The Wine Merchant issue 121

An independent magazine for independent retailers

Issue 121, February 2023

Indies braced for chaos as recycling deadline nears

Scottish merchants pin hopes on a last-minute delay to Deposit Return Scheme as registration cut-off approaches

Merchants in Scotland are calling for a delay to the Deposit Return Scheme that they fear will be a disaster for their businesses.

Most independent wine retailers are hoping for a complete overhaul of the plans as they stand, which require all their suppliers to register with an agency called Circularity Scotland and ensure that barcodes appear on all bottles so that empties can be traced through the system.

The deadline for registration with the scheme – which will involve a 20p deposit on bottles – is this week (February 17), with the new regime coming into force on August 16.

But merchants say there is still not enough detail about how the scheme will operate in practice, and it seems clear that independent shops will be disadvantaged by comparison to the supermarkets.

Despite widespread opposition to the DRS plans from the trade, the Scottish government seemed determined to press on with the proposals as The Wine Merchant went to press. Merchants including Peter Wood of St Andrews Wine Co, who has been on a social media awareness campaign, believe that the scheme will restrict their ability to list wines from smaller producers.

Traders fear that there is little awareness of the DRS even among UK-based suppliers and have criticised the way the publicity

and consultation for the scheme has been handled.

The UK government has indicated that glass bottles will be excluded from its own

proposed scheme, but there is still the possibility that the Welsh government will follow Scotland’s example.

• Analysis – page 8.

Dog of the month: Fergus Theatre of Wine, London

The Wee Vinoteca has expanded beyond its Hitchin base with a second shop at Burwash Manor, near Cambridge, previously run by Cozzi & Boffa. Story on page 7.

Judges are lining up for the 2023 competition

Calling all importers big and small: make sure your wines are part of the only wine competition judged by independent retailers.

We are looking for exceptional wines that deserve their place on the shelves of independent merchants in the UK. Whether your wine is currently on sale in just one shop or in multiple locations, as long as it’s exclusive the independent trade it’s welcome to take part.

This year, as well as announcing the Top 100 list and our Highly Commended winners, we’re introducing a new category just for wines with a retail price of £15 or below. Wines for this part of the competition enter in the usual way – we’ll simply take price into consideration during the judging.

As always we will also have a dozen or so Trophy winners, and these will be unveiled on the floor of the London Wine Fair in May. The wines will also be available to taste on The Wine Merchant’s stand.

Our judges will be made up of a panel of about 40 independent merchants from across the UK. Many of them like to work through their wines with their teams, so actually the real number of judges is always in excess of 100.

This year’s panel is shaping up nicely, with the following businesses ready to blind taste their way through the best of the wines the UK trade has to offer.

Our judges confirmed so far Alastair and Teresa Wighton at Alteus Wines, Crowbrough; Kathryn Stead at Brigitte Bordeaux, Nottingham; Paul TateSmith at Derventio Wines, North Yorkshire; Sunny Hodge at Diogenes the Dog, London; Sarah Hall at Doddington Hall Farm, Lincolnshire; Julia Jenkins at Flagship Wines, St Albans; Mark Stephenson at Grape & Grain, Morpeth; Graeme Wood & Michael Jelley at Grape Minds, Oxford; Sam Howard at HarperWells, Norwich; Abbi and Dillon Moreno at Flora Fine Wines, London; Morgan Ward at Morgan Edwards, Knutsford; Jon Moore at Mumbles Fine Wines, Swansea; Charlie Jones at Native Vine, Bristol; Cameron McKeown at Oak N4, London; Ted Sandbach at Oxford Wine Company; Alex & Ruth Grahame at SugarBird Wines, Aberdeen; Fabien and Christine Voisin at Tell Me Wine, Monmouthshire; Anne Cleminson at The Cross Street Bottle Shop, Newton Abbot; Jim Dawson at The Jolly Vintner Too, Bournemouth; Michael Boniface at The No 2 Pound Street Cellar, Wendover; Iris Fabre at The Real Drinks Group, London; Rochelle Garbut at The Wine Club, Merseyside; Kieran O’Brien at Three Pillars Wine, Eccleshall; Ed Gillibrand at Tiny’s Tipple, Manchester; Tom I’Anson at Tom I’Anson Wines, Cheltenham; Liam Plowman at Wild & Lees, London; and Kirsty McEwan at WineKraft, Edinburgh.

Editor and Publisher: Graham Holter graham@winemerchantmag.com

Assistant Editor: Claire Harries claire@winemerchantmag.com

Advertising: Sarah Hunnisett sarah@winemerchantmag.com

Accounts: Naomi Young naomi@winemerchantmag.com

Second shop is five minutes away

The Stroud Wine Company is expanding, with a second site set to open later this month.

Richard and Laura Holloway launched the business in 2017 after relocating from Brighton, where they had worked at both Oddbins and Quaff.

The new shop at Griffin Mill may only be a five-minute drive away from their shop at Withy’s Yard, but each location has its own benefits.

“I suppose it’s quite unusual to have two shops within the same town,” says Laura. “But for us a lot of it’s about storage and parking as well. [Withy’s Yard] is in the town centre, which is pedestrianised, and is great, but there’s the demand for people to be able to just pull up outside as well.

“There’s an alleyway down to our shop and a busy café opposite, so you can imagine what it’s like getting a pallet delivery. We also spend a lot of time delivering so it’s also about being able to do that side of things more easily.”

The weekly farmers’ market also ensures footfall.

“The lovely thing about Griffin Mill,” continues Laura, “is it’s on the Golden Valley, which has just seen a lot of investment [as part of the Stroudwater canal regeneration]. It’s a really nice area that’s going to hopefully attract more tourists and there’s lots of other lovely businesses down near the canal, like Stroud Brewery and lots of cafés.”

• As part of Reserve Wines’ corporate rebrand. The Didsbury store is getting a facelift. The Reserve team have kept their customers updated on the refurbishment via social media promising “a snazzy new wine tasting room” when the site reopens later this month.

Calling time on 10 years in Brixton

Chix Chandaria has decided to close The Wine Parlour, the business she started with her partner Norman Comfort a decade ago.

Both branches in Brixton were shuttered in December, with Chandaria admitting that the business never fully recovered from the effects of Covid.

“We really did struggle the last 18 months,” she says, “but the last six months or so, from June to December, were just horrendous. In the end we just came to the conclusion that although we were trying really hard to bring back what we had, it just wasn’t going to ever get there. We were just throwing good money after bad.

“I’d been in Brixton for 10 years, and I

feel like I was one of the early people to do what I was doing. But I just felt like it was over.

“We haven’t just locked up and run away but we didn’t make any huge announcement because it was just all very hard. We’ve sort of done it slowly. We made our staff redundant, we obviously had to pay them and we’re still paying suppliers and things as much as we can.”

The couple have moved to Norwich where Chandaria is building her wine consultancy and tastings business. They plan to continue visiting wine regions in their camper van with their dog, Fino.

Megan ready to welcome customers to the Withy’s Yard shop

Phoenix will rise after eviction

Phoenix Wines in Cirencester is in the process of securing a new premises after being unceremoniously evicted from its shop on Castle Street before Christmas.

Owner Simon Griffiths says a change in managing agent resulted in an unnecessary dispute which took an unexpectedly dramatic turn.

“We spoke to the new agent two or three months before our lease was due to end in July and had a verbal agreement to continue as we were for another three years,” he says. “We shook hands and thought that was the job done. But when they sent the lease through, I spotted that a very important clause had gone missing.”

Historically, the landlord had acknowledged there was a substantial damp patch in the shop which would cost an estimated £15,000 to repair. The missing clause stated that, although the landlord wasn’t going to address the problem, they wouldn’t hold the tenant responsible for it either.

While Griffiths tried to negotiate the reinstatement of the clause, he was switched to a monthly rolling lease. He says: “In mid-November they told us if we didn’t agree to the lease in its current form they would kick us out at the end of the month when we were all paid up. In the Landlords & Tenants Act, they were perfectly within their entitlement to do so but I thought no landlord would be stupid enough to kick out paying tenants in the current climate, and I’d also thought no landlord would be that vindictive. I called his bluff, but apparently he wasn’t bluffing after all.”

On the first day of December, staff arrived for work at Phoenix Wines to discover repossession notices and signs

from the bailiff.

“Thankfully, I’ve got a pub around the corner as well,” Griffiths says, “so we did a little bit of a pop-up shop in there. We managed to do about £3,000 worth of sales, but normally in December we’d be looking to do £40,000-£50,000. I’ve got the warehouse, but that is now full of £70,000 worth of stock that was bought in ready for Christmas.

“We’ve got the website back up and running, but because of the way everything had to just come straight out of the shop and get shoved in the warehouse, I’ve made it very limited because we didn’t want to have someone ordering something and then me not being able to find it among all of the boxes.”

Disarming a robber

It may sometimes seem that the entire world is gunning for the independent wine trade. Ironically, this may no longer be true of armed robbers.

The villain who pointed his weapon at staff at Le Cellier de Vinalgros, a wine shop in Brussels, was about to make off with €110 in takings when manager Michael Thill decided to appeal to his better nature.

“We explained to him that the situation of small shopkeepers was very dire,” Thill explains. “That after having paid all our charges, salaries, taxes and other expenses, we had nothing left.

“We also explained to him that there was no more cash in circulation, because of the successive crises and because the few people who spend money with us paid by card.”

The robber told the team they could keep the money, and asked for help leaving the store.

“He felt sorry for us and the sad reality we are in today,” said Thill – who suggested that other small-time crooks should consider a change of career due to the dire straits of their usual victims.

Lambert’s acid burn

Birmingham indie closes retail space

Wine Freedom, owned by Sam Olive and Taylor Meanwell, closed at the end of November.

The shop and bar, situated in a development that was part of the former Bird’s Custard factory in Digbeth, originally opened in 2020. The company will continue to operate as a wholesaler.

The reality of Scotland’s deposit return scheme has been sinking in fast among suppliers, who fear a trade barrier with the rest of the UK if the proposals go ahead in their current form. With the registration deadline passing this week, the time for polite diplomacy is drawing to a close. Daniel Lambert, who says he will be forced to stop selling in Scotland, has accused the Scottish government of being “on acid” when it drew up the plans.

Not a fan, then?

An American tasted Buckfast for the first time and reviewed it on Reddit. “Almost like a dead animal in a bird’s nest,” he declared. “Akin to being under a bridge on one’s knees orally pleasing a vagrant while simultaneously drinking liquified meth through a dirty rag ... the Vatican needs to send an exorcist over to Buckfast Abbey.”

Wine Freedom opened in 2020

Indies battening down the hatches

Faced with rising costs, several independents are cutting their cloth accordingly.

The Old Garage Wine Shop & Deli in Cornwall has consolidated by closing its second site in Nansledan to concentrate on the original flagship store in Roseland.

Owner Lucy Chenoweth, who started the business in 2019, is taking the added step of closing The Old Garage for a “month or so”, just to “wait out the quiet Cornish winter”. She will use the time to “revamp and get some energy back”.

Tim Watson, owner of The Grape to Glass Wine Shop & Tasting Room in Rhos-on-Sea, north Wales, was running two premises, but at the end of January decided to focus on just the one.

“At the moment, having two lots of overheads and two rotas, and with the demands of my children, I just want to get a little bit more balanced,” he says. “When things stabilise financially outside in the normal world, we might possibly relocate.”

As the owner of the premises he has just vacated, Watson says there are several businesses who are interested in leasing it, which he says will help out financially too.

In Cheltenham, David Dodd of Tivoli Wines has weighed up his options and cut down on hospitality, resulting in the temporary closure of The Wine Library on the first floor.

“I fully expect to reopen The Wine Library in the autumn,” says Dodd, “and we all get to have our evenings back over the summer, which the team deserve, having worked relentlessly since the beginning of 2020.

