champenois from the 2020 vintage, made from Chardonnay grown around Romery, which is northwest of Hautvillers on the Montagne de Reims. The Max in question is Maxime Renault, and he makes only still wines from the region. Inspired by Pierre Overnoy, his wines are “natural+”, with zero added sulphur, both biodynamics and regenerative ecology being at the heart of what he does on his 1.8 hectares. This is a lovely wine, lean in a good way in that it is precise and you can taste the intricate skeletal structure under the fruit. Les Caves du Forum in Reims sold this (53€).

Montedesassi 2019, Il Borghetto (Tuscany, Italy)

This is a very good value Toscana IGP made by Antonio Cavallino’s small-to-medium estate in Chiantishire, yet intentionally keeping the wines out of the DOCG (which, being bottled in the Burgundy shaped bottle means they can’t qualify anyway). Organic/biodynamic fruit (95% Sangiovese, 5% Canaiolo), this is Sangio with a leaning to Pinot Noir’s elegance but with a degree of power as well. The palate of this 2019 echoes the wafting fragrance of the bouquet’s cherries, spice and wild flowers complemented by savoury notes. I was quite taken with it. Retail, around £30, imported by Alliance Wine. Great value, the 2019 drinking so well right now. Must remember to get some in my next Solent Cellar order if they have any left.

Wintricher Ohligsberg Riesling Auslese 2017 (50cl), Julian Haart (Mosel, Germany)

This wine simply does what it says on the bottle, but does it rather well. With 7.5% alcohol and a rapier-like acidity, this is certainly young, but thrilling nevertheless. Julian farms at Piesport. Once he was one of the new stars of the Mosel, but he’s pretty well established in that role now, and he is part of a long tradition, being custodian of one of the oldest private wine estates on the river. This will be nothing short of sublime when mature. Now it is merely profoundly exciting. £65 at The Solent Cellar, now out of stock.

La Closerie “Les Beguines” Extra Brut, Jérôme Prévost (Champagne, France)

Prévost is based at Gueux on the Montagne de Reims, from where he has been bottling some of the finest examples of Champagne found anywhere since 1998. Les Beguines is 100% Meunier, aged in oak, the code on the label (LC16) showing it is from the single vintage of 2016. It was dosed Extra Brut at around 2g/l.  Peter Liem recommends drinking this cuvée (one of only two made here, the other being the earth-shatteringly wonderful Fac-Simile Rosé) within ten years of vintage. Sounds about right. This was sensational, but quite mature. If you (as I do) like Champagne with the complexity of bottle age, this is right on point. A genuine terroir wine, so long, so good. £105 from Solent Cellar but out of stock. Vine Trail imports.

« Gamet » Coteaux Champenois Rosé 2022, Clos du Goulot (Champagne, France)

This is a tiny production still pink wine made from a parcel of Meunier planted in 1960 at Fleury-la-Rivière, just north of Damery and the Marne. In fact, it’s a mere three-minute drive from Romery, site of the first Coteaux wine I wrote about. Vines are south-facing and they receive a forty-hour saignée (the colour being bled off from the result of a gentle eight-hour maceration). Another example of the excellent still wines now being made in the heartland of Champagne by growers I’d never heard of before. An elegant Rosé made from a grape variety capable of excellence in the right hands (but I think you probably knew that). Another wine from Les Caves du Forum in Reims, circa 34€. Just 600 bottles made. A bargain!

On s’en Fish! 2023, Domaine Gardies (Roussillon, France)

This IGP Côtes Catalanes red is made organically by Jean and Victor Gardies at Espira-de-Agly (Agly Valley). Cinsault (85%) and Carignan are fermented by carbonic maceration to make a fresh and chillable red which despite 13.5% abv tastes good with fish. The tannins are gentle and the fruit (red berries, cranberry and strawberry dominant) is vibrant. With a nice label too, this is a cracker at just £21 from Solent Cellar (Lymington). The importer is Alliance Wine. I have a friend who has just been to Roussillon who would love this!

Weisser Burgunder “R” Morstein 2021, Seehof (Rheinhessen, Germany)

The vineyard, Morstein, needs little introduction. Klaus Peter Keller has (along with Philipp Wittmann) made this one of the most famous sites in Germany. Winemaker Florian Fauth is actually Klaus Peter’s brother-in-law, and he’s making excellent value wines from the same region. This very much includes Pinot Blanc, from the same site. Off limestone and clay, it ferments in large (1,200-litre) oak, where it stays for seven months. It’s a creamy wine with 13% alcohol giving it just the right amount of weight but no flab. The palate is like peaches and cream, but with acidity to balance. Look for hints of white pepper too.

I like Weisser Burgunder at lunch. This single site version may be a bad choice to drink the bottle solo, being a little more alcoholic than some, but it is gorgeous. It will pair with a range of white fish from lighter to meatier. I have enjoyed the Seehof Chardonnay (from the Steingrube site), and have more of that in the cellar, but this for me is as good. At £17 it is remarkable value. From Solent Cellar, imported by Boutinot.

“Electio” Xarel-Lo 2021, Parés Baltá (Penedès, Spain)

This is a quality Cava producer at Pacs del Penedès, which was founded towards the end of the eighteenth century. This still wine is the result of biodynamic (Demeter cert) farming and its barrel-fermented Xarel-Lo fruit comes from isolated, century-old, terraces and 70-year-old vines. They call it a micro-cuvée. Pale yellow, with camomile on the nose and textured, mineral, white peach and peach stone on the palate. You get a hint of Mediterranean herbs on the finish. Pretty special, but not cheap – £45 at Hedonism Wines. Imported by Top Selection Wines.

Sobre Lías Crianza 2023, Finca Viñoa (Ribeiro, Spain)

Bottled under the Finca Viñoa label, this is made by Bodega Pazo de Casanova at Santa Cruz de Arrabaldo, Ourense. This is a 12-ha domaine situated in the Val del Avia, comprising seventy terraces on granite planted to the region’s autochthonous varieties. This organic white seems to blend mostly Treixadura (85%) with roughly 8% of Godello and some other varieties including Loureiro and Albariño. Straw-coloured, the bouquet mixes green apple and lemon with smokey notes.  The palate is herbal and mineral with a citrus zip. A refreshing white which is just perfect for oily tinned fish, of the kind many indie wine shops seem to stock nowadays, assuming you can’t get them fresh from the Atlantic. £22 from Solent Cellar, via Alliance Wine.

Rioja Reserva Viña Tondonia 2001, Lopez de Heredia (Rioja, Spain)

LdH is one of the now famous bodegas clustered around the railway station at Haro, in the far north of Rioja Alta. Founded in 1877, this family-run estate is famous for long-lived, traditional, wines of great beauty. Tondonia is a single site (though 100 hectares) on the right bank of the Ebro, from which they make their finest wines, it should be noted in all colours, although strangely the Rosado is perhaps the hardest to find.

In this 2001 Reserva we have the successor to the 1995. Tempranillo (70%) was blended with 20% Garnacha and 5% each of Graciano and Mazuelo, first fermented in old wood (the famous vats here are over 150 years old, but are immaculately maintained), after which they age it for a decade in used barrels. These are the traditional 225-litre casks made of American oak, produced in the bodega’s own cooperage.

