tried & TESTED

Luminous Hills Pinot Noir LUX 2019

Luminous Hills in Oregon is the home estate of Seven of Hearts owner and winemaker Byron Dooley. The cool vintage of 2019 adds to the unshowy elegance of this Pinot, with its raspberry notes and distant wafts of incense. It expertly straddles the divide between Burgundian austerity and new world jam.

RRP: £40.50 ABV: 13.5% Vindependents (020 3488 4548) vindependents.co.uk

Alma Gemela Carignan 2019

This boutique winery in the north of Mendoza is run by Mariana Onofri and Adán Giangiulio, and ticks all the right boxes when it comes to sustainability, minimum intervention etc. In the glass it’s a pure, bright iteration of Carignan, easy-going, mediumbodied, clean and fresh, with plummy richness and a pleasing herbal lift.

RRP: £16.99 ABV: 14% Condor Wines (07715 671914) condorwines.co.uk

Graham Beck Yin Cap Classique 2016

Yin is a 60-40 Pinot-Chardonnay blend; Yang, sold in the same gift pack, reverses that polarity. For our money, Yin just edges it, with its pale pink colour making an initial visual statement that’s backed up on the palate. We picked up strawberries, grapefruit pith and a saline note, as well as creaminess from the Chardonnay.

RRP: £80 (two-pack) ABV: 12.5% Walker & Wodehouse (020 7449 1665) walkerwodehousewines.com

Moorooduc Estate Pinot Noir 2017

Using fruit from three vineyards in the same coolclimate subregion of the Mornington peninsula, Richard McIntyre ferments his wines with wild yeasts. There’s a tannic grip in evidence here but it’s part of the wine’s structure rather than anything jarring. Notes of liquorice, cloves and cherries add to the fun.

RRP: £25 ABV: 13% Vindependents (020 3488 4548) vindependents.co.uk

Jorge Navascues La Nevera 2017

Mariano Navascues is a renowned oenologist and wine writer, and his son Jorge is clearly a chip off the old block, attracting acclaim in his own right for his DO Cariñena wines from Aragon. This 60% Garnacha, 40% Carignan blend gestates for nine months in oak and emerges tight, dry and meaty, with fruit that is clearly perfectly ripe but doesn’t exude sweetness.

RRP: £15.99 ABV: 14.5% C&C Wines (020 3261 0927) carsoncarnevalewines.com

Lyme Bay Chardonnay 2020

Cool-climate Chardonnay is quietly becoming a trump card for the English wine industry, with the Crouch Valley in Essex (the source of the fruit in this example) a reliable source of ripe grapes. It’s a world away from what still English whites used to be: yes, there’s a zingy acidity but it’s moderated by tropical fruit, and the softening effects of French oak. Beautifully poised.

RRP: £23.99 ABV: 13% Lyme Bay Winery (01297 551355) lbwdrinks.co.uk

Klein Constantia Vin de Constance 2017

It was technically a drought year but winemakers say 2017 provided a “textbook” growing season with “exceptionally healthy” Muscat de Frontignan fruit. Needless to say, the wine is a joy, with its familiar but still exotic tangle of honey, flowers, peaches, citrus fruit and saffron. More prosaically, almond cake mix too.

RRP: £60 ABV: 14% Mentzendorff (020 7840 3601) mentzendorff.co.uk

De Bortoli Show Liqueur Muscat NV

After you’ve negotiated an evening meal with wines that are models of restraint and subtlety, it’s time to let rip with something as unashamedly exuberant as this. An explosion of sticky fruits, coffee and caramel, bolstered by oaky vanilla, it’s a wine that should be poured for Rishi Sunak before future duty negotations.

RRP: £15.99 ABV: 18% North South Wines (020 3871 9210) northsouthwines.co.uk

brightening up brighton terrace in walthamstow

orest Wines is the proud owner of a freshly-painted

Fmural which makes the shop a community focal point.

Owner Jana Postulkova explains: “There are a lot of murals around in Walthamstow and we worked with a local organisation, Wood Street Walls, in order to get ours. They work to connect artists with public spaces, so it’s not only for businesses but also private homeowners who might have an end of terrace, for example.

“We’ve always had this huge wall and over the years our customers have said it would be nice to have something there.” The appearance of new murals in the area always creates a buzz, so Postulkova was not surprised when the week-long installation attracted lots of customers. “Luckily we had really lovely weather that week,” she says, “and people were coming in and taking pictures and asking questions.

“We always feature the latest art arrival on our Instagram and it’s highly engaging content. The annual Art Trail has created a map of where all the murals are so people can walk or cycle round to see them all.”

Naturally, Postulkova had to seek permission from her landlord, but Wood Street Walls took care of everything else and introduced her to a few artists. She commissioned and collaborated with Albert Clegg, tag name AGWA, and she’s thrilled with the result.

“I feel that it’s a nice addition to the neighbourhood,” she says, “and a good way of investing back in our community.”

Rising Stars

Michael Huband, an English graduate with teaching experience, has proved to be the perfect fit for a role encompassing wine education for a rapidly expanding retailer.