“We’re only just starting to see price rises come through on everything from website hosting (10%) to wastage fees (13%), so I thought it prudent to close the

room during our quieter months, assess consumer behaviour once the inevitable wine price increase hits, and examine the impact of increased back-of-house costs on the profit and loss,” he adds.

Wine shop opens next to restaurant

Jane and Steve Turner launched their eponymous wine shop in November in Colne, Lancashire.

Turners is next door to the couple’s restaurant, Tubbs of Colne, which they established in the town six years ago.

Jane says this latest development has brought the couple full circle. “We’ve spent a lot of time evolving,” she says. “We originally started in Barrowford as a wine shop and we did French and local cheeses. But Booths opened in our small village and we had to quickly develop from being just a retail shop.

“When we moved to Colne we became a full restaurant and bar, but now it feels the right time to have a wine shop and deli again. We’ve got the restaurant to a point where the manager and head chef are more than capable of running the business themselves, and over the period of the next five years they will own 50% of the business between them. If at that point they want to buy us out, they can.”

The premises adjacent to the restaurant came on the market, and the Turners decided to take the plunge despite the

economic climate. The top floor is being run as an Airbnb.

Jane says: “The offering will be, come and stay, you can get a nice cheese platter in your fridge when you arrive, a bottle of Champagne from the shop downstairs as well as local charcuterie, or you can just nip in the restaurant next door for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It all works really well together.”

The Turners buy from Liberty Wines and Thorman Hunt. “The wines are all great quality and we know we have the best wines that we have tasted from that region at that price point,” says Jane.

“From our experience in the on and offtrade over the past 12 years we know that, rather than having 10 different Malbecs, for example, we can say ‘this is the best one’, and it’s the same with the deli items.

“We get our charcuterie from Porcus: it’s a rare breed pig farm just over the hill in Todmorden. We’ve used them for years and we will get all their charcuterie and that’s the only one we’ll stock.”

Most of the wine sold is in the £10 to £15 range, which Jane says is the magic number for them. “Customers are going to supermarkets and probably spending about 10 quid on a bottle of wine that’s nowhere near as good, so to spend an extra couple of quid and get something so much better – our customers immediately notice the difference.”

Customers explore the Turners shop

Lucy Chenoweth: waiting out the winter

Vinoteca is less wee than before

Duncan Gammie at The Wee Vinoteca in Hitchin opened a second shop, in Burwash Manor, west of Cambridge, last month.

“It’s something we’ve always wanted to do,” he explains, “but I guess I’ve always been looking for an opportunity that wasn’t super, super scary.”

Along with his wife, Hannah, Gammie launched the business in 2018.

“I’ve always been aware that the second site can be quite a difficult proposition,” he says. “A lot of people I’ve spoken to in the hospitality world say that going from two to three or three to four is actually easier, in a way, because you kind of know what you’re doing – the pattern is there.”

This particular non-scary opportunity appeared in the shape of an existing wine business in a recently refurbished premises sitting pretty in a rural but busy location.

After two decades of trading, Jason Cozzi at Cozzi & Boffa was looking to retire. Gammie and Cozzi shared the same account manager at Hallgarten, who, as party to both their plans, made the initial introduction.

Gammie says: “It’s reassuring to know that there’s been a successful merchant here for 22 years. I’ve personally visited lots of these lovely converted farm places, in more rural locations, and it’s good to know that a wine business has already done really well here.

“My agreement with Jason was more of a purchasing of the assets and a little bit of goodwill and a handover in that respect. The rest of it was just establishing a new lease with the landlord. There’s been a nice element of fluidity.”

The Burwash Manor site is about a 40-minute drive from the Hitchin shop, and Gammie lives more or less midway

between the two.

“I didn’t want to be too close to our current business,” he says. “Burwash has established itself as a bit of a destination. So I’m expecting to have a totally new set of customers. However, I was in the shop doing a bit of a handover and one of our customers from Hitchin happened to pop in. So there might be a little bit of crossover but generally we’re going to be reaching out to a totally new set of people.

“The location is kind of cool. It’s an old converted dovecote. There’s two levels, and on the top level there are these beautiful, classic, wooden beamed ceilings and this big table for us do lots of events around, which is quite exciting. It’s actually smaller than our shop in Hitchin – it doesn’t have a big footprint at all, which I guess fits in very nicely with our USP of being that smaller, more intimate space.”

Exchange rate comments were correct

I read the letter from Paul Chambers from Lake District Drinks (A Devalued Pound, The Wine Merchant, August 2022).

As a French man living in the UK for more than 20 years, I follow the pound/euro exchange rate on a daily basis, for personal and business reasons.

My description of exchange rates, (How Much is Brexit Costing, The Wine Merchant, July 2022) was correct if we’re talking about the situation immediately pre and post Brexit. Many graphs can be found online to prove this.

Unless you want to go back to 2015, when yes, indeed we did hit €1.40. But I don’t believe, when I was asked the question, the journalist wanted us to go back as far as six years.

Being part of a destination site brings conveniences such as parking and a large outside space dedicated to various events at Burwash Manor Barns throughout the year.

“We would love to be doing a bit more with the events space,” says Gammie. “There’s a wedding marquee and a picnic area, and we’ve already discussed the possibility with the landlord of having our annual Christmas wine fair here.”

There are lots of ways of interpreting and analysing exchange rate data and fluctuations. Sometimes it’s a matter of opinion. But I would like to put the record straight about my response to a very specific question, which was entirely accurate.

Yannick Loué, Le Vignoble, Plymouth, Bath and Bristol

• Editor’s note: Happy to correct the record and apologies if Yannick’s position was allowed to be misrepresented.

Duncan Gammie at the Hitchin branch

The 20p calamity Scots merchants warn of existential threat from recycling plans

The real kicker is that “all drinks producers will have to register with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, and producers will have to make sure their products can be identified as part of the scheme by barcode or specific labelling”.

By Sarah McCleery

You could make the whole debacle into a Netflix documentary,” says one Scottish indie when asked to sum up the increasingly contentious issue of the Deposit Return Scheme.

Conversations with retailers, wholesalers and importers north and south of the border make one thing very clear. Though fully supportive of an effective and sustainable recycling scheme, they believe a DRS which includes glass is very likely to fail.

“With the exception of alcohol statecontrolled countries like Sweden, no country in the world includes glass as part of their DRS. It is simply unworkable,” says Peter Wood of St Andrews Wine Company. It is a view that has been long supported by the Wine & Spirit Trade Association, which has argued that the best way to increase glass recycling rates is to improve kerbside collection.

The UK government recently said it would not include glass in its delayed DRS rollout in England and Wales, though the Welsh Assembly may yet choose to go its own way. WSTA chief executive Miles Beale

says: “It is disappointing that not all UK governments share this same evidencebased approach to policy making. The consequence of Scotland and Wales taking different approaches will make it harder for business to trade across the UK.”

Under Scotland’s DRS regulations, wine retailers will need to meet several obligations. They don’t sound too horrendous to begin with: operating a return point; charging a 20p deposit and making clear the container is part of the scheme; and displaying the deposit value separately from the product price.

Putting barcodes on wine bottle labels is not industry standard, so this new requirement presents big challenges for indies and their suppliers. The published deadline for registering products is February 17. However, in a conference call with Circularity Scotland (CSL), the public agency tasked with administering the scheme, Peter Wood, Daniel Lambert and Sip Wines were told that producers only need to have registered themselves, and just one product, by this date. The portal would then remain open for additions to be made any time before the scheme comes into full force on August 16.

The barcode barrier

This muddled communication is the start of the barcode headache.

Will de Burgh, of de Burgh Wine

Merchants in Dalkeith, feels that “the major sticking point for small wine merchants is around barcodes”.

He adds: “So many wines don’t have them and without them, they cannot be registered and thus sold in Scotland after August 16. This is going to have a huge impact on the availability on smallerproduction wines in Scotland.”

Echoing these views south of the border is Laurie Webster of Argentinian specialist Ucopia Wines. Despite all of Webster’s wines being barcoded, he has concerns. “I have just become aware of DRS but the scenarios running through my head are worrying,” he says.

“I supply a variety of different clients in Scotland: larger wholesalers, who effectively have exclusivity on a small number of products; and a large number of brilliant, smaller clients who take small volumes of a broad range of wines.

“It seems the wholesalers will register the wines they deal with, but what will

“So many wines don’t have barcodes and without them, they cannot be registered and thus sold in Scotland after August 16. This will have a huge impact on smaller-production wines”

Deposit Return Scheme

happen if we run out of stock? If they have to find an alternative from a small pool of already registered wines, their point of difference is diminished. It seems that Scottish consumers will be penalised by having less choice.”

In St Andrews, Wood is blunt. “If DRS goes ahead in its current format, I face losing half of my stock, as these wines don’t have barcodes,” he says.

The frustration felt by Wood and other independents is exacerbated by a lack of awareness among suppliers. “The larger outfits seem to be on it, but I emailed all of my smaller suppliers to explain the scheme as best I could in December last year. I told them they needed to get ready. The number of people who knew absolutely nothing about it was shocking. I emailed again in the new year.” He adds: “Now, if a supplier calls me to tell me about a great new wine, my first response isn’t ‘great, what is it?’, it’s ‘does it have a barcode?’”

Suppliers are in the dark

The lack of knowledge about Scotland’s DRS is striking. With the registration deadline looming large, a significant number of indies had no comment to make because they simply knew nothing – or very little – about the new regime.

There are gripes aplenty surrounding the poor communication from CSL about the scheme. Beyond the barcode challenges, merchants are fretting about an array of still unresolved issues.

As de Burgh says: “We are a few weeks away from the deadline for registering and there are still so many grey areas that CSL doesn’t have answers for.

“Responses [include] the ridiculous ‘do you have suggestions or solutions?’

We will be fully compliant by the date of registration, except for un-barcoded stock. We are taking legal advice about signing

a contract with CSL, which is another major sticking point. You have to worry when the government is asking you to sign legal documents in order to do business, especially when Clause 8.5 leaves you financially liable for costs, even if the scheme does not go ahead.”

Desperately seeking a delay

Other pressing matters include a decision on whether the 20p deposit will or will not be subject to VAT. There is a myriad of other worries that indies say haven’t been addressed: fraud, insurance and health and safety issues surrounding waste management, and the reliability of the collection machines. There is widespread concern that booze trips to the north of

England, where things will be cheaper (and the range possibly wider), will lead to lost sales.

Speaking to indies and wholesalers about DRS, you can almost hear the hair being pulled. They are unanimous in their support of recycling, and are weary and wary of suggestions that they aren’t.

Wood says: “We want to be in a room with the legislators so we can make ourselves heard. The failure to consult properly in the first place is what’s caused all of these problems.

“We desperately need a delay so we can all work together to find a workable solution, especially if the government is determined to retain glass as part of the scheme.”

Indies on the perils and impracticalities of DRS

“England isn’t introducing a DRS scheme yet. What’s to stop an enterprising type in the north of England collecting hundreds or even thousands of bottles, and bringing them to Scotland – to a shop like mine – and claiming 20p on every bottle? £20 for every 100 bottles. A decent return when your raw material costs you nothing!”

Euan McNicoll McNicoll & Cairnie, Dundee

“DRS is even more difficult here in Orkney, and no doubt in other remote and island communities too. As best as I can understand what is proposed, I can see it working for

supermarkets, and big-box retailers, where economies of scale will make it worth someone’s time to collect and process the returned receptacles. How it might work on, say, the island of Sanday, where it would take a lorry all day to get there and back on a ferry, to collect a few dozen bottles from the island shop, is beyond me.

“I may regret it, but I am more or less ignoring the scheme, in the expectation that it will be delayed or sufficiently modified before launch to make it work in Orkney and similar places.”

Duncan McLean Kirkness & Gorie, Kirkwall, Orkney

Peter Wood of St Andrews Wine Company

Stop it.