It’s a medium-bodied red, elegant and smooth. The bouquet is spiced, and the palate has a slightly chalky texture with genuine salinity on the finish. Carefully crafted, yet so sensual (and very long). Someone suggested I keep my own bottle for a few more years, and one merchant counsels opening it in 2031. This bottle was drinking beautifully, but having had the wonderful experience of sipping this bottle (a friend’s), I feel I can give my own a little more time. I doubt it will stay in the cellar that long, though.

My own remaining bottle came from The Sampler, now just in Islington, where you can currently buy a magnum of the 2011 for £105 or a half bottle of the 2012 for £30. Prices always vary for all the Tondonias so it is worth looking around. As for the Rosado, The Sampler was selling it for £98 but thank goodness they have none left to tempt us. They do have the 2004 Gran Reserva red for £210.

Ooh, and we also drank some of this…wow!

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Recent Wines June 2025 (Part 2) #theglouthatbindsus

Posted on 11/07/2025 by dccrossley

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 13th 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 1/100th-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 17th 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.

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Recent Wines June 2025 (Part 1) #theglouthatbindsus

Posted on 08/07/2025 by dccrossley

June is always my favourite month on account of it containing the longest day and the Summer Solstice. It has a habit of throwing up some wine surprises too. Not the big names, but rather wines which would surprise most wine lovers with how good they are. I can already see an impossible choice for “wine of the month” looming in my end of year review, between the Galician wine here in Part 1 and the Savoie in Part 2, but any adventurous palate would almost certainly enjoy all of these.

Our six bottles in Part 1 begin with a Crémant Rosé from the Jura, followed by another wine of roughly the same hue from Alsace. Ringing a change next, a Scottish cider, then a white from Italy’s smallest region, Aosta. Then there’s a new wine from Czechia, before we end with that Galician I mentioned.

Crémant du Jura Rosé Brut Nature [2020], Domaine Overnoy (Jura, France)

This is not, of course, the famous Pupillin Domaine, but that of Guillaume Overnoy, down in the south of the region. Guillaume is at Beaufort-Orbagna, in the Sud-Revermont, where he farms a little over six hectares. Pierre Overnoy is his great-uncle. He did his apprenticeship at Domaine des Marnes Blanches, and when he returned to his family domaine he immediately set about implementing natural winemaking and input-free viticulture. As a result, Guillaume’s wines are beginning to get noticed.

He grows all of the Jura varieties, both the autochthonous varieties and those international varieties common in the region, and this pink sparkling wine is 80% Chardonnay and 20% Pinot Noir. It sees 18 months on lees before disgorging, and there is zero dosage. However, some still Pinot Noir is added for colour, a lovely salmon-pink, and the wine has a slightly lower pressure of 5.5 bar.

It strikes you first as fruity, but there’s a very attractive savoury twist. The finish is almost tart with red fruit. The lower pressure makes it attractive with food, though it is equally good as an aperitif. I like this kind of versatility because you can have a glass before dinner and then continue the same wine through the meal. That’s good in this case because it really is “moreish”. You want to drain the bottle.

This cost £32 from Communiqué Wines (Stockbridge, Edinburgh), via importer Vine Trail. To buy a pink Champagne this good you’d have to pay much more than double the price. I hope to buy some more for that very reason.

Pink Pong Macération 2022, JM Dreyer (Alsace, France)

Jean-Marc Dreyer is based at Rosheim. We are getting into that thrilling wine frontier of Northern Alsace here, north of Barr and Obernai but south of Molsheim, for those who haven’t perhaps ventured this far from the tourist trail. Jean-Marc is a natural winemaker, but is also often described as a holistic winemaker. He does have a philosophy which goes far deeper into nature and the natural environment than most.

It is worth reading Camilla Gjerde’s Natural Trailblazers to understand that philosophy, and that of his friends, Yannick Meckert and Florian Beck-Hartweg. That chapter in Camilla’s 2024 book explains pretty much, by focussing on just these three growers, why I always argue that Alsace is the most exciting place for natural wine in France right now, taking over the baton from The Loire and The Jura.

Pink Pong is a skin contact wine (JM is a skin contact man, for sure) made with that new classic blend of natural Alsace, Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris. Is it a light red or a Rosé? Who cares? Fruit is what it’s all about: cherry, strawberry and cranberry, mostly. The label states that the wine is made “SAINS”. That’s “Sans Aucun Intrants ni Sulfites Ajoutés”.

It’s another glass drainer of a wine, 12.5% alcohol but tasting like fruit juice. I think this is quite sought after and not always easy to find. Gergovie Wines is the UK importer and I bought this from their shop/restaurant at 40 Maltby Street (London). They are currently out of this cuvée, but do still have a couple of Jean-Marc’s wines listed. Pink Pong will cost between £30-£40 in the UK if you can find any. Quite feral, though for me, very pleasantly so.

Overture, Naughton Cider Company (Fife, Scotland)

You might have seen that I wrote about the Naughton Cider Company in the second part of my focus on the Cork & Cask Summer Fair, the previous article on this site. This bottle, which I didn’t really talk about much there, was drunk a week before the Fair. It is, as the name suggests, the entry into Peter Crawford’s world of “Champagne Method”, bottle-fermented ciders.

You’ll know, if you read that article, that Peter has orchards on the family farm at Balmerino, in Fife, close to the Tay. This is a blend of both cider and culinary apple varieties, vinified in oak using Champagne yeasts. After bottling it gets two years on lees for its second fermentation.

It has a very fine bead, a fresh apple nose and crisp “lemon zest” acidity on the palate. It has a cider freshness but the method used to make it helps give a very refined cider, even though Peter has described this as “our prologue…”. Only around 1,200 bottles made and at 7.7% abv it has a slightly lower alcohol content than the next two ciders in the range.

My bottle came from Aeble Cider (£21) in Anstruther, a shop and cider bar which I never fail to pop into when I’m over on the other side of the Forth. However, as you may have guessed, it can be currently found in Cork & Cask (Marchmont, Edinburgh or online) as well, for just £20.

Petite Arvine 2021, Lo Triolet (Vallée d’Aoste, Italy)

It’s worth repeating, as people still find it confusing, that the province and wine region of Aosta/Aoste is officially bilingual, so that you will often (more often than not) see the anomaly on labels of Vallée d’Aoste coupled with DOC. Being Italy’s smallest region, having just under 500-ha planted to vines, I’m often surprised, considering how little is exported, and how risk-averse many UK wine retailers have become, that we do see a few Aostan wines here. Lo Triolet is perhaps the producer I’m now seeing most of.

Lo Triolet is to be found at Introd, in the western part of the valley, quite close to the Mont Blanc Tunnel. We are just five kilometres from the Gran Paradiso National Park, and Marco Martin does make genuine mountain wines. Petite Arvine is certainly a mountain grape, better known in the Swiss Valais region, which is just over the Grand Saint-Bernard Pass. Aosta makes plenty of excellent Petite Arvine wines from several producers, and they are almost all somewhat cheaper than any good Swiss versions.