Tim Jackson MW, head of marketing at Amathus, explains: “Michael initially started in our Soho store, supporting Sam who runs it. He very quickly got to grips with and engaged in the wine business. We have really seen his proactivity, delight and pleasure in getting involved in more and more things.”

Michael is now the assistant manager at the South Kensington store, which he recently helped to open, and he is thriving in other areas too.

“For the last six months he has been the voice of Amathus on all of our social media because all our central accounts are run by him,” says Tim. “Michael is a former English teacher and he is a really good writer so we have tapped into his historic talents in a really nice way. He’s really taken it to the next level in supporting the other stores in their social media activities.

“He has that combination of enthusiasm, initiative and intelligence to be able to support the business in multiple ways to drive things forward, beyond simply being a good seller of products in a shop.

“He’s showing us really fantastic ways to engage people coming into our stores and drive the business more broadly than just being an assistant manager. Once you have gems you nurture them and give them the opportunity to grow, and Michael has taken that with both hands.”

Michael swiftly realised that teaching in a secondary school was not for him, but he has retained his enthusiasm for education and has fully embraced his additional role as “head of grammar” at Amathus. “It never hurts to have someone to proofread everything,” he says.

“When I did my WSET Level 3 about four years ago I decided the education element of it was something I really enjoyed and would be well suited to. I was lucky in that within six months of joining Amathus the WSET course provision was on their radar. Unfortunately for senior management, that gave me licence to pester them about it!”

His “pestering” paid off and Michael says he is looking

Michael Huband

Amathus, London

forward to running the courses. “I know I will love the structuring and the pedagogy of it. I love managing our events because there is something so powerful about demystifying wine. I find it extremely satisfying to know that I am helping someone to enjoy something and empower them to find something that they really like.

“Wine can be exceptionally difficult to communicate, even if you have a bottle open in front of you. Often you have to have that slight sense of poetry, metaphor or idiom because taste and smell are very difficult to articulate and we are also talking about something that is very complex and can be emotionally loaded. So communicating this, on both the sales side and the educational side, is something that really appeals to me.”

And what are his particular favourites when it comes to wine? “I’m a little bit of a wine tart,” Michael laughs. “I like everything, although I have a particular love for Spanish wines. Godello in particular has a special place in my heart. Often I tend towards rich, fleshy whites, so South African Chenin has always been a favourite of mine too.”

Michael has no regrets when it comes to his career change. “The lovely thing about this industry is that you are talking about and dealing with something that you can really enjoy,” he says. “Starting work at Amathus could have been intimidating because these are very much spirits stores as well as wine stores, but there was this infectious enthusiasm and I was so interested in all the products they were offering.”

Michael wins a bottle of Grand Tokaj Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos 2013

If you’d like to nominate a Rising Star, email claire@winemerchantmag.com

It's time to Taste Rueda

Get behind this dynamic Spanish wine region and you could qualify for a £250 bursary and a useful POS pack

The Taste Rueda campaign is back and independents are invited to apply for a £250 bursary to support their own in-house promotion.

Between October 2021 and April 2022, wine retailers and on-trade outlets are encouraged to promote the wines from DO Rueda to their customers and there are free POS materials up for grabs.

Recent changes at DO Rueda involving new categories and varieties provide plenty of talking points for indies to share with their customers.

Rueda is Spain’s number one selling white wine and although the region might be synonymous with Verdejo, there are many different varieties and styles to be discovered. Winemakers have embraced the new classifications and are producing unique and exciting wines.

The rise in popularity of Rueda wines is reflected in the growth of the export markets, including the UK, where the region anticipates significant growth.

To take part, merchants can apply for a POS pack at the #tasterueda website, which is at www.tasterueda.uk.

The Rueda logo and hashtags #tasterueda @DORuedaUK @DORueda should be used in any promotion.

Merchants must increase their existing listings of Rueda to include at least another two wines from the region. The wines must have the official DO back label – they cannot be Verdejo from Castilla Leon or La Mancha.

Bursary requests should be accompanied with photos and proof of the store’s promotional activity.

Your at-a-glance guide to the Rueda modifications

In 2019 the Denomination of Origin Rueda ratified a series of modifications to its regulations and labelling instructions. Some of the most important changes are as follows: • The old classifications of Rueda Verdejo and Rueda Sauvignon have been merged into Rueda. It is the only category that will be in place for the still white wines 2019 vintage • A new category, Gran Vino de Rueda, has been created for wines made with grapes from vineyards older than 30 years, with a yield of less than 6,500kg per hectare and a 65% processing ratio. The production of these wines started in the 2020 season and bottles will feature a different back label

• Rueda Pálido, a fortified wine, aged under flor, that had disappeared from the DO’s classification system back in 2008, has been reintroduced • A new type of wine now exists, called Vino de Pueblo, which may show the municipality from which the grapes derive, provided that the percentage of grapes from that village is equal to or greater than 85% • Sparkling wines (Rueda Espomoso) may include the words “gran añada” (meaning excellent harvest), when the entire production process, from pressing to disgorging, exceeds 36 months. This reference must be followed by the year of the harvest • Viognier and Chardonnay are the two new white varieties now allowed and Syrah has also been introduced.

In association with