ISSUED BY THE WINE MARKETING BOARD

NOT YOU AGAIN!

customers we could do without

… It’s a bit annoying, actually, because two of the six bottles I bought from you last time smashed all over our lovely front steps, glass everywhere and you can still see the purple stain despite all this rain … that box might as well have been made of paper, it was absolutely useless … well, no, it was one that I’d brought in myself but maybe the assistant could have warned me … then on one of the unbroken bottles I cut my finger open on the metal foil … you would not believe the quantity of blood and it’s quite ruined a favourite linen dress … incidentally I wonder if anyone had been shaking up the Champagne bottles, maybe to get rid of the sediment? I only ask because the cork came flying out with so much violence that our dear old Scottie bolted into the garden and almost drowned in the fishpond … these blasted screwcaps are a nuisance, aren’t they – I had the misfortune of treading on one the other day in stockinged feet, jagged side up – agony! – and I haven’t been able to do my morning 2k ever since … by the way, are these synthetic floor tiles?

I swear I just got an electric shock as I moved that chair out of the way … it is rather a trip hazard …

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ANAGRAM TIME

Congratulations to the five Wine Merchant reader survey respondents whose names were drawn at random and who each win a Coravin, courtesy of our partner Hatch Mansfield.

Can you unscramble these New Zealand wine regions? If so, you win a London City Bond anklet

Peter Fawcett, Field & Fawcett, York

1. Brighton Armour

2. Colon Regatta

3. Y’Brother Can’t Run

Anthony Borges, The Wine Centre, Great Horkesley, Essex

4. Ask Abe Why

5. Rub Hologram

Zoran Ristanovic, City Wine Collection, London

Daniel Grigg , Museum Wines, Dorset Riaz Syed, Stonewines, London

43. Maggie Tinzell-Blauer

Worried about sulphites in your wine?

They are absolutely fine.

Northabout

My customers’ attitude matches the latitude when it comes to alcohol levels

to give themselves a treat often go for Amarone or Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Nothing wrong with that, but they’re hardly breakfast wines. And on top of this tendency there’s Orkney’s enormous thirst for port. The newspaper pundits filled columns pre-Christmas with recommendations for turkey, goose and nut roast. It was claret this, Burgundy that. They should have added a paragraph at the bottom saying, “For anyone north of the Pentland Firth, just find a good LBV”.

It would make an interesting subject for a thesis at Plumpton or Montpellier: Correlation Between Preferred ABV and Latitude of Drinker. Here in Orkney we’re 59˚ north, and our customers prefer a similarly elevated level of alcohol.

Yesterday I was wrapping a bottle of Pinea 17 Ribera del Duero and noticed its label stated an ABV of 15%. It was a repeat purchase. The customer hadn’t originally sought out this wine specifically, but they had asked me to recommend something “big and bold and fruity, you know, like a good old-fashioned Shiraz”. It seemed they liked my recommendation and came back for more.

For many years ripe and oaky Shiraz from Barossa Valley and other warm Australian areas was my top selling red style. Then customers’ enthusiasm shifted – individually, but all at once, like a murmuration of thirsty starlings – towards ripe and oaky Malbec. Now I sense a twitching of the tailfeathers around Malbec, and a movement towards other

reds. The allegiance to ripeness and oak, however, remains strong.

Some of the movement is towards Spain. Initially I thought customers were simply reaching out from the perennially popular Rioja into other Spanish regions, and there may be something in that. But they seem to be going particularly for things like Ribera del Duero, and Garnacha from Campo de Borja – Borsao’s Tres Picos, for instance, which comes in at an unmissable 15.5% in the current vintage. Interesting 13 percenters like Bobal from Utiel Requena or Mencía from Monterrei linger on the shelf.

Away from Spain, people who want

We all know that climate change is tending to push up alcohol levels. But there are still plenty of 12.5% and 13.5% bottles out there, and in here, on our shelves. I’m sure this magazine’s readers often reach for Mosel Riesling or Chiroubles, as I do. But that doesn’t suite the average Orcadian, that much is clear to me.

What’s less clear is why. It’s not a desire for drunken oblivion: these are careful people making considered choices. The Pinea 17 costs over £50, and there are a lot more economical ways to accumulate units. So what is it? Maybe the weather. We’re at the cold end of the country here, and at this time of year it’s also the dark end of the country: the north of Scotland is dipdyed in mirk from 3pm to 9am. Assertive, warming wines are a suitable counterblast to the climate.

My best guess, however, is food related. These islands are one of the finest beefproducing areas of the UK. Since the 1850s our prosperity has been based on the export of beef cattle. Although other industries such as oil, renewable energy and tourism are now equally important, beef is still a badge of identity, and most people eat it in great quantities.

For those in search of a lighter option, there’s seaweed-eating, rare-breed mutton from the islands of North Ronaldsay and Auskerry. What are you going to drink with that? Nothing from the Rheingau! Roll out the Ribera …

Duncan McLean is proprietor of Kirkness & Gorie, Kirkwall

Maybe it’s the weather ... assertive, warming wines are a suitable counterblast to the climate

Rising Stars

Being born into a family synonymous with the wine trade doesn’t automatically guarantee you a job. There are skills to be learned, knowledge gained and there has to be that essential spark that hard graft cannot extinguish: a genuine love of wine.

Dillon Moreno graduated from the University of Leeds six years ago just as his mum, Abbi, was in the process of selling the family business to Boutinot. “He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do and it was Boutinot that suggested he start working in the shop,” recalls Abbi. “It was supposed to be a bit of a stopgap for him, but they sent him on a couple of WSET courses and he’s just gone from strength to strength.

“When we sold Moreno Wines, we retained the shop because my father owns the building. I decided, rather than having just a wine shop, to add cheese and charcuterie; a wine and cocktail bar. Dillon runs it now and sources new wines and spirits for us. He has done an amazing job. In the last five years he’s just blossomed. He has brought a lot of new customers, lots of them who have said they’d love it if he did a podcast – so I think we might start one.”

She adds: “A lot of people feel intimidated by the wine industry. So having that atmosphere where people feel that they can put their hand up and ask a question without feeling silly is really important. And that’s something I’m really proud that Dillon has achieved. As a 26-year-old Londoner, he has a diverse group of friends both culturally and class-wise as well. He’s really incorporated that into our shop and he makes people feel comfortable talking about wine.”

Dillon admits that although wine was inevitably discussed and enjoyed in his family, it wasn’t until he started working with Abbi that he became interested. “It was something I grew up around,” he says, “but like all 15-year-olds, I wasn’t sitting around talking about Bordeaux, I was more into heavy metal music and going out on the weekends. During the 18 months I worked at Boutinot, I just became more invested in it. Then working directly with my mum really opened my eyes. Seeing lines from the 1960s that my great-grandfather would have purchased is quite humbling and something I really, really enjoy, and I try not to take that connection for granted.”

Dillon Moreno

Flora Fine Wines

Maida Vale, London

Thanks to Brexit-related issues, Abbi has put a stop to direct importing for now, but Dillon hopes they will be able to resume in the future. “Going out and meeting wineries and importing their product, that is so very important,” he says. “It’s what my family has always done, it’s where we come from, so absolutely without question I would love to be doing that again.”

For now Dillon is content to grow the business by adding lines he can source from within the UK. He’s been busy expanding the spirits range and his love of whisky has led to a deal with Master of Malt and some in-store whisky tastings.

“While I do feel very confident in my wine knowledge, particularly Spanish wines, my mum has so much experience and I trust her opinions on a lot of those matters,” says Dillon. “But when it comes to whiskies and gins, I’ve sort of taken over that side of things. I think me and my mum have a very unique dynamic, we’re very open with each other. As I always say, at the end of the day we do we do sell booze for a living, and this trade is just great fun.”

Dillon wins a bottle of Esk Valley The Hillside Malbec/Cabernet Franc/Merlot

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

40: Fantastical story telling Alix Chidley-Uttley Tanners, Shrewsbury

In a nutshell: Under the banner Tanners Talks, Alix and the team run a variety of wine events that lean into a love of local folklore and superstitions. From spooky to unashamedly kooky, there are tours, talks, visiting historians and actors, Halloween frights, Christmas carols and Dickensian tableaux. Depending on the event, tickets range from £18 to £32.

How did this all start?

“We had been doing the tours of the building, sort of unofficially, for quite a long time, so I asked James [Tanner] if we could make it more formal and efficient by ticketing them.

“One of the main things I’m always asked is ‘how old is the building?’ And then the second question is ‘have you got any ghosts?’ The Tanners building is fantastic and the history of the area so rich, so I thought there must be scope there to do a talk. We did the first one last January, which was a history of hauntings, and then we did a few similar ones and they’ve been so popular.

“Wine and storytelling have a natural synergy and Shropshire is a place that still has an interest in the many local legends and folklore.”

Tell us more about your most recent talk: Myths, Magic & Concealed Cats with historian Brian Hoggard.

“Brian is fascinating. His talk was an insight into what our ancestors did to

protect themselves and their homes from otherworldly mishaps. Brian is everything you’d expect from someone who makes a living talking about ghosts. He is very articulate, very softly spoken and looks like he should be on Time Team. The ticket included a glass of fizz on arrival, a buffet supper and a glass of wine. Brian’s presentation was about an hour long and then there was a Q&A.”

How scary is the Halloween event?

“Our building was at one time an old coaching inn so I thought it would be fun to have that as our setting. We dimmed all the lights and played old music. We had all these costumes and we took the customers around to different parts of the building in character. We’d set up the boardroom with fake candles and it looked really spooky. We had a murderous clerk,

a bit of a Scrooge-type character, and we did a take on a scene from Woman in Black with someone in a rocking chair. When I led them out of the room, I asked them to wait while I went down the stairs a little way and left them to discover one of the girls hiding around the corner dressed as a Victorian child sitting in the dark recounting nursery rhymes. People were jumping out of their skins and they just loved it.”

Do these tours and talks attract completely different customers from your more traditional guided wine tastings?

“It’s always a completely mixed bag. We have a customer who always comes to our en-primeur tastings and Bordeaux and brandy masterclasses, and it really surprised me when he bought 15 tickets for our Christmas carol evening. I genuinely didn’t think it would be his kind of thing. I’d say we have a lot of customers who attend our more serious tastings and often come to the more obscure things too. Whether that’s part of the eccentricity of Shropshire or just people in general, I don’t know.

“I think that variety is key and people don’t know what they enjoy until they go to it. Likewise, we always say that about our masterclasses; don’t think because you don’t know much about Burgundy that you can’t come. That’s the whole point: come and learn something.”

Alix wins a WBC gift box containing some premium drinks and a box of chocolates.

Tell us about a bright idea that’s worked for you and you too could win a prize. Email claire@winemerchantmag.com

A natural setting for spooky stories

DAVID PERRY

Irregular Thoughts

It’s

It is getting proper cold now and that’s always a dilemma. How can I keep myself from freezing without warming the whole shop?

I have a little heater behind the counter and a collection of heavy-duty thermals. I sometimes hear, “It’s OK for you, but what about us customers?” I have to explain that, to be honest, I’m more concerned about the wine, especially the top-end white Burgundy. And anyway the little heater does no more than prevent serious frostbite. With decent boots and thermal socks, I haven’t had frostbite for a few years now.

In a previous life I worked for a Midlands Co-op society before the central buying group formed. Sometimes I’d have a run around the smaller shops in Birmingham. They had the odd bottle of Chablis and because it was relatively expensive it was on the top shelf.

Now here’s the issue. When it was cold they would have heaters on and a pillow of hot air would settle on the ceiling. They’d turn the heaters off at night and the shop would plunge to near zero. Anyone who understands the estufagem process in Madeira will guess the consequences.

I would take the brown wine off the shelf and explain that it was not saleable. I’d return a while later and find it back on sale because, I learned, reduced waste was a Key Performance Indicator. I started taking a big black marker pen with me and became quite unpopular.

I was reminded of this a while back when

I saw a newspaper article on a reasonably new but sufficiently distant indie wine shop. It was coming up to Christmas and they had a picture of their roaring wood burner surrounded by wooden boxes of top-end wines. The caption read something like “come and warm yourself by our fire while browsing our range”. I have to confess I was envious of the nice, toasty working conditions but decided to maintain the cellar-like chill in my shop.