This one sees eight months in stainless steel after a brief maceration/fermentation. It is straw-yellow in colour and the bouquet has savoury notes plus stone fruit and a hint of white flowers. The palate is textured and waxy, with decent body (14% abv here) but a glorious freshness to balance that alcohol. I do like this and if Solent Cellar (Lymington, Hants) had any left I’d be putting another bottle in a pending order. Sadly it has all gone. Highbury Vintners might have some? My bottle cost £26.

Na Zdravi 2023, Krasna Hora Winery (Moravia, Czechia)

I visited this winery in Stary Podvorov in Southern Moravia back in 2022. They make a wide range of excellent value wines, although this is very much a family operation, using low intervention methods in the vineyard and winery. Nothing they make is overpriced. None of the wines represent anything less than excellent value.

This red wine, and a matching white, are brand new cuvées. They are a collaborative venture with their importer (see below). Na Zdravi means “cheers” in Czech, a good choice for an intensely fruity blend of, in this case, Zweigelt and St-Laurent. The vines are cultivated biodynamically on a long, sloping hillside up behind the winery. Winemaker Ondrej Dubas has created a juicy wine, with a lovely cherry bouquet, and which tastes of super-refreshing crunchy fruit with just a little grounding texture. It really is mouth-filling…smashable as they say.

Best served chilled, this 12.5% abv guzzler is just in time for summer. We drank it with fish & chips (of course we did). £20 from Basket Press Wines. I first saw this at The Sourcing Table, so they might still have some too.

Sal da Terra “Vino do Salnès” 2023 (Rias Baixas, Spain)

This wine is a collaboration (the name translates as salt of the earth) between Daniel Primack (our UK Zalto importer), Jamie Goode (presumably no introduction needed), and Ben Henshaw (Indigo Wines and The Sourcing Table), with Eulogio Pomares (winemaker at Bodegas Zarate). Zarate is located in the famous Salnès Valley in Galicia.

The wine is 100% Albariño, 60% coming from a site called Carballoso, in Xil, at 250 masl, 37-year-old vines 6km from the Atlantic Ocean on ferrous sand and granite. Those grapes were fermented and aged in 1,200-litre chestnut casks. The other 40% of the fruit is from Cambados, specifically the Francón vineyard, where 32-year-old vines grow on granite and red clay at sea level next to the ocean. This fruit is both fermented and aged in 1,500-litre concrete vat.

I last tasted the shockingly good 2018 vintage but it has been suggested that this 2023 is the best yet. It is simply stunning. I think Jancis Robinson may have called it the wine to get her back interested in Albariño (or words to that effect). I never got out of the variety, but this would for sure have that effect on most people. It has a smooth palate, broad, with peach and lime, and a lot of salinity. The nose is floral with more peach. The salinity gives it life, and it has genuinely great length. It is so worth the money. £30 from The Sourcing Table (Peckham Rye) in my case, via Indigo Wines. I might even call this, certainly the 2023, under the radar greatness.

Posted in Alsace, Aosta, Artisan Cider, Artisan Wines, Cider, Crémant, Czech Wine, Italian Wine, Jura, Natural Wine, Spanish Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Merchants | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cork & Cask Summer Wine Fair 2025 (Part 2) – Uncharted, Alliance, Naughton Cider and some beer

Posted on 03/07/2025 by dccrossley

The second part of my coverage of the Cork & Cask Summer Fair begins with a selection from Uncharted Wines. This has a focus mostly on Westwell Wines from Kent (not exclusively) because, well, they are so good! Second up, Alliance. This is another agency, like Moreno Wines in Part One, which I don’t get to taste often, but I have been buying a few of their wines recently. Naughton Cider Company makes “Champagne Method” artisan ciders in Fife, and Peter Crawford was showing a new, special, cuvée I’d not tasted before. Peter also brought some Champagnes from his Sip Champagne import agency.

I’m also going to mention a few beers because, well, thirsts need quenching. I was going to say in this summer heat, but it has currently dropped to 13 degrees up here in Edinburgh. Our son got home from 42 degrees yesterday and seemed very happy to cool down…just to make everyone down south a little jealous.

Just to recap from Part 1, all prices are to the nearest £, retail at Cork & Cask (136 Marchmont Road, Edinburgh).

Uncharted Wines

I’ve known Uncharted Wines for as many years as they have been going, since 2017, I think. Like many small agencies they focus on smaller artisan domaines, but with a good worldwide spread. They import my favourite New Zealand producer, and have always had their finger on the Beaujolais pulse, in an already crowded market. Co-owner Rupert Taylor has also developed the wine in keg concept, and I think he was one of the first in the UK (maybe even the first) to begin commercialising this form of delivery in his previous role, before founding Uncharted.

Westwell Wines in Kent was taken over by Adrian Pike also in 2017, and he has established this vineyard as one of the most innovative and exciting English wine estates. I’ve written about Westwell enough before so I won’t add much here, except to note that they offer a range of visit options, including various food nights and other entertainments. If you don’t yet know the wines, you will see from the five bottles below that they certainly offer variety.

Westwell Pelegrim NV – Pinots Noir and Meunier plus Chardonnay, very fine and getting better with every release. It has some marked autolytic character, and it does get toasty with age but it also has a bright freshness, steely in youth. At £37 this is one of the best value English sparkling wines out there.

Westwell Unnaturally Petulant Pink 2023 – The same three “Champagne” varieties as Pelegrim. The second fermentation didn’t start so Adrian added some more sugar and yeast to get it going again, prior to bottling, hence the name of this pink petnat. Pale salmon colour, a fruity beauty perfect for summer. It really is! £30.

Westwell Village Chardonnay – My first taste of this (2023). A blend of younger vines planted in 2019 and older vines planted a decade earlier in 2009 (before Adrian arrived). It was made in stainless steel. It’s a bright and crisp wine, closed under screwcap. Dry, lemon, lime and grapefruit. It has less depth than the estate version but it doesn’t lack depth, and scores on freshness and price (£22). Or try a 20-litre keg for £574.59 direct from Uncharted.

Westwell Little Bit – This wine is made from the leftover pressings from Westwell’s sparkling wines. As they are pressed very gently there is still good potential in what remains. They had been experimenting with the third pressing of Pinot Noir and Meunier and in 2023 put it into stainless steel where it underwent a “constantly evolving fermentation”. Floral and fruity (red fruits) and a little texture on the palate in a wine the colour of pale peach skin. This wine works so well because 2023 was such a “fruity” vintage. Although it’s a little different to most pink wines, I can’t think of a better value English Rosé (£18), but this will interest wine obsessives more than supermarket lovers. Just 10% abv.

Westwell Pinot Noir 2023 – Picked late October, 70% of the fruit was destemmed, 30% whole bunches. The grapes were then layered, like a lasagne, in tank to undergo a semi-carbonic maceration. The free-run juice was then moved to another stainless-steel tank to complete fermenting (with indigenous yeasts). A pale Pinot, let it unfurl in the glass to get that ethereal nose of a violet top note underpinned by ripe red cherries. The palate brings in more red fruits, strawberries being particularly attractive. It will age into a more savoury wine if you let it, despite its low, 10.5%, alcohol. I’m thinking pair it with a mushroom wellington.