We stock Flor de Vetus Verdejo (Liberty Wines) which has a clever label. It is white with a white butterfly. The butterfly is thermo-chromatic and goes blue when it is cool enough to drink. In the shop it is generally blue from September through until the following April. That’s quite handy when someone inevitably asks if we have anything chilled: everything is chilled, including me! And I can prove it. That particular wine also alerted me to the fact that our fridge at home was not working properly.

One particularity harsh winter, I remember a lady customer looking at the Champagne and asking if we had any in a chiller. She had just stepped around a small snow drift to get to the cleared pavement outside the shop. I explained it was probably as cold as anyone would want it. “Well I don’t know,” she replied. “I’m wearing gloves.”

I get that most wines bought in our shops are for immediate consumption, but just how cold do you need it to be? In the good old days white would be served at cellar temperature, not half frozen, and red at room temperature – that’s the temperature of a big room with no central heating or double glazing, so not warm at all. Here’s a confession, though: when it gets really cold and I need to plunge myself into a steaming hot bath when I get home, I take the red wine with me.

Because we are on the shady side of the street we never get direct sunshine on the front window. The south-facing back wall is baked outside but the two feet of stone prevents any warming of the store room. This means that even in the height of the summer the shop remains fairly cool. It also means I can justify not having a chiller. I don’t want to have a chiller either because it takes up a lot of space, it is expensive to run and it pumps out a lot of heat which I would need to get rid of with air conditioning. So I don’t have a chiller. My electricity bill this month? £18.53.

In the words of Elsa, the Ice Queen: “Cold never bothered me anyway.”

time to dig out the thermals. But my wines are perfectly happy in the cold

David Perry is the owner of Shaftesbury Wines in Dorset

In the good old days white wine would be served at cellar temperature, not half frozen

A customer queues patiently

Pflüger Cuvée Biodynamite Riesling/Gewürztraminer 2021

Alexander Pflüger’s biodynamic Pfalz Rieslings are noted for their purity and elegance so you might wonder what a 20% Gewürz component would bring to the party. The answer is a subtle but definitely discernible richness, rounding off some of the Riesling’s angles and adding an exotic note to a great wine.

RRP: £20 ABV: 12%

Winetraders (01993 882440) winetradersuk.co.uk

Bedoba Saperavi 2019

The vinification process here is complex, with grapes from Georgia’s eastern border with Azerbaijan journeying through qvevri, stainless steel, barrels and vats before regrouping in bottle for a year. There’s a slightly Syrah-like sweetness, and no-nonsense tannins, but the overriding impression is of a fresh, juicy and fruity wine with its own Caucasus character.

RRP: £17.99 ABV: 13%

Liberty Wines (020 7720 5350) libertywines.co.uk

Chateau Brgozone Via Istrum Esperanto 2020

Delibo is reporting a warm reception for this Bulgarian blend of Cabernet, Syrah and Gamza. It’s easy to see why it’s such a crowd pleaser. It seems like a much more expensive wine on first sip, with its rich cherry and spice flavours, but it’s actually far more medium-bodied and gluggable than it first appears.

RRP: £15 ABV: 14.5%

Delibo Wine Agencies (01993 886644) delibo.co.uk

Sigalas Santorini Barrel Assyrtiko 2021

Oak in Santorini Assyrtiko is a divisive subject but it’s hard to imagine anyone taking issue with it here. Far from dumbing down, the gentle vanilla works in harmony with the steely and citrus components and the more honeyed and peachy notes seem to shine brightly too. Prices have shot up, but this is worth the outlay.

RRP: £44 ABV: 14.5%

Enotria&Coe (020 8961 5161) enotriacoe.com

Vallisto Blanco de Pieles 2021

Vallisto’s wines never seem to disappoint and this orange Torrontes from Salta is another winner. The nose is bursting with blossom and tropical fruit, maybe even a faint hint of fresh linen. The acidity is precise but not piercing, moderated by a distant creaminess. A wine to celebrate the first days of spring, ideally in the company of seafood and birdsong.

RRP: £18 ABV: 13%

Ucopia World Wines (01435 517080) ucopiawines.co.uk

Jesus Madrazo Ermita de San Gregorio Reserva Blanco 2020

Only 1,500 bottles were made of this Rioja blend of Viura and Malvasia, crafted by Jesus Madrazo, who ran the famous Contino estate until 2017. It’s light years away from the drab white Riojas of yesteryear: elegant but with a lovely viscosity, a leesy depth and just a hint of apple-pip bitterness. Accomplished stuff.

RRP: £30-£35

ABV: 14%

Frederick’s Wine Co (07823 344173) frederickswine.com

Far Mountain Myrna Chardonnay 2020

The fruit comes from a dry-farmed vineyard in California’s Mayacamas mountains, dating back to 1972. It’s clearly the right environment for Chardonnay, which in this case emerges sappy and sinewy, with ripples of brioche and butterscotch and a rocky mineral undercurrent.

RRP: £52.99

ABV: 14%

Liberty Wines (020 7720 5350)

libertywines.co.uk

Creu Celta Priorat 2018

Belfast merchant Direct Wine Shipments established this business as recently as 2003 but the vines, planted in one of Priorat’s cooler sites, are much older. Garnacha dominates the blend, which is as firey and dusky as you’d hope it to be. It doesn’t go down without a fight, but there are some silky edges too, and some pleasing dark chocolate and spice flavours.

RRP: £24.99

ABV: 15.5%

Winetraders (01993 882440)

winetradersuk.co.uk

Favourite Things

Online drinks firm hits the buffers

Online UK retailer thedrinkshop.com has gone into administration.

The Kent-based drinks retailer, established in November 1999, appointed administrator Opus Restructuring on January 18, documents filed at Companies House reveal.

Magpie

Italians object to Irish health labels

A plan by Ireland to put stark health warnings on bottles of wine, beer and spirits has caused anger in Italy.

Chris Bain

Harris & Co, Castle Douglas

Favourite wine on my list

Herrenhof Lamprecht Sand & Kalk

Pinot Gris 2020, Bucherberg, Austria. I tried this at the winery last May and it made an instant impression. The character, texture and flavours this wine has makes it very hard to put into words. Mind = blown.

Favourite wine and food match

Domaine Laougué Madiran 2020 paired with Chinese-style spare ribs.

Favourite wine trip

An infamous trip to Rioja and Ribera del Duero with some of the finest Scottish wine merchants back in 2016 haunts me still. Thankfully most of them remain friends.

Favourite wine trade person

Daniel Lambert, for various reasons, but mainly because he took us to Barbados last November, which was an incredible experience.

Favourite wine shop

There are too many to mention and though I haven’t visited for some time, I think Glasgow’s finest, Valhalla’s Goat, always holds a special place in my heart. The passion and enthusiasm those guys have for their liquid treasures is phenomenal.

The company’s website says that its services are used by “tens of thousands of consumers, on and off-trade accounts and corporate clients”.

It claims a list of more than 6,000 drinks including some products “not available elsewhere online or on the high street”. The Drinks Business, January 30

LVMH’s Mentelle arithmetic adds up

Endeavour Group announced it has signed an agreement with Moët Hennessy, the wine and spirits arm of French luxury goods giant LVMH, to acquire Cape Mentelle. A fee wasn’t disclosed.

Completion of the deal will take place “in due course”, pending licensing approval, said Endeavour, a leading retail and hospitality group that has alcohol retailer Dan Murphy’s and several other wine brands in its portfolio.

Cape Mentelle was founded in 1970 and the deal heralds an ownership change for a pioneer of winemaking in Australia’s Margaret River region.

Decanter, January 12

Ireland is free to go ahead with the measure, which would warn consumers about the risks of cancer and liver diseases linked to alcohol, after a deadline passed for the European Commission to oppose it.

Coldiretti, Italy’s biggest farmers’ association, described the “terrifying” warnings as a “direct attack” against the country. “The green light from the EU for alarmist wine labels in Ireland represents a dangerous precedent as it risks opening the door to other legislation capable of negatively influencing consumer choices,” the association said.

The Guardian, January 12

Merchant wins sexism court case

Belgian wine merchant Sandrine

Goeyvaerts has won a defamation case for “public insults of a sexist nature” against French wine writer and blogger Vincent Pousson for his comments on Facebook.

French wine news site Vitisphere. com said the case centred on Pousson writing “this Belgian shrew openly gives me lessons in manners, in how to love women, in youthfulness … the fishwife has nothing better to do than instigate a greasy Stalino-Mélenchonist trial on the grounds of sexism”.

Pousson was fined a total of €7,000, including €4,000 damages to Goeyvaerts. Wine-searcher, January 29

Silver lining in the California clouds

The January storms that pummelled California, causing an estimated £24bn in damage, also provided a desperately needed gift to the wineries.

Jason Haas at Tablas Creek Vineyard couldn’t reach his vines for several days and had to close his tasting room for a while, but he is optimistic.

Winter rains, which nourish vines while they are still dormant and have not yet started to grow grapes, are “almost always a good thing”, said Haas. “It will ensure that the vines have enough vigour to ripen the crop this year. It’s not a guarantee the wines are going to be great, but it eliminates one of the biggest worries that we have: that there’s not going to be enough water to keep the vines growing.” BBC, January 19

Welsh vineyard is ready to be fleeced

Gwinllan Conwy Vineyard is laying thousands of sheep fleeces between its vines to fight weeds and reflect sunlight onto ripening grapes.

The property in Llangwstenin, Wales, began laying fleeces in and around two rows of vines in October 2021. This week, it took delivery of more than 3,000 fleeces to move forward with the sustainable method on a permanent basis, based on the trial’s overwhelmingly positive results.

“More sugar means more alcohol and while a couple of per cent may not sound like much, our fleece-ripened grapes will produce a wine from classic varieties with a much fuller body,” said co-owner Colin Bennett.

The Drinks Business, January 31

? THE BURNING QUESTION

What do you think are the best non-alcoholic drinks?

�In the past I've been sceptical of non-alcoholic beverages. I was never a fan of the lingering sweetness. Recently products are so much better and brands nowadays are more confident to bring out something that is stand-alone rather than something that is just imitating a gin or a rum. I really rate Talonmore. I prefer a dark spirit if I'm drinking the hard stuff, so I love the fiery kick the Talonmore has. We recently got the ALT Wines in and I have to say I was really impressed with those as well.”

Kirsty McEwan H Champagne winner H WineKraft, Edinburgh

�There are a number of non-alcoholic beers that we see are popular … the beers from Big Drop do really well for us. We have a steady stream of people buying them all year round. It’s the wines and spirits that don’t seem to have caught the imagination in the same way. We stock Natureo from Torres. There’s a red, white and a rosé in the range and we have all of them.”

Mark Stammers Vine & Bine, Solihull

�I would say the quality is getting better but we don’t have a lot of people asking for them. We stock no-alcohol Prosecco, wine and beer. I’ve been selling Nozeco because the feedback is that it's actually quite nice to drink, because it's quite fizzy and has a similar texture to Prosecco. I haven’t got any at the moment but the Eins Zwei Zero Riesling from Enotria&Coe is also quite popular – they do a still and a sparkling.”

Christine Longden

The Twisted Cork, Kelvedon, Essex

�We have the Walt Lo, which is a German Riesling, it’s 0.5%. I think people are still wary of low-and-no wines but much more accepting of beers. We sell Green Light from Powderkeg, a low-alcohol IPA, and I think it’s brilliant – it has full flavour. I find people are much happier with a really good soft drink, something that’s not too sugary. I was really keen to get a few more non-alcoholic wines in and so I tried a few at the LWF last year, but a lot of them contain tea, so if you’re sensitive to caffeine, you’d be bouncing off the walls.”

Anne Cleminson

The Cross Street Bottle Shop, Newton Abbot

Champagne Gosset

The oldest wine house in Champagne: Äy 1584

Books and wine on the same page

Given the job of designing the perfect high street, most of us would include a decent independent wine shop.