The label here, like all of those at Westwell, I think, are extra special, and come from illustrations by Adrian Pike’s partner, Galia Durant. Her illustration of Bacchus on “Unnaturally Petulant Pink” is my current favourite.

Village Chardonnay, Pinot and Gus with A Little Bit

Curtimenta Orange 2023, Espera (Alcobaça, Portugal)

This is the token non-Westwell offering I picked from Uncharted, but I’m including it as a prime example of how good Portuguese wine is right now. This may not be as cheap as some wines from a country offering some good prices, but it’s a lovely drop of wine. Curtimenta effectively means “orange wine”, so I guess me calling it “Curtimenta Orange” is as silly as saying “naan bread”, but at least you know what you are getting. Rodrigo Martins is fashioning some nice wines on his five hectares, an hour north of Lisbon.

Arinto and Fernão Pires grapes see three weeks on skins. The colour is between peach skin and light amber, with apricot on the nose along with a floral note, and some mineral texture with the fruit on the palate. Espera means “wait” in Portuguese, and I think that this wine will reward a little patience. That said, it had enough impact last Saturday to get a profile here. £27.

Alliance Wine

Alliance was founded in 1984, in Ayrshire, so a true Scottish importer (they do have a London office but HQ is still up here) which now imports wine from two-hundred producers in more than twenty countries, as well as making wine themselves in France, Spain and Chile. They have a good presence in Scottish retail, but also seem to work with a few wine shops I buy from in London and the South of England.

August Kesseler “The Daily August” Riesling 2024 (Rheingau, Germany)

This is a blend, after separate vinification, of grapes from sites including Hattenheimer Wisselsbrunnen, Erbacher Siegelsberg and Lorcher Schlossberg. The wine sees no oak. It is intended as an easy-drinking dry (12% abv) but fruity every day wine to accompany fish, seafood, salads and white meats. Labelled as a Gutswein but from an esteemed VDP producer, this is juicy, fruity and has racy acidity. £20 for a good Rheingau Riesling, not complex but very enjoyable. There is a Pinot Noir in the same series.

Mosaic White, Domaine Chatzivariti (Paiko PGI, Greece)

Greece is a wine country which gets far less traction in the UK market than it deserves. If you want to see what I mean, try this wine. This estate, which has been operating for just over thirty years, is located in the Goumenissa Region, in Macedonia, Northern Greece. The winery was founded by Vagelis Chatzivaritis, but in 2017 his daughter Chloi returned from overseas and has introduced a low intervention approach.

Roditis, Sauvignon Blanc, Assyrtiko and Xinomavro (a red variety but immediately pressed gently off skins to avoid colour) ferment separately after which their juice is blended and aged on lees for just three months. The fruit fills the mouth, but this is essentially a light wine, a wine that begins with citrus and ends with quince on the finish, along with a bit of texture from the lees. I liked it a lot. £20.

Frappato 2023, Baglio Gibellina (Sicily, Italy)

This Terre Siciliane Frappato intrigued me because, for Frappato, it is quite cheap. It is actually made from vines planted on sandy soils at around 250 masl, in a part of Sicily (Salemi, inland east of Marsala) where much quality viticulture takes place at slightly higher altitudes in the hills. Grapes are picked before they become over-ripe to preserve aroma and vinification in stainless steel helps preserve it further. The result is a wine which won’t challenge the likes of COS Frappato in my affections, yet for £13 seems rather good value. Garnet colour, a surprisingly deep bouquet, a bit of bitterness and texture on the palate and 13% abv, so food won’t spoil it.

Lledoner Pelut Vieilles Vignes 2024, Cami del Drac, Terres Fidèles (Roussillon, France)

Lladoner Pelut (aka Garnatxa Pelluda or Hairy Grenache) is a Grenache mutation known for complexity and intensity, though little is grown. Matassa uses it to good effect, but a varietal Lledoner is quite rare. Alliance has created this wine as part of their project in the Pyrénées. Winemaking is overseen by Fergal Tynan MW (Alliance) and Emmanuel Cazes. They use old parcels of vines in the high Roussillon hills.

The fruit is fermented in stainless steel with a ten-day maceration on skins. It’s another luminous, pale red showing bright red berry fruits and liquorice. It has a hint of rusticity, but in a good way. Its texture means it needs food, but although this is just 12.5% abv, I’m guessing no one is going to choose this as an aperitif. Roussillon lamb might be a good choice, though I should stress that isn’t their suggestion. UK-reared should do, or maybe you appreciate mutton? £15 makes this another great value bottle, which seems to be the theme from Alliance on this occasion.

Naughton Cider

Peter Crawford has orchards on the family farm near Balmerino in Fife, on the banks of the Tay. To place him, we are just over the river from Dundee, and in the other direction, maybe fifteen miles from St Andrews. We are lucky, because this is a very beautiful location, to have good friends who are his near neighbours. However, since I tried my first Naughton Cider (from the wonderful Aeble Cider Bar and Shop in Anstruther) I have not managed a trip to Fife to coincide with Peter being around.

The ciders I describe below are all made by the same method as Champagne. Primary fermentation uses Champagne yeasts and takes place in barrels previously used in that region. The apple must is aged on lees for ten months or so before bottling, when it then undergoes its second fermentation (just like Champagne). The mousse is created by adding more Champagne yeast at this point, along with a dosage of sugar, before spending, depending on the cuvée, at least two years on the yeasts in bottle before disgorging by hand.

Overture blends cider apples and culinary varieties which are “vinified” (I don’t think “pommified” exists) in a mix of oak and stainless steel. This is crisp and fruity with a touch of complexity well-described as a mix of “bittersweet and bittersharp”. 7.7% abv, £20.

Brut Vintage 2021 blends eating and cooking varieties, again part-fermented in oak, and is probably the main cuvée at Naughton. A citrus-dominated bouquet (more than apple, I’d say) leads to a palate that has green apple acids and some noticeable salinity, and even a bread/brioche/biscuit element adding complexity and the sense of bottle age. 7.6% abv, £24.

Le Clos 2020 is made from ten different varieties of eating and cooking apples picked from a single, south-facing, walled orchard at the farm. Made in Champagne oak barrels (10 months), and then undergoing second fermentation and matured 44 months on lees in bottle, this is an elegant cider. It is nutty, citrussy, and hints at honey and toffee apple. It is also saline too, and still very fresh on the tongue. It comes in at a slightly higher 8.3% alcohol. The vintage produced just 295 bottles, so it will cost you £45 a pop, but this is among the finest UK ciders I’ve sipped. That’s even more expensive than the Swiss Cidrerie du Vulcain’s cuvées I’ve tried, but I would imagine some of Michelin’s finest would list this if they could get some.

Peter Crawford is also one of the founders of Sip Champagne, and he had brought along some bottles which I understand may find their way to Cork & Cask at some point soon. A couple I tasted are included here.

Champagne Paul Clouet Sélection Grande Réserve

I have been hearing about Champagne Paul Clouet but don’t know the wines. They are based on the southern side of the Montagne de Reims, at Ambonnay, but have vines on the Côte des Blancs as well. This multi-vintage blend of all three major Champagne grape varieties (PN 50%, Ch 30%, PM 20%), I think all from the Montagne, has a 2015 base plus reserve wines. It was disgorged November 2019 and dosed at 7g/l.

It’s a well-made fruity Champagne, balanced despite a higher dosage than many these days, and a wine which will show a bit of complexity in the right glass (not a flute, perhaps), and will gain more in a year or two if more mature Champagne is your proclivity. At an expected retail price of around £37 it is far more in line with what I’d prefer to pay than the more optimistic prices of some producers. If that price is reasonably correct, I could easily see myself grabbing some.

Champagne Delouvin/Nowack Delouvin Meunier Perpétuel

I do like a good Meunier Champagne (Prévost when I could once afford it). This is a gem, from a single cru, Vandières in the Marne (near Châtillon-sur-Marne) and made from a solera/perpetual reserve started in 1992. This bottling contains fruit from 1992 to 2020. The family baton is currently with tenth generation Geoffrey Delouvin, who works 7.5 ha all close to the winery in Vandières.

As well as an interest in Meunier I have something of a thing for Champagnes formed in a perpetual reserve. Bérèche Reflet d’Antan ranks highly in my top half-dozen subjective favourite Champagnes. There is always complexity, and maturity, if you like such a style. This has those things. It also has a nice fresh salinity. Even at £47 on Sip’s web site it still represents good value when you consider what a “solera” Champagne might cost you today.

Some Beer

I don’t drink beer by the gallon but I do like it. I have certain favourites, Kernel being one I regularly drank back in London and Brighton. In summer it’s nice to try something a bit different, and we are, after all, blessed with some very fine brewers up here around Edinburgh. They are what I’d call genuine craft brewers.

Pilot Rosé Sour: Pilot are in Leith, of course, Edinburgh’s port area. They literally started out in Matt Johnson’s garage in 2011. Fourteen years on, they have a thriving business but have remained staunchly independent. I’ve been a fan of their Peach Melba Sour for summer drinking but this “Rosé” was brewed to mark the opening of their bar, Vessel. Rosé is a lager made with the addition of red and white grape juice. An elegant sour for, perhaps, wine lovers after a tasting (the traditional palate cleanser is always a beer). c£3/330ml.

Campervan Puffin Isles Gose: Campervan is also based in Leith, though they claim to have been born in 1973 in, you guessed, a garage (in which there also lived a campervan belonging to nascent brewer, Paul Gibson), but the commercial craft brewery was opened in Leith in 2017, and Paul is now managing director. They also have a tap room in Leith (technically Bonnington) at 112 Jane Street. Puffin Isles is a Gose-style, made with Scottish pale ale and wheat malt, with Scottish sea salt and coriander seeds. 4.2% abv, £4.50/440ml. Puffin Isles is gluten free. We have a thing for puffins here, I should mention. Also look for the Campervan radlers (lemon/lime, Grapefruit/mandarin) and if you want low alcohol, try that 0.5%er in the photo next to our Puffin.

Vault City Blood Orange Radler: Vault City Brewery claims to be the UK’s largest sour beer producer but these beers still have a real artisan quality to them, despite brewing half-a-million litres every year. They are in Portobello, Edinburgh’s seaside (well worth a visit). The tap room is close to the centre of Edinburgh. Late last year City Vault announced that its excellent Portobello Tap Room was to close. A real shame as I only discovered it last year. Anyway, this Radler is very fruity, juicy, and 3.4% abv. £2.50/330ml.

Futtle Organic Wheat Beer with Bay: The “East Neuk” describes the Fife coast as it stretches up the northern coast of the Firth of Forth, towards the picture postcard beauty of the fishing village of Crail. The Fife Coastal Path allows a string of attractive villages and rugged coastline to be enjoyed. We try to walk a part of it at least once or twice every year and it is so far only on this side of the water that we have seen dolphins (including from the back garden of Crail’s very good Harbour Café). Crail also has what has been described as one of Scotland’s best seafood shacks, Reilly & Sons (only Sat/Sun at the harbour, but North Berwick’s Lobster Shack is open every day in the summer months if you are heading over our way).

Futtle Brewery is just outside one of those villages (St Monans) at Bowhouse, where it also has a shop and tap room. There is also a shop in Dundee, over the Tay to the north. Futtle makes what they call “natural beers”, with spontaneous fermentations, and following the “farmhouse brewing tradition of Northern Europe”. Their approach is also to make beers which follow the seasons. At the Fair they were showing their East Neuk Pale Ale on draught, plus organic lager and this organic wheat beer from can. I think their very good table beer is sold out right now.

Made with three types of organic wheat (including one spelt), and using bay branches to make a filter bed for the mash. This gives nice bay aromatics in a beer that is light and refreshing. 3.4% abv, c£4/330ml.

All of these breweries allow visits, but check opening times and whether an appointment is necessary. Not all, as you will read above, have a tap room on-site. They do all have web sites. The Vault City site has some astonishingly wacky drinks on it. Mango Chilli Margarita, Foggy Lemonade, or maybe Sudden Death X Vault City Doggo’s Delight Pastry Sour anyone?

If you fancy a trip to Fife, Bowhouse (where Futtle is based) has a very highly regarded mostly food and drink market on the second weekend of every month except January.

Posted in Artisan Cider, Artisan Wines, Beer, Champagne, Cider, English Wine, Natural Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Festivals, Wine Merchants, Wine Shops, Wine Tastings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Cork & Cask Summer Wine Fair 2025 (Part 1) – Moreno, Poggiarello, Roland and the Electric Spirit Company

Posted on 01/07/2025 by dccrossley

I’ve said this before, but the Cork & Cask Wine Fairs (Summer in June, Winter in November) have become highlights of my Edinburgh wine year. The winter event tends to be strongly wine-focussed, I guess with Christmas around the corner, whilst the summer fair broadens out what’s on taste, especially with far more beer.

India Parry Williams (Manager, and also co-founder of the Wild Wine Fair), who organises these events with Jamie Dawson (Wine & Spirits Buyer, also a founder of the rather special artisan whisky bottler, Blind Summit), was my first contact on the Edinburgh wine scene when I moved up here in late summer 2022, so I won’t deny that I am very grateful to her, but these wine fairs are essential for me. It’s one of the few chances to get to meet up with a selection of mostly smaller importers of artisan wines all in the same place.

We shall split the wines etc tasted on Saturday into two parts. No long and dreary notes to take up thousands of words, just enough to try to convey the excitement of both the occasion and of the products I am highlighting here. That said, the things I do write about, well I liked them for different reasons, so I’ll try to get that across as well.