There’s perhaps an argument to be made that access to a quality wine merchant even has an effect on property values. But it’s a hard claim to quantify, at least in isolation, because where you find a specialist wine shop, you’re also likely to find a butcher’s, a good bakery, certainly some popular coffee shops, and possibly a reasonable deli.

It’s no secret that, when scouting for locations, wine merchants are attracted and reassured by other specialist food and drink retailers. It proves that the audience they are looking for is already there.

Maybe there’s a correlation with book shops, too. Indeed figures from the Booksellers Association, as our graph on the right demonstrates, suggest that the fortunes of independent book shops and independent wine merchants have been on a similar upward trajectory since 2016 –and their numbers are remarkably alike.

Both sectors have, in the past, been given the last rites by some commentators. Indie book shops were predicted to be wiped out by Amazon; indie wine shops were going to lose their market share to supermarkets and the big online players.

Changing consumer dynamics have certainly presented existential challenges

for independents of all types. But it’s striking that wine stores and book shops have not merely survived: they have thrived.

Meryl Halls, managing director of the Booksellers Association, which represents chain and indie bookshops alike, says: “Book shops are crucially important – and valued –parts of our high street communities. Book

shops bring social and cultural capital to every town, village, suburb or city centre they are part of, and punch way above their weight in terms of impact and engagement locally, and nationally.”

It’s interesting that both sectors saw sizeable increases during the pandemic. High streets experienced mini booms after Covid hit, but in many cases retailers misjudged what would happen once some

There’s a marked similarity in the fortunes of independent book sellers and independent wine merchants, as Graham Holter reports

sort of normality returned. Not every shop that opened is still trading today.

In the worlds of wine and books, this problem isn’t so obvious, though it’s possible that the scenario might have changed when the numbers are analysed again in a year’s time.

Meanwhile, the words of Meryl Halls apply as much to the independent wine trade as they do her own membership.

“What is particularly pleasing is to be able to welcome a new cohort of book sellers to the industry,” she says. “Those with fresh eyes, new perspectives, energy and a commitment to the cultural contribution of book selling to our society and our economy.

“This new energy is so important to the future viability and diversity of our sector.

“The number of book shops has grown gradually and slowly since 2016; during the pandemic we saw a frankly astonishing number of new entrants to book selling. Drawn by the cultural relevance of books, reading and bookshops, inspired by the activism on display amongst current book sellers, seeing bookselling as a valid and rewarding career choice – these are all reasons why people open book shops.”

Ring any bells?

“A curious thing occurs when people buy books in book stores. As part of a Masters research project, I found that both customer and book seller believe they are engaged in a relatively equal exchange of information. What they are doing registers as nontransactional, which I knew intuitively from a lifetime of book selling and is borne out in the research.

“If you’re a reader, you tend to find your book shop and form a relationship with the book sellers there. You become attached to the physical space and start to feel proprietary about it. Book sellers are trusted to understand and serve the needs of people who have access to every product in the world.”

Robbie Egan, CEO, Australian Booksellers Association, 2019

Forced substitutions

If the wines we love are unaffordable or in short supply, the solution isn’t necessarily simply to seek out alternatives made with the same grapes, argues David

Williams

Ihaven’t tasted as many 2021 Burgundies as I’d like to. In part, that’s because there aren’t all that many around: volumes were down by as much as 75% for some producers, thanks largely to the freezing conditions that stopped newly budding vines in their tracks at the beginning of April 2021. But it’s also because that very scarcity has pushed prices even further out of the reach of both my own pocket and that of all but a very few of our readers.

It’s a pity because the wines I have tasted are really rather lovely, with the cooler conditions that prevailed for those vines that escaped the frost producing wines that are very much closer to what I think of as the paradigm of Burgundy than they have been in recent warmer years. The wines are lighter, fresher, keener, racier, more chiselled and defined than the 2020s I tasted.

But then, “it’s a pity” is what I’ve been saying, like a joyless, handwringing religious puritan, about Burgundy every time I’ve tasted the new vintage en primeur for years now. I’ve started to bore myself with the same old lament about how these wines used to be affordable to the likes of me, a treat maybe, but not a significant portion of my annual salary. It really is time I stopped moaning and accepted that we do not live in my fantasy libertarian socialist state, where rations of

the very finest wines are issued in a winelovers’ lottery rather than to the highest bidder with the best connections. I should, instead, accept that Burgundy is largely pour les autres, and switch to one of the many viable replacements instead.

The trouble for me is that I’ve always found the hunt for substitutes a little too literalminded, a seemingly obvious solution that almost always leads to unsatisfactory results. Wine is not reducible to its basic components. It’s not as simple as saying Burgundy is made from Chardonnay or Pinot Noir, and that, therefore, to get the same kind of experience you simply need to find a Chardonnay or Pinot Noir made in

a similar way in a similar climate at a less fashionable address.

There are, it’s true, many Chardonnays, and at least some Pinot Noirs, being made in various places around the world that are very close facsimiles of great examples of the grape from their original region. I dare say I’d confuse them, in a blind tasting, for the “real thing”. But they won’t fill a Burgundy hole, for the simple reason that they’re … well, they’re not Burgundy.

No doubt there are some wine drinkers who are looking for a style or set of flavours and are happy with that no matter where it might come from. But in my experience, most wine lovers are at least as interested in wine as a form of proxy travel. We’re not so much concerned with having an experience of the flavours of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir as we are with knowing what Chardonnay or Pinot Noir taste like from Burgundy and – as we become more interested – from that part of Burgundy, and that producer, in that year.

This isn’t just a Burgundy thing, by the way, or even just a wine thing. I have a similar problem with the Spotify algorithm, which has never worked out that the reason we like a song or piece of music isn’t always because it’s from a particular scene, genre or configuration of instruments and a certain kind of voice. More often it’s down to a whole lot of other,

No doubt some wine drinkers are looking for a style or a set of flavours but, in my experience, most are at least as interested in wine as a form of proxy travel

often ineffable things to be found in both the listener and the musician.

I like Prefab Sprout, but not for the reason Spotify seems to imagine I do: the

lush 80s production (in fact, I hate the lush 80s production). I started listening to Prefab Sprout because the band’s songwriter Paddy McAloon had a wistful way with a melody that appealed to me when I was 14 – and I listen to them now to get lost in waves of bittersweet nostalgia and remember my lost youth.

But even if Spotify, or some wine equivalent, were able to find a way of precisely anticipating my next favourite thing, I’d still have a problem with this tendency of thinking of wines as fundamentally interchangeable.

It’s fine to know – it is in fact fascinating and essential context – that the Oregon Chardonnay you are drinking was in some

way inspired by and made from the same grape variety as Burgundy. But for the winemaker, there’s something limiting – something almost servile and overly deferential – about always referring back to the motherland, while, for the drinker, it puts a cap on the imagination and stops us giving credit where it’s due.

There are many moments when I would relish a bottle of one of Timo Meyer’s Yarra Valley Pinot Noirs or Thomas Bachelder’s Niagara Chardonnays, in other words. But I find I get a whole lot more enjoyment once I forget about their debt to Burgundy and enjoy these superlative wines as representatives of their own places, made on their own terms.

Coming off, number 15, Geoffrey Chambertin, being replaced by number 19, Martin Borough

Battle’s got a bottle shop to be proud of

The East Sussex town is best known for a momentous event that changed the course of English history, but it wasn’t a great place to buy wine until Sarah Truman and husband Paul took the plunge a couple of years ago.

The early stages of the shop’s development were fuelled by sheer enthusiasm, with some guidance from helpful suppliers. Now, Sarah has a clear idea of what her customers already like and what they’re ready to explore – and thoughts are turning to what she might be doing next.

King Harold famously came to grief a little way up the road from Sarah’s Cellar, and taller customers risk injuries of their own when they enter the quaint High Street premises.

It’s not a hazard for Sarah herself, but anyone beyond about 5ft 10in needs to duck on entry and then slot themselves between some of the gnarled ceiling beams if they want to survive unscathed.

“Some people have taken skin off on the doorframe,” Sarah admits. “I have public liability insurance. We’re all good.”

Headroom issues aside, it’s hard not to fall in love with the place, which had been selling wool until coming on the market in 2020 and before that was home to a shoe shop. It’s thought to date back to the 15th century.

“They’ve used the some of the stonework from the abbey,” says Sarah. “Local historians are always coming in, looking at my beams. They’re looking for signs of where they put marks in them to ward off evil spirits and things like that. It’s very cool.”

Sarah is new to wine retail but not the wine trade. “In my early 20s, 20 odd years ago, I worked for The Wine Corporation, which was sort of like a Sunday Times Wine Club competitor,” she says.

“It was great. It was a really fun place to work. They put me through my first two wine qualifications. So you start to understand wine a little bit better. I didn’t work there very long, but it was long enough to get wine under the skin. And then I went and did sensible things; became a maths teacher. I did that for about 15 years.

“My parents never really drank wine, so I sort of had to discover it myself as a grown-up. When I met my husband, Paul, he was working in hospitality and running hotel restaurants, and putting together wine lists. So we had this joint love of wine.

“When we went on holiday, we were going around vineyards and going to wine tastings and enjoying good food, good wine. And then I thought I really wanted to work in wine. But I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do.”

By Graham Holter

When Sarah left teaching in 2019, it was originally to help with the couple’s other company, which teaches martial arts. But the aim was always for her to start a wine business in some shape or form.

“It was probably October time in 2020,” she recalls. “Paul was driving to classes and he had heard this premises was going to be available. He pulled over and phoned me and said, ‘maybe we should open a wine shop’.”

Merchant Profile: Sarah’s Cellar

When you first opened, was it terrifying?

No, actually, it wasn’t terrifying. I suppose that we’ve got a confidence, Paul and I, because we’ve had our own businesses and we’ve both had corporate jobs as well as the other stuff. I think what surprises me when I look back is how quickly we turned it around, from application to opening the door. I think we did it in about six weeks. So we made the decision really quickly and just went for it.

Why did you choose Battle?

We live just up the road, we’re three miles away, so it is local to us. We love wine, and in 2020 you couldn’t get hold of wine. We drank through our stash because we hadn’t been able to go on holiday. There are very few wine merchants in this area, so you have to be prepared to travel. I suppose we wanted a shop that we wanted to shop in. There

was nothing here: you’ve got a tiny little Co-op, you’ve got a tiny little supermarket. Their wines go up to about £7 or £10, you know. We knew that we could do better than that. We knew that wasn’t going to be our market.

How did you put your original list together?

I suppose you start with what you know. Because when you open a shop and you’ve never been in retail before, you only know a tiny portion of what’s available. The learning curve is extreme.

But we love Burgundy, the Chardonnays as well, and then we love Alsace. That’s probably where we started because that’s what we love. And we’ve completely changed as people have approached us.

I love the quirky stuff. My customers fall into a few different brackets. A group of them love things that they can’t buy anywhere else, that they never

“ When you open a shop and you’ve never been in retail before, you only know a tiny portion of what’s available. The learning curve is extreme”

Sarah Truman, Battle, January 2023

see in a supermarket, or even in Naked or Virgin Wines. I love the Austrian and Swiss stuff and anything slightly off the beaten track.

Alsace wine isn’t the easiest sell. Yeah. Except when people discover it, then they come back for it. I have people that get very upset if I’ve run out of something like Alsace Pinot Gris. And if they try Pinot Gris from other regions, they say “no no no – it’s not the same”.

How have sales been over the past year?

Christmas was pretty good. December was about 6% down compared to last December. But it’s very different times and I’ve never had a normal year. I was up a little bit last year, but it was only my second full year.

We learned a lot last year. I think in the first year, you have no idea what you’re doing. You’re sort of bumbling along, buying wines that you just like. You find yourself looking at the shelf going, “oh my goodness, why do I have three Malbecs, all from Argentina, all at the same price point? Why have I done that?” I have a tendency to panic buy a little bit.