In this Part One, I shall cover Moreno Wines, with an additional feature on one of their producers, Poggiarello Winery, to follow. Then we shall see what Roland Wines had on offer. We finish here with perhaps the first pre-mixed cocktail I’ve ever got truly excited about, the Blood Orange Negroni from the Electric Spirit Company.

Part Two (to follow later this week, all being well) should cover Uncharted Wines (a bit of a Westwell focus for me), and Alliance Wine. I also finally got to meet Peter Crawford of the Naughton Cider Company. Peter makes fine cider using the traditional “bottle-fermentation” used in Champagne, but he also imports a different kind of fizz as the joint-founder of Sip Champagnes, so sparkling traditional method cider wasn’t the only thing on (or rather, under) the table.

I shall end Part Two with a few beer reflections, especially highlighting some beers for the current climate.

All Prices shown (usually to the nearest £) are retail, from Cork & Cask (136 Marchmont Road, Edinburgh). As usual, this close and friendly team from the shop put on a truly enjoyable, if busy, event in St Giles’s Church Hall, Marchmont.

India and Jamie with their hard-working team do this twice a year, and I for one am grateful they do

Moreno Wines

Moreno has been around for about fifty years, and it has always had a reputation for supplying interesting wines lower down the price spectrum. This might be one reason that even in all the years I regularly attended London Trade Tastings I don’t ever recall tasting their portfolio. However, they are not all aout the value end of the market by any means. They had some lovely wines on the table on Saturday, poured by the knowledgeable Antonia Macfarlane. As a matter of fact, two of the wines Moreno imports were among the bottles I grabbed from Cork & Cask after the tasting, along with that cocktail I mentioned, and a few beers.

Château Picoron “No Lemon No Melon” (Bordeaux, France)

Picoron is run by an Australian couple, Glenda and Frank Kalyk, who took over an estate making wine since 1570. The vines are all around the Saint-Emilion region but they are bottled as Vin de France. Glenda and Frank seem to have something of a thing for Merlot. They like palindromes too, it seems. Here, Merlot comes in every imaginable shape or form (red, pink, fizzy and, yes, white), all made from organically grown fruit, low intervention viticulture and winemaking, and with minimal sulphur added.

This cuvée is a white Merlot. Merlot gently pressed to make a white wine (think Pinot Noir in white Champagne cuvées) is something of a speciality in Switzerland’s Italian speaking Ticino region. I’ve had a few, and all but the most expensive have been disappointing for the money. None are remotely cheap.

This wine is very good. I love the fresh acidity and it is presumably the low sulphur that gives it a liveliness on the tongue with no fruit covered up. It’s a kind of mix of red fruits and some more exotic, peach and mango perhaps, going on. £22.

Château Picoron “Tattarrattat” Merlot (Bordeaux, France)

This is also very different. It has a “Merlot price tag” in terms of alcohol (13.5% is maybe even “restrained” for Merlot these days), but it is made by carbonic maceration. I think the white Merlot had a reasonable production run, but this cuvée was only 4,200 bottles. It’s wonderfully fruity, and despite that alcohol level, sipping it chilled from an ice bucket at the fair, worked really well. The alcohol was well disguised by the wine’s super fruit profile and more of that fresh acidity. Also £22.

Mosel Riesling 2023, Hermann Ludes (Mosel, Germany)

Julien Ludes calls this the quintessential breakfast wine. Just off-dry (10.5%) from the Thörnicher Schiesslay site, it is gently floral with a little r/s and some CO2 prickle. Easy drinking for a day like today, which I can tell you, here in East Lothian it feels significantly warmer than any day I remember last year. And just £16.

Carignan, Bosbrand (Wellington, South Africa)

This is a good example of a great value South African. It is a blend of 50% old vines plus young vine Caringnan grown around Wellington, just north of Paarl. The young vines doubtless give it a very fruity core, but there’s also a more mature-tasting savoury edge. Described as organic/biodynamic, and you might even detect a touch of oakiness from somewhere, but retailing at £15, this seems as remarkably good value as anything I’ve been drinking recently.

Meet the Maker – Jannet Iathallah from Poggiarello Winery (Gutturnio, Italy)

Poggiarello is in Gutturnio, one of those super famous DOCs of Northwest Italy, grouped with Oltrepò Pavese, Colli Tortonesi and Colli Piacentini, in the province of Piacenza, in the region of Emilia-Romagna. This is just the kind of region where you can find a lot of fairly commercial wine alongside some hidden gems.

Jannet

Of course, gems are what we have here. Cork & Cask sells a number of wines from Jannet’s (sic) range and I’m only highlighting three. The sparkling red was described by one person as “going to be your wine of the day”. I won’t nail my colours to any mast but I did buy a bottle and will hopefully drink it soon. These wines are also imported by Moreno.

La Malvagia is a white wine made from Malvasia di Candia grown biodynamically, but it is fermented with cultured yeasts. It’s clean and fruity with peach and orange on the nose, with citrus and balsamic notes on the palate. It is an entry level wine from a series called “I volti” (the faces). A nice intro to Poggiarello’s still wines. On sale for £24.

Ortrugo Frizzante is one of two sparkling wines, this being a bianco made from the Ortrugo grape variety, one usually having good acids coupled with higher alcohol than you may expect. These two sparklers (see also below) are made by the Charmat method, although I am learning that the old negatives about this method of production are very much outdated (though this is maybe not the time for a detailed look at how to improve the commercial method of tank-produced sparkling wine). This is a beguiling dry and grapey gentle sparkler (frizzante), very good in its own right, except that the red below is possibly even better. £20.

Gutturnio Frizzante Rosso is a blend of Barbera and Bonarda. Also Charmat Method (see above), but it is gorgeous (well, if you like wines like good red Lambrusco). It is dry, with super-concentrated dark and red fruits with a very attractive bitter, savoury edge to the finish. High quality cured meat platter coming up. £20. Decades ago, a bottle of “red sparkling burgundy” would often accompany us on a picnic. I guarantee this is better. Sappy and refreshing. In our house it would also go with Fish & Chips. Both wines are sealed spago-style, with a string-tied cork.

Roland Wines

Roland is one of a select group of wonderful small importers which came to prominence since I have been writing about predominantly natural wines. Founded by Hungarian-born Roland Szimeiszter, they initially specialised in artisan wines from Central and Eastern Europe. They now have a small list of twenty-one growers based in seven countries. These four wines are all very appealing, though you might already know the last one.

Crazy Lúd 2023, Oszkár Maurer (Subotica, Serbia)

Subotica is, along with Tisa, a wine region in Serbia’s far north. Vineyards are mostly planted on sandy soils. Here, we are right on Hungary’s southern border. This is a field blend of Welschriesling, Bakator, Piros Magyarka and Riesling, and is Maurer’s entry point in terms of price. Vines are bush trained and mechanisation just stretches to horse-power for soil preservation. 70% of the fruit was destemmed and direct-pressed but 30% was macerated on skins for two days. Ageing was around ten months in old oak and stainless steel. A tiny addition of sulphur was added at bottling. Despite a short maceration, it tastes like an “orange wine”, but yet with very refreshing, lifted, sour fruit. £25. If you want to try a Serbian wine, this is one to go for.

“Just Enjoy” 2023, Bott Frigyes (Garam Valley, Slovakia)

It’s nice to see a wider range of Slovakian wines now available in the UK. Bott Frigyes is one of the producers that has an increasing profile. They farm ten hectares of vines at 250 masl above the Garam River, on the slopes of the Muzsla Hills. The soils mix limestone and volcanic rock. Open vat fermentation of Tramini (sic) and Welschriesling takes around three weeks, before pressing off the skins into used oak for 8 months ageing on fine lees. Aromatic, with peach and pineapple plus something spicy. That is matched in a savoury edge to a creamy palate. Quite easy going now, though it may add complexity with age (not that it needs any). A natural wine. £30.

Kühlbar Zweigelt, Christina Netzl (Carnuntum, Austria)

This isn’t a DAC Carnuntum wine. It’s a natural wine labelled merely “Weinland Austria”. It is made at Göttesbrunn which is sort of southeast of Vienna, west of Bratislava and north of Burgenland’s Neusiedlersee. But you don’t really need to know all that if you are looking for a wine that fits the cliché of “summer in a glass”, because this is it. Red cherry fruit, violets on the nose, fresh and easy, 11% abv and just under £20. It even has a pretty label. Don’t let that put you more serious wine obsessives off taking this on a picnic. I mean, just look at the colour!

Fred XI, Strekov 1075 (Southern Slovakia)

Zsolt Sütö may be the best-known winemaker in Slovakia, at least among lovers of natural wine. He might also be Slovakia’s best-known drummer. Certainly, the most famous photo of him must be that in which he’s playing his drum kit out in the vines. He’s been making wine at Strekov since 2002. The varieties here in Version 11 of his iconic glugger are 30% Blauer Portugieser from 2020, 50% Alibernet from 2019, and 20% Dunaj 2020, all grown on clay-loam over limestone. I won’t enumerate on the complex and different fermentations and the mixed ageing regime.

This is grade-one glouglou stuff, unfiltered and zero added sulphur. It is easy to drink and refreshing, vibrant and electric, but it does have a negroni-like bitter twist and a touch of tannic texture on the finish. As Blauer Portugieser is a teinturier variety (red flesh), it has a deep and dark colour that belies its refreshing lightness of touch. Not a beginner’s wine, despite being easy going. Be open to it and it will reward you generously. £30.

Electric Spirit Company

In 2015, this company was responsible for opening the first distillery in Edinburgh’s “booze port”, Leith, in forty years. Leith no longer imports most of Scotland’s wine, but if you are thinking of spirit distillation (and bottling), then Edinburgh is buzzing. The company first and foremost makes a very highly regarded, and “awarded”, gin called Achroous (Sichuan pepper and fennel along with the juniper). Good flavours for a negroni.

This gin is one of the ingredients in their pre-blended Blood Orange Negroni, along with Valentian Vermouth (a super-premium Scottish-made vermouth) and Fusetti artisan bitters (made near Milan). These are blended with blood orange distillate made in-house from Sicilian fruit and a little “Scotch New Make”. The result is a very aromatic negroni, a good blend of citrus and bitterness. I’ve never found a pre-made negroni (my favourite cocktail) which has come close to the real thing. Sometimes negroni in a tin is acceptable – on the beach for example. But this bottled one is next level.

I have a bottle ready for some visitors next month. It just requires a day in the fridge, ice, and some slices of the best organic, unwaxed oranges I can find. £27 (Gospa Citrus oranges, by the way, if you can find them). If the temperature pushes above thirty degrees, then a small addition of tonic water can maybe spritz it up a little for a longer drink. At 22% it probably comes in a little lighter than the negroni’s I make, but then again, naval gin rations are dangerous when you’re in a heatwave.

James is justifiably proud of his creation

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Wines of the Loire Valley by Beverley Blanning MW (Book Review)

Posted on 26/06/2025 by dccrossley

As someone who has been a bit of a wine obsessive for a number of decades, I find that things, in this case a more than average interest in any particular wine region, come around in cycles. The world of wine is so wide that you can either focus on one or two types of wine, and then miss out big time, or you can follow my approach, which is unashamedly eclectic. Such is the case with the very large region, one of more than fifty appellations, which we group together as “The Loire”. For me, The Loire is now taking up more cellar space than it was a few years ago (now I see I am neglecting Tuscany, oh dear!).

My early interest in The Loire was as someone just out of university, well before I began the long road of wine study and qualifications. Back then, wine was a good enough reason to go on holiday somewhere, but it had to compete with other things. In this case, it was history (all those châteaux to visit) and cycling. I have never missed the chance to cycle in wine country, and I could almost write a book on all the wine regions with good cycling routes.

Generally, the cycling paths and routes along the rivers here, at least before we hit Sancerre, are relatively flat, although I do recall from the last time I ventured on a bike in the region, in Touraine, that even a fairly gentle climb post-lunch in Candes-St-Martin to the abbey of Fontevraud proved taxing. Wine, in that case a bottle of Baudry Rosé as I recall, and a hot day, made me experience what it’s like for a pro to crack on the Alp d’Huez, except I was climbing maybe less than 100 metres over perhaps a kilometre. Then I got a puncture.

Over the years I’ve visited the Loire a good number of times, both its more tourist-saturated vineyards between Saumur and Cheverny, Sancerre (when many fewer visitors went there) and also the upper reaches at Saint-Pourçain, where the Sioule joins the Allier. I’ve never stopped over in Muscadet, only travelled through. I think it’s fair to say I have now found the pendulum has swung back and whilst I have no immediate plans to visit the region any time soon, I am enamoured by its wines once more.

Chenin has always been a variety I love, more than Sancerre et al’s Sauvignon Blanc if I’m honest. When it comes to Cabernet, modern (ie ripe) Franc is delicious. The upper reaches, making those mountain wines, really appeals to me, and Muscadet is surely now one of French wine’s best kept secrets, no longer focused on the cheap stuff which the UK used to import in the 80s and 90s.

The Loire also has some gems yet to gain wider appreciation. These include varieties traditional in the region, making local specialities worth exploring. Grolleau (Gris and Noir), Pineau d’Aunis, Sacy (aka Tressallier), Gamay Saint-Romain, Côt (Malbec) and Pinot Gris (aka Malvoisie here) all make wines we should try if we can find them, alongside more ubiquitous grape varieties found elsewhere, although my list of obscurities above doesn’t count them all, merely the ones which most appeal to me.

I don’t drink a lot of Romorantin, nor Loire Chasselas, though I’m ready to be convinced. Folle Blanche (Gros Plant) gets tasted occasionally. I’d try more varietal Loire Negrette if I saw some (we did drink a bottle in a restaurant outside Vouvray once, of all places), and Menu Pineau, point the way please. Gamay from most of the Loire can be appealing, but especially that aforementioned Gamay Saint-Romain from the mountainous volcanic vineyards in the far east.