But then the second year, you sort of find your feet, you understand your customers a little bit better, they’re understanding you a little bit better. People often come in weekly and I know what they like, I know what they don’t like, and it makes life super fun. You can hand-sell.

A lot of recent entrants in the indie trade are primarily wine lovers rather than wine experts. Are you in that category?

I would say I am. I love learning, though. I read an awful lot, and the amount I’ve learned since I opened the doors is astonishing.

I send out emails every week to my customer database. I try to keep it quite simple because most of my customers are on their learning journey.

I did Rioja month and lots of people don’t know that Rioja is a place: that’s where quite a lot of my customers are. So I try and share a bit of information with them and sort of get them moving on their wine journey. Some of them, as soon as they see a word they don’t know or a place they don’t know, they’re Googling it, and they’re really starting to love wine. When we’ve done wine tastings, and I have my suppliers in to do those, they’re engaged, they’re interested, they want to know about the wine.

As a maths teacher, are you fascinated by the numbers and facts behind a wine, or is that side of your brain switched off when you’re tasting? I just fall in love with the wine because it makes your mouth excited. Pinot Noir is one of my favourites. I just love California ones; I love the Chardonnays as well. I love Grenache too. I like my reds to be quite fruit-forward and easy-going.

Which suppliers have you worked with from the beginning?

I still buy a lot from Boutinot. My first account manager was Mike Best: before I even opened the shop, he came to visit me at home with a selection of wines. I could just lean on him and say, “what do I need? What do I want at this price point? What am I missing?” And he just guided me. So that was really good.

Boutinot’s price points are great. Their prices on some of their stuff from places like Chile remain so stable – and the supermarket pricing is coming up to match my pricing now. So that sort of works.

I buy more from Liberty now than I did at first. I wanted Rathfinny, so that got me into Liberty and the rest is history.

I buy more and more from Liberty. Everything I get from them is just absolutely top notch, but they don’t do a great level of wines that would sit on the shelf at about £10. That’s not their thing.

How important are wines at those price points and how are you reading the economic situation among your customers?

My feeling is that I’ve definitely lost some of my customers in the last six months. People that were coming in relatively regularly, I’m not seeing them. Some of them did pop their heads in, in the run-up to Christmas. But it hasn’t been the same.

They’re buying cheap wine from elsewhere. So I’ll be really focusing on that £10 to £15 price point.

When I first opened in the beginning of 2021, the offers that were out there, because there were no restaurants open, were insane. But that’s not the case at the moment. Now it’s gone back to kind of normal, I suppose. But I’ll be really focusing on £10 to £15 for the next six months at least, making sure that price point is really good.

I find that if I open a wine for people to try that’s £20 or above then they’re more inclined to buy it. But I think my average bottle price last year was probably about £20. I’ve got some very affluent

“I think in the first year, you have no idea what you’re doing. You’re sort of bumbling along, buying wines that you just like. In the second year, you find your feet”

customers who come in here and they don’t look at the prices; they just want good wine.

Lots of my customers have cellars of wine and they also have a merchant that they use in London. I’ve got one customer who only buys from me and Hedonism. There’s plenty of people around here who aren’t going to be suffering too much. But there are customers I’ve definitely lost, people that were subscribing. I have a subscription service for regular cases but I don’t have many subscribers. It’s something I’d like to grow.

On your website you say that every wine you sell has to over-deliver; none can be just average. Is that possible, in reality?

That is the ambition. There’s the odd thing that I buy because it sounds nice, and it’s cheap, and then I regret it and never get it back. And I’m really honest with people about things. So when I bought things that I think are maybe unbalanced, a bit too tannic, I’ve told people exactly that.

A good example is a really cheap Barolo that I bought when I first opened. It was on my shelf for £18. I just couldn’t get on with it. I had a customer who kept coming back for it over and over and over again. He loved it. And when I sold out, because he bought it all, he was very upset with me. I had to explain, “I’m really sorry, but it’s not for everyone else – you’re the only one”. He always wants to see the same wines on the shelf, which is not my thing. You’re unlikely to come in and always see your favourite wines.

Do you have a hardcore, mainstay element to the range or is nothing sacred here?

The Waldschütz wines, which I buy from Alpine Wines: they’re pretty much a mainstay. They will always be on my shelf. The rosé that they do was my best-selling rosé, which is £18 a pop, so not inexpensive. I really like their wines; they’re my kind of go-to.

Some of the Italians, which I’m out of, and some of the Spanish that I get from Boutinot are just great. I sell a lot of passimento wines. They’re pretty much staples.

What about English wines?

I sell a lot of Henners [based just nine miles away]. They’re really great and they support me brilliantly. They’re currently my house choice of sparkling. I sell more English sparkling than Champagne.

When you’re in the middle of Sussex, I don’t see why you wouldn’t focus on English sparkling wine.

Do you do any wholesaling?

I’ve only been selling to restaurants locally, and it’s pay when you purchase. I can’t afford to do invoice terms. I just can’t. So I keep that really small. I just do a few guest wines in a restaurant over the road. I was selling to a restaurant in St Leonards but they’re closed as of the beginning of January. So they are one of the casualties, and there will be others, I’m sure. Right now it’s better not to be focusing, I think, on wholesale business.

Tell us more about your extra-curricular activities: the Australian evening, for example, or Drink & Draw.

The Australian evening is the day after Australia Day. A lot of the artist’s work is abstract landscapes, but it’s based on Australia. So it kind of all works. I’m going to be doing Australian wines, and he’ll show off his latest exhibition. We have a big overlap in terms of our customer base; his artwork is very expensive.

With Drink & Draw, he teaches: we have life models and things like that, which is interesting. We’ve only had four sessions so far, and they were in here, but it’s a little bit tight. So we’re going to do it in the Memorial Hall, which is like a Tardis.

Is that where you do your big wine tastings?

Yeah, it’s really good. We did one in July and one in November. This year we might change the format a little bit, have fewer suppliers and have people spreading out a little bit.

What you learn from going to trade tastings is how it feels to be that person, having to wait to get something in a glass and having to use your elbows a bit. This is not a student bar; you want it to feel like a quality sort of evening out.

I charge quite a lot for my tickets: it’s £27, which just covers the hall and glass hire and the food. I make sure it’s good-quality nibbles because otherwise my customers are gonna be on the floor, because they obviously don’t spit. So I might do three of those this year but make them smaller.

If you invite too many suppliers, then you have a lot of orders to place and then you end up with a

Smaller tastings take place inside the shop, which also serves as a life drawing studio on occasions

lot of invoices to pay all at the same time. I learned that, but it took me two sessions.

What other events have you done?

We’ve done a few meals where we’ve had up to 80 people in the Memorial Hall, and we get a caterer in and do paired wine and foods. It’s five courses. The first two were really, really popular; we sold out very quickly. And then we did another one in October; it was a tiny bit more expensive, but for what people were getting, still really good value. But I sold less than half of the tickets, so we had to use a smaller hall. It was still a great night, probably my favourite of the three events that we’ve done, but we didn’t make money on the tickets for that. And it’s hard work.

What about in-store tastings?

I’ve done quite a lot of those in here. Usually just me, jabbering about the wines and nobody listening. But it’s a really lovely environment in here with 12 people standing around a barrel with their wines and cheese and meats.

It’s what you see when you go to vineyards in France. You go into the cellar, and they love telling you about all their wines. I absolutely love that. That’s what I had in my head when I was thinking of my own shop.

I avoid using any of the proper wine words. If you start using words like “violets” and “floral” and “lychee”, for example, people have no idea what you’re talking about. Just keep it really simple. Assume you’re talking to somebody who just likes wine. Who doesn’t have that vocabulary.

People seem to get quite worked up on social media about the use of certain wine terms. But sometimes describing a wine as “smooth” makes perfect sense.

Speak to your customers the way they want to be spoken to you. Because the problem is, when someone comes in here for the first time, they sometimes look like they’ve walked into an underwear shop. They look alarmed, they just stare at the wines, they see the one label that says a price that is out of their budget. And then they think that they can’t afford anything in here. And they have no idea what they’re looking at.

So you have to reassure them; you have to talk to them in their language. And they’re often buying a gift for somebody. What’s your budget? How old is

the person you’re buying for? Are they a traditional wine drinker? Or do you think they want something a little bit quirky? That sort of thing. And then you’re picking on label a little bit, because it’s got to look the part. You can’t have something for an 80-year-old that looks like it’s aimed at a 25-yearold. And then away they go, and they’re very happy. Then they say, “my friend loved it, can I buy one for me, please?” That’s the game. They come in next time and they’re not so worried.

Does Paul ever make an appearance in the shop? If you come in December, you’ll see him. He’s always at the events that we do. He’s the one setting up the hall and putting out the tables … doing all those things takes him back to his hospitality days. You see, I think he secretly likes it. But no, he’s usually doing the martial arts side of things. He will do a lot of the admin stuff in the background. We are a really good team and he’s very much part of the business.

You’ve hinted at possible expansion. Is that something for the short term or medium term? Probably medium term. Short term, I need to focus on just making sure that we’re OK for the next year, because we just know that the high street is going to take a hit. We’re not worried at all, and I will be here, but this November there will be a decision about whether I stay here, if they’ll let me, or whether I want somewhere a bit bigger. And if I did go bigger, I stay on the high street.

Do I want to go with something more hybrid? I think I’d love to have something where I had some comfy sofas, some nice glasses of wine, a bit of charcuterie … there’s places like that which we’ve seen on holiday and you just can’t get them out of your head. So I might go that route, or I might have a second shop somewhere else.

Is being a wine merchant as fun and fulfilling as you hoped it would be?

I don’t think I’d really thought about how much I’d enjoy it. But I really love it. I really like people. I have such random conversations in here all of the time. And I love that. It’s kind of like being a bar person, but only working in the daytime.

I’ve made lots of friends of my customers. I think I could hold a party with my customers and it’d be the best party ever.

They’re just so much fun. All of them. So yeah, coming to work doesn’t feel like work.

“ When someone comes in here for the first time, they sometimes look like they’ve walked into an underwear shop. They look alarmed, they just stare at the wines. You have to reassure them; you have to talk to them in their language”

THE DRAYMAN

Artificial intelligence

Here’s what you get when you ask a computer to design a craft beer can

I’m always a bit wary of anything that admits to have been created with the help of artificial intelligence, ever since a craft distiller claimed to have done just that to come up with a gin called Monker’s Garkel.

A bit of Google digging revealed that monker was urban slang for someone who looks like a monkey, and garkel was a term for a 19th century slave master’s abode in the deep south. Not so much artificial intelligence as a very real lack of it.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached Dream Factory, a beer for which London brewer Two Tribes used AI to design the can.

It did so by inviting followers to use an online AI-image generator called Midjourney, on the Discord platform, to submit ideas. It’s effectively a drawing and painting bot for people who can’t draw or paint. You type in a short description of the image you’d like to come to life, and in a few seconds it gives you four alternatives.

I experimented myself. The T&Cs prevent me sharing the image that came

up for “Cambridge Wine Merchants as it would appear at daybreak on Saturn”, but it did come up with various representations of a shop with what was identifiable as wine in its windows against a sunrise backdrop, as if drawn by prog rock album cover illustrator Roger Dean, but with the name misspelt as four variations on the theme of “CAAIISTRAIA”. A request for images of a man serving craft beer to a woman in a wine shop was a little more successful, with four options that could quite happily usurp clip art on a retailer’s email newsletter.

Two Tribes had 1,800 submissions for its beer can over a two-week period, eight of which were smashed together to create a pack in the brewer’s trademark pop art style. It’s certainly a striking design, though presumably the manual

task of whittling down the entries was more time-consuming than the traditional small business route of getting Sue from accounts’ lad to knock something up because he’s studying graphic design at night school.

Still, it would be an interesting exercise to see what young Olly would come up with given the successful briefs given to Midjourney, which included “lemon with Elvis hair detailed polaroid”, “knitted hotdog” and “Indian Andy Warhol hops on T-shirt mango pants 16 eyes 2 pairs of polka dot glasses”.

The press blurb put out on behalf of the brewery even mentioned design elements that didn’t make the can – “Brian Blessed behaving like an otter” – but, alas, without ever mentioning what the beer tastes like.

True, it sometimes feels like the design of craft beer cans has become almost as important as the liquid contents in recent years, though brewers forget the latter at their peril. The can might achieve your first sale, but only the quality of the beer will gain your second.

It’s easy to be cynical of course, but reference to the taste would have given cause to take the exercise more seriously. Though “this sort of thing” may well become a conventional design tool in the future, at the moment it’s difficult to see it as anything but an artificial gimmick.

The blurb mentioned design elements that didn’t make the can –“Brian Blessed behaving like an otter” – but, alas, without ever mentioning what the beer tastes like

taste spain WINES FROM SPAIN ANNUAL TASTING 2023

The

Taste Spain – Wines from Spain Annual Tasting 2023 is an unmissable event for any UK wine merchant. See overleaf for details of this year’s shows in London and Leeds, and details of how to get involved.

# WFSTasting @SpainFoodWineUK

London: Tuesday, February 28

The Lindley Hall, Elverton Street SW1P 2PB

Leeds: Monday, March 13

Ibérica, 17a E Parade LS1 2BH

Importers attending:

A&A Wines; Alliance Wine; Amber Beverage UK; Araex Grands Spanish Fine Wines UK; Berkmann Wine Cellars; Bodegas Manzanos (Alliance Wine); Bodegas Ramón Bilbao (Enotria&Coe); Boutinot Wines; C&D Wines; CVNE (Hatch Mansfield); City Wine Collection; Ehrmanns Wines; Enotria&Coe; Félix Solís Avantis UK; Frederick’s Wine Company; Freixenet Copestick UK; González Byass UK; Hallgarten & Novum Wines; J&O Boutique Wines; J García Carrión UK; John E Fells & Sons; Liberty Wines; Lighthouse Brands; Marqués del Atrio UK; Mentzendorff; Moreno Wine Importers; Myliko Wines; Oakley Wine Agencies; RDM Wine Agencies; Solaris Wines; The Modest Merchant; Ultracomida; Vintae Luxury Wine Specialists UK.

Exporters attending:

Bodega Otto Bestué; Bodegas Aradón; Bodegas Cornelio Dinastía; Bodegas Gardel Organic Wines; Bodegas José L Ferrer; Bodegas Palacio Quemado; Bodegas Pola-Crayón; Bodegas Valdepablo; Bodem Bodegas; Can Ràfols del Caus; Destilería Santa Cruz de Tenerife; Domenio Wines by Cellers Domenys; Ego Bodegas; J Fernando Family Wines; Michelini i Mufatto; Montesquius Cavas & Wines; Palacios Vinos de Finca; Pazo de la Cuesta / Pazo de Rubianes; Shukhrat Khakimov & Viticultores; V&F Wines.

more than

There are plenty of reasons to register London on Tuesday, February 28

Who’s exhibiting?

For any merchant looking to consolidate or expand their Spanish offering, attending the Wines from Spain Annual Tasting isn’t just a great opportunity to taste the wines, it’s also an unrivalled chance to meet and talk with dozens of Spanish wine experts. No event is better suited to help indies build an outstanding Spanish wine and beer portfolio.

More than 30 suppliers will be in attendance, all listed at annualtasting. foodswinesfromspain.com, along with details of their Spanish ranges. Online there is also the chance to download spec sheets, read up on the wineries and make direct contact with UK sales representatives. Planning ahead is recommended, to help get the most out of the day.

Among the exhibitors are 20 Spanish estates seeking representation in the UK. From Jumilla in the south to Somontano in the north, attendees will discover a host of great wines, all ready to take their place in the UK market.

A wine selection with something for everyone

The event will feature 930 wines from 62 DOs, made from 85 different grape varieties. So there’s no question that there is a wine for every taste and budget.

From the islands to the mainland, fabled regions to the more modestly brilliant, it is the place to be to taste your way through one of the world’s most exciting wine producing countries.

Whether it’s a full-bodied and refreshing

900 wines from 62 DOs

register for the Taste Spain – Wines from Spain Annual Tasting 2023,

in Leeds

Monday,

Listán Blanco from Tenerife, or age-worthy wines from Rioja to Txakolí, Wines from Spain’s Annual Tasting will have it covered, along with the country’s wealth of fortified, sparkling, rosé, dry and sweet wines: every category covered under one roof.

See annualtasting.foodswinesfromspain. com for a preview of the wines on offer, and to message importers in advance.

Join us in Leeds

There’s a lot going on at the Wines from Spain tasting event in Leeds this year, giving visitors from the north a terrific chance to explore the exciting, ongoing developments in Spanish wines.

Themed tables will guide visitors through the diversity of wines on offer. Aperitivo! is an essential pit-stop for any merchant looking for easy-drinking Spanish wines that deliver on taste, without breaking the budget. There will be tasty tapas to sample too.

The Compass Tasting is a great way to explore Spain’s many wine regions, helping visitors pinpoint them on the map and understand their respective styles of wine.

It would barely be a Spanish wine and food event without a Sherry Bar. This steadily re-emerging category offers exciting drinking, for unbelievably good value. Here visitors will have the chance to try both dry and off-dry sherries with

hand-carved jamón.

A special selection of premium and super-premium Spanish wines will also be available to taste.

Masterclasses

Masterclasses are a great way to add to your Spanish wine knowledge and taste new things.

In London there are two events. Campo de Borja’s Garnachas Historicas Project is a chance to take a deep dive into old vine Garnacha. The Asociación de Cerveceros de España will be presenting a special tasting of Spanish craft beers, which are increasingly appreciated by UK consumers.

In Leeds Sarah Jane Evans MW and Christine Austin will be leading two fascinating sessions. Back to the Future is a six-wine tasting from classic regions, chosen to illustrate Spain’s ability to reinvent itself. Austin’s Spanish Sparks is a focus on the indigenous varieties that are lighting up Spanish winemaking.

Visitors must book a place, as masterclass numbers will be limited.

Feature produced in partnership with Foods & Wines from Spain. For more information visit annualtasting. foodswinesfromspain.com. To register or book a masterclass email: winesfromspain@ otaria.co.uk.

Discover lesser-known indigenous varieties

World-class Tempranillo, Garnacha, Albariño and Verdejo are grapes that have secured Spain’s reputation as a fine-wine producer across the globe. Taste Spain is a chance to explore lesser-known varieties that will add tasty thrills and diversity to any wine list. Here are some examples.

Treixadura. This Galician white grape is wonderfully aromatic and considered to be the jewel of the Ribeiro vineyards. Winemakers talk about the finesse and elegance of Treixadura wines, as well as their ageing potential.

Graciano. Native to Rioja, Graciano is reasserting itself as a star player in the region, with vivid aromas of mulberry and violets and the structure to support wines with great ageing potential.

Callet, Manto Negro & Prensal Blanc. The wines of Mallorca are on the up, with a tenfold rise in wineries in the last 20 years. The wines have quickly gained a following in mainland Spain, and their international success is not far away.

taking place in and

on

March 13. Here’s a summary of what to expect

JASON YAPP

Unfiltered Bubbling under: the crémants that can add extra depth to your sparkling range

provided by the Vosges mountains and a sunny climate ensure a good ripening season. The favoured grape variety is Pinot Blanc, and the wines have a touch more residual sugar than many but lend themselves to being enjoyed with or without food. Like most crémants, even non-vintage versions, which most are, they can age well for two to three years if well cellared, and will take on richness and complexity with maturity.

As it is a – theoretically – romantic time of year it might be good to add some effervescence to our wine itinerary.

France is a celebrated stronghold of sparkling wine. The region of Champagne alone has over 34,000 hectares under vine, producing around 300 million bottles each year. As well as other specialist areas of sparkling wine production, such as Vouvray and Montlouis in the Loire valley, France has eight specific geographic locations that are allowed to add the prefix crémant to their geographical zone of production. The word crémant was applied because the resultant wines have a lower atmospheric pressure than Champagne, which was thought to give them a softer, more “creamy” mouth feel.

These Appellation Contrôlées (more recently Protégée) vary greatly in size, age and output. But they are united in producing and promoting high-quality sparkling wine.

The oldest appéllations we are looking at were inaugurated at exactly the same time, on October 17, 1975, when Art Garfunkel was at the top of the UK charts with I Only Have

Eyes for You

Perhaps the best known is Crémant de Bourgogne, which has 2,681 hectares under vine and runs to about 19 million bottles per year. The main grapes are Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, that must make up at least 30% of any blend, and are grown on free-draining chalk and limestone

soils. Both white and rosé wines are made, and they enjoy a strong following on the domestic French market. They are usually dry and fruity with a fresh acidity and, compared with most Burgundy, offer good value for money.

Burgundy’s sparkling vinous twin is the Loire valley. Here there are 2,626 hectares under vine, producing Crémant de Loire, and the principal grape is Chenin Blanc. About 17 million bottles are made annually, which encompasses white and rosé wines. Often a tad less costly than the Burgundian equivalent, they are popular in France and are widely deployed in all manner of small celebrations.

Crémant d’Alsace officially came into being in August 1976 and now boasts the distinction of being France’s biggest producer of crémant. The rain shadow

Next up comes Crémant de Bordeaux, which was given AOC status in April 1990. Today there are 800 hectares under vine making about 6.4 million bottles per annum. Semillon and Sauvignon are the main grapes and the wines are popular with Bordelais producers: it gives them some bubbles without having to get too friendly with the Champenois. It isn’t seen particularly frequently on the UK market; the example that was selflessly sampled for researching this article was perfectly passable, dry and effervescent, with clean fruit, but was otherwise unremarkable.

Crémant de Limoux came into being in August 1990. Its vineyards receive less Atlantic influence than Bordeaux but they have good elevation and a long, sunny growing season. There are currently 823 hectares under vine that are mainly given over to Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc. It shouldn’t be confused with Blanquette de Limoux, which is a far older wine made from the Mauzac grape, but when Crémant de Limoux (which can be white or rosé) hits form it can be terrific and is often seen as a good-value alternative to Champagne.

Crémant de Die is a specialist appellation that consists of just 30 hectares of vines surrounding the market town of Die in the Drôme valley. It should not be confused with the other specialty in the vicinity, Clairette de Die, which is also sparkling and grown on the same slopes. Clairette de Die is made by a different process that involves slow filtration and leaves much smaller bubbles and more residual sugar. Crémant de Die is dry and is made by secondary fermentation in bottle. Clairette, Aligoté and Muscat are the locally favoured grapes and 92% of

When Crémant de Limoux (which can be white or rosé) hits form it can be terrific and is a goodvalue alternative to Champagne

production is consumed in France.

The Jura, between Burgundy and Switzerland, gained Appellation Contrôlée for its crémants in 1995. It currently has 515 hectares (for crémant) under vine shared among 450 producers, so a lot of people make a little of it. The main grapes are Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Trousseau, and 90% of production is white, with 10% of rosé. It is noted for its elegance and finesse, and enjoys a strong local following.

The newest crémant kid on the block is Savoie, which was inaugurated in 2015. It boasts just 57 hectares of vines in

the foothills of the Alps, shared among 50 producers. The principal grapes are Jacquère, Roussette and Chardonnay and nearly all the production is consumed locally, much of it by thirsty skiers.

Now, if you haven’t already done so, find a bottle of something impressively effervescent, pour a glass for the one you love – and try to resist telling them you know all about crémant.

tequila russian

Coffee is one of the alcohol flavour trends of the day, so Bacardi’s decision to stop making Patron XO Café liqueur a while back was baffling, not least because it alienated its considerable band of cult followers. Others have stepped into the breach, most recently rival tequila brand Bandero, whose Café product offers the opportunity for slightly more boozy takes on the White Russian or Black Russian than using the conventional Tia Maria or Kahlúa.

60cl premium vodka

30cl tequila coffee liqueur

Ice Cream Cola (optional)

Stir the vodka and coffee liqueur with ice in an old-fashioned glass. For a Black Russian twist, either serve as it comes or add cola for a longer drink according to taste, and garnish with a Maraschino cherry. For a White Russian variation, gently layer some lightly whipped cream on top, and dust with finely grated nutmeg to garnish.

Jason Yapp is director of Yapp Bros in Mere, Wiltshire

Crémant to Die for: don’t confuse Drôme valley fizz with the local Clairette

A château in vineyards near Sopot, Plovdiv Province, Bulgaria

A blast of blanco

Rioja

One of the more curious developments in Spanish wine in the past decade has been the way in which the country’s foremost red wine region has become the home of arguably its most exciting white wines. Curious because, as recently as the late 2000s, Rioja’s white-wine reputation was pretty much on the floor, with plantings of white varieties at an historic low. The old oxidative white Rioja style seemed out of place in a world in which bright, aromatic, fruit-driven Sauvignon Blanc and, closer to home, Verdejo and Albariño were making all the running, and the region’s attempts to appropriate some of that stainless steelfermented, unoaked action had led to some pretty dull and uninspired wines.

The transformation of the Rioja white since that nadir has gone hand in hand with developments in the region’s redwinemaking: a movement away from the obsession with ageing times and oak as a synonym for quality towards something much more vineyard-based. A concerted attempt by the Rioja Consejo to broaden the number of varieties available to producers in 2007 also played its part in shaping today’s stylistically heterogenous scene, with the re-admission of Tempranillo Blanco, which now accounts for around 11% of the white Rioja vineyard, a conspicuous success.

A list of Rioja’s finest whites today would still likely include one of the inimitable, traditional gran reserva whites made by

producers such as Lopéz de Heredia / Viña Tondonia or Marqués de Murrieta. But it would also take in a run of varied and various producers that don’t conform to a template; producers such as Sierra de Toloño, Remelluri and Remírez de Ganuza, to pick out some personal favourites, who are making white wines as arresting as anything in the world right now.

Three for your list:

• Abel Mendoza Rioja Blanco 2021 (RRP £32.99, Alliance Wine): A complex, layered 100% Viura of succulent depth and beautiful balance.

• Cosme Palacio Reserva Blanco 2018 (RRP £19.99, North South Wines): 10 months in French oak and a lovely balance of ripe fresh fruit and creamy oak character.

• Finca Manzanos Tempranillo Blanco 2021 (RRP £10.99, Alliance Wine): Juicy and tangy tropical fruit in a fresh, lightly oaked example of Tempranillo Blanco.

Ribera del Duero: Lining up with Rueda in Castilla y León

For the better part of 40 years, the two biggest and best-known wine regions in the Castilla y León region two hours’ drive north of Madrid had very clearly demarcated roles. Rueda was for brisk, pungently aromatic unoaked whites from Verdejo; Ribera del Duero was a place for deeply fruited, muscular Tempranillo red wines kept aloft by the bright streak of freshness they maintained from the position of the vineyards at altitudes as high as 800m above sea level. The two complemented each other to the extent that Rueda was seen as Ribera producers’ white vineyard and Ribera as the place where Rueda producers went to make reds.

The boundary began to blur in 2019, when the Ribera del Duero Consejo ratified the use of DO Ribera del Duero for white wines. Before that, the region’s 320 producers had been bottling their whites under the Castilla y Léon regional appellation. While only accounting for around 3% of production, Ribera del Duero’s whites are highly distinctive, featuring at least 75% of the indigenous local variety Albillo Mayor, with the balance featuring any of Pirules, Malvasia, Viura, Verdejo, Albariño, Hondarrabi Zuri, Palomino, Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Treixadura and Viognier. The wines are all about textural richness with stone and tropical fruit rather than aromatic intensity and zip: in that sense they are a

From Alicante to Rioja, and from Albariño to Xarel.lo, David Williams picks out some of the independent-only white wines he feels would add a spark to any merchant’s Spanish list

complementary yin to classic Rueda’s yang. But Rueda itself is developing too. While the classic youthful unoaked styles continue to dominate sales both in the UK and in Spain, a funkier side is emerging, with the wines of producers such as Vidal Soblechero and Barco del Corneta, both based in the village of La Seca, working in small batches with old vines, natural yeasts, extended lees and skin contact and neutral oak emerging as an alternative to the more commercial styles.

Three for your list:

• Valduero Blanco, Ribera del Duero 2021 (£22, The Wine Treasury): Rich, golden, multifaceted white: a brilliant introduction to the unusual charms of Albillo Mayor.

• Barco del Corneta CuCú Verdejo, Castilla y León 2021 (£18, Indigo Wines): From vines at 750m above sea level in

Segovia, this is Verdejo in rippling, pure, limpid style, filled with lemon and dill.

• Javier Sanz Rey Santo Verdejo, Rueda 2021 (£10.99, Hallgarten & Novum Wines): Classic modern (if that’s not too much of a tautology) Verdejo in a pristine, clean style from a consistently excellent producer at a good price.

Galicia: Spanish white wine’s true north

From the international success story of Rías Baixas Albariño to the aromatic domestic favourites that are Ribeiro’s white blends, and the hugely varied expressions of Godello on offer in Valdeorras and Monterrei … taken as a whole, Galicia is one of Europe’s most dynamic and varied white wine regions (its reds, notably in

the dramatic, swooping granitic valleys of Ribeira Sacra, are pretty interesting too, of course).

Experimentation in Rías Baixas is leading to some fascinating new approaches to Albariño, whether it’s the use of chestnut barrels (Eulogio Pomares), granite tanks (Mar de Frades) or extended skin contact and orange wines (the go-ahead local co-operative Martín Codax’s Orange Wine Albariño, among others). Godello, too, can vary from the reductive-flinty Burgundian (Rafael Palacios) to leesy, lemony and salty-mineral (Valdesil Sobre Lías).

Elsewhere, Galicia’s best producers are taking a back-to-the-future approach with old-vine field blends in large neutral oak (Fedellos do Couto), or simply providing some of the world’s most reliably refreshing, direct, but characterful dry whites (Ailalá Treixadura). One of the

rising stars of the white wine world over the past 20 years, Galicia has remained a place to watch, even as it has matured.

Three for your list

:

• Pazo de Señorans Albariño Colleccíon, Rías Baixas 2018 (£21, Alliance Wine): Five months on the lees, 30 months in bottle, and an Albariño of real depth, length and energy.

• Rafael Palacios Louro do Bolo Godello, Valdeorras 2021 (£22, Liberty Wines): From a master of Godello, a sensitively oaked, lemon-scented, Burgundian take on the variety.

• Fedellos do Couto Consabrancas, Galicia 2020 (£26, Indigo Wines): A luminous, endlessly fascinating field blend of Doña Blanca, Godello, Albariño, Treixadura, Lado and Torrontes from Ribeira Sacra.

From Catalonia to Valencia: Mediterranean adventure

If Galician whites are all about the saltyfreshening influence of the Atlantic, then the wines of Catalonia and Valencia get much of their verve from the Mediterranean. High altitude, as in much of Spain (the second-most mountainous country in Europe) also plays its part, as does the increasingly confident use of local grape varieties.

In Catalonia, two varieties have become particularly emblematic. The first, Xarel. lo, is still more familiar to most drinkers outside the region for its role as one third of the classic Cava trio. Over the past 20 years, however, it has been taken up as the flagship dry white variety of Penedès, and, perhaps because it still has a ring of novelty as single-varietal, it’s been subject to a certain amount of experimentation, with amphorae, stainless steel, oak, chestnut, varying times on skins and lees all bringing something different to wines that at their best have a distinctive chalk

texture, a touch of salt seasoning, stone fruit and modest alcohol.

A similar panopoly of approach and styles can be found in the other Catalan contender, Garnacha Blanca, which has become strongly associated with the upland southern Catalan DO of Terra Alta, where, to generalise, it produces wines of stone-fruited richness and stony mineral coolness.

Heading south, into Valencia, Jumilla, Alicante and Yecla, Malvasia has enjoyed a revival, as it has elsewhere in Spain (notably Rioja) and is behind some of the region’s most distinctive and evocative wines. And Merseguera has had a similiar reputational overhaul as the local red Bobal, thanks to producers such as Mustiguillo and Baldovar 923, with immensely talented Javier Revert including both varieties alongside the profoundly

obscure Tortosí, Trepadell, and Verdi in his brilliant indigenous pick-and-mix of a field blend, Micalet.

Three for your list

• Gallina de Piel, Ikigall Penedès Xarel.lo/ Malvasia/Muscat 2021 (£14.95, Liberty Wines): 85% Xarel.lo from former El Bullí sommelier David Seijas, an arresting introduction to the chalky texture and herbal-fruity charms of the Catalan grape.

• La Comarcal La Font, Valencia 2021 (£18.50, Alliance Wine): 100% Malvasia from high altitudes with extended lees ageing in concrete: a ripple of Mediterranean hillside scents.

• Altavins Ilercavonia, Terra Alta 2021 (£16.50, Jeroboams Trade): Lusciously tropical fruited, broad and mouth-filling Garnacha Blanca with a freshening streak of Mediterranean scrubland herbs.

The dramatic valleys of Ribeira Sacra, where Albariño and Godello are the main white varieties

That’s it, I’m done. Get me a oneway ticket to Madeira. Never have I encountered something that has caused me such deep gloom, anger and annoyance. Nothing that symbolises the erosion of society and culture and basic hatred that the haves have for the havenots. This would never have happened under the queen’s reign. It could only have happened in this hinterland of monarch.

Hellman’s have released some kind of fake, cynical, egg and fat-based product, and called it “Mayo”.

(Jordan says I have covered mayonnaise in (an) Amazing Lunch(es) before/covered Amazing Lunches in mayonnaise(s) before – but by god, if there’s one thing I believe in, it’s mayonnaise. Also Jordan doesn’t like mayo(nnaise) so cannot understand why it would appear as a central motif in my essays. Montaigne had habit, nature, perspective and friendship; I have yellow labels and mayonnaise and late-stage capitalism.

I gave it up, once, in some kind of foolhardy resolution and it was the only time in my life that I actively lost weight. But seriously, seriously, what is the point of being thin when you can no longer have mayonnaise? And not that shitty Heinz mayonnaise, NO, it burns, it burns, I could give that shit up, no bother.

First came Hellman’s Light: “You can’t taste the difference”. Yes you can, what is wrong with you? It quite clearly tastes of ash and misery. It tastes of lack of conviction. If you are going to allow mayonnaise into your life, just let it in, welcome the weight gain and the mayonnaise deposits around your eyes.

26. STATE OF THE MAYONNATION

It’s white, it’s wobbly, it’s life affirming. Phoebe Weller of Valhalla’s Goat in Glasgow will accept no substitute for the original, high-octane, leaded Hellman’s was the same thing as mayonnaise. “Oh you want whole egg mayonnaise,” mad bastard Scott told me. Let me tell you, I took the first aeroplane out of that godforsaken island.

I don’t want “real mayonnaise” either, with the finding of the food processor and the dribbling and the yellowness, I want the one true Real Mayonnaise, Hellman’s, all white and wobbly, all life affirming and food affirming.

“New Great Value Recipe” should

have alerted me instantly to a New Piss-Take. But it looked so familiar sitting next to the incorrect Heinz in my local birdfood/wood/cleaning product bargain warehouse. Same gold central banner but rather than proudly stating Real Mayonnaise on it, an unassuming, understated – Mayo. Comparing the two now, the differences are clear. But I thought it was a special edition, a Cost of Living Crisis special. Are you eating cardboard pretending it’s food? Hellman’s have got you!

The “mayonnaise” itself looks like it has sat on a warm truck for too long – it doesn’t “grip the bottle” in the same way that it should. That is