Finally, let’s not forget that The Loire was one of the catalyst regions for “natural wine” in France. A long history of unconventional viticulture here includes one of the first and most vocal advocates of biodynamics in Nicolas Joly at Coulée de Serrant. I am otherwise unsure exactly why so many natural winemakers were drawn to make wine in the region, especially in those parts that are damp and prone to fungal diseases, but it has attracted many, and their wines always get a very popular reception from the international wine buyers and professionals who flock to the Dive Bouteille Fair (in the tufa caves of Saumur this February just passed).

They are equally appreciated in the more fashionable establishments in London and throughout the UK. The much-missed London restaurant with a Loire focus, Green Man & French Horn (a narrow, former pub in St Martin’s Lane) is however no longer with us. It closed in 2015. I’m sure I’m not the only one to miss the excellent Loire-inspired food and Loire natural wine it offered diners for what seemed like a very short time.

So much for my indulgence in Loire nostalgia. Last year Master of Wine Beverley Blanning wrote a new book called Wines of the Loire Valley. Although it has taken this long for it to come to the top of my reading pile, it does seem well-timed. I have been actively buying a few Loire wines of late, and Beverley has confirmed that the wine merchant advice I have received has been sound. I’m sure this book will help me going forward. I should add that what you really want to read in an author bio of a book on this particular region is that he or she “spends much of her spare time in the Loire Valley”.

Although there have been a number of Loire books published since the first one I ever bought (Hubrecht Duijker’s The Wines of The Loire, Alsace and Champagne, Mitchell Beazley – 1982, I think, a fascinating work of its time), here we have a book which is very much up-to-date.

The book follows a pattern established by those in the same series, the “Infinite Ideas Classic Wine Library”, now under the Academie du Vin Library imprint. You will see from the photo of the contents that we begin with a little history, followed by geography/geology, wine styles (of which the Loire gives us more than most), appellations and grape varieties.

Then we move through the wines of France’s longest river and its tributaries, from the eastern vineyards closest to the sea, the Pays Nantais, through Anjou, Touraine, the so-called Central Loire (around Sancerre and Pouilly-sur-Loire), and finally a decent number of pages devoted to the vineyards and wines broadly grouped as “The Auvergne”, where we have four pockets of vineyards in Saint-Pourçain, Côtes d’Auvergne, Côte Roannaise and Côtes du Forez.

For each appellation Blanning not only covers all the factual information needed to understand the styles of wine being made, but she also covers what is happening today in terms of new developments etc. Plenty is happening, from the classification of certain sites in Anjou as Grand and Premier Cru (which will surely open the flodgates elsewhere in the region) to the renaissance of Cabernet Franc wines in Saumur-Champigny, Chinon and elsewhere. She doesn’t shy away from certain controversies, which occasionally arise from inter-appellation jealousies, and she also gives adequate space for the new and experimental. You certainly feel that where a minor grape variety is gaining a little bit of a profile it will be covered, even when production of such wines is still low.

Following on from each sub-region and appellation’s introduction, which can vary from a few pages to just a paragraph, we get treated to a profile of what the author considers the “notable producers” who make wine there. I would say that pretty much all of the important classical producers are profiled along with plenty whose wines I have never tried. There are some exciting names for me to lookout for.

François Chidaine is one of Montlouis’s leading lights

If I have one gripe about the book, I would say that these profiles show first of all good local knowledge, but secondly a little bias in taste…potentially. Very few of the “natural” wine producers whose wines we can buy quite easily in the UK get an individual profile. Some do, and some appear after the main profiles in a list of “other producers to try”. But many don’t. A good few of the winemakers who do get an extended entry do not appear to have UK distribution, though I would not suggest that this is important, far from it. It merely suggests that all you wine importers out there should have read a copy.

Natural wine as a whole does get some general coverage, but I feel the author is wary of those especially who eschew the addition of sulphur. I too was quite wary of some early Loire natural wines, say back in the 1990s and early 2000s, but I think that natural winemakers have over the ensuing decades learnt that 100% healthy grapes and very high standards of cleanliness in the winery are essential to lower the risk of spoilage, and I find faulty natural wine a rarity these days, albeit not completely eradicated.

I also find that many wine faults, including the infamous mouse taint, will in many cases dissipate over time. The old and conservative dictum that natural wine doesn’t age is not only wrong. In some cases, age can be its best friend. That, at least, is my own experience over the twenty-five-or-so years I have been open to low intervention wines.

However, I have dwelt over long on the one case where I perhaps diverge in views and taste from the author, although I might be wrong. In no place is she overtly negative about natural wines. Indeed, Blanning does highlight one area where the Loire has changed over its whole great length, in the increase in organic viticulture. As Beverley rightly points out, most of the so-called notable producers profiled along with their wines are working organically, and many have been doing so for a long time.

The pages have a smattering of photographs, some in colour. There are maps for every appellation and these are at the very least adequate. For a region like the Auvergne, you get a broader location map (see photo), but some smaller sub-regions get a more focused map, like that of the Quarts de Chaume Grand Cru and the Coteaux de Layon Premier Crus in Anjou. The book ends with a useful glossary and appendices on vintages (c. the past twenty years) and production figures, plus a bibliography.

If you want to reacquaint yourself with a region whose time has finally come, not least because warmer temperatures benefit a number of the Loire’s autochthonous grape varieties (despite unseasonal rain, hail and frost), along with a new generation of exciting vigneron(ne)s who often have obtained wide experience overseas before coming home to work the family vines, then this book will fulfil your need.

Coverage can reasonably be called comprehensive, a major achievement for such a large wine region, one which extends to around 500 kilometres west to east. This book is timely for Loire wines of all types, but especially those from artisan winemakers, which are definitely appearing in greater number on the shelves of independent retailers once more.

You will also read up-to-date information about the Loire Valley’s top producers, many whose estates have undergone a recent change in generation or, in a few cases, have completely new owners who have to live up to the legacy created by their famous predecessors (Domaine Huet in Vouvray is just one standout example among several).

If you want to read about many of the region’s more famous natural wine makers, then you might need to look elsewhere (as much as any books I would suggest UK readers look at the list from Les Caves de Pyrene, who import around forty-five natural wine stars from The Loire, some of whom you can read about in this work, others who you can’t).

But that only goes to show that such knowledge is easily obtained through a trusted wine merchant. What Beverley Blanning has written is essential reading for any Loire fanatic, or for any wine lover wanting to know more about this varied and now very exciting part of viticultural France. If you are interested in The Loire, you probably need this book.

I for one am so glad I now know about producers like Grange Saint-Sauveur, totally “media-shy” but making ethereal, fresh and balanced wines with minimal inputs in a remote corner of Anjou, along with others who, like Antoine and Alice Pouponneau at Saint-Sauveur (Antoine boasts a roster of work experience and consultancies most would envy) have greatly expanded my list of wines to seek out.

Wines of the Loire Valley by Beverley Blanning MW was published in 2024 by the Académie du Vin Library, priced £35. The publisher will often offer a discount code, but it is also currently available from a large multi-national vendor which you may know for just £26.87.

The Académie’s web site for direct sales can be found here:

http://www.academieduvinlibrary.com

The rear cover with its book publicity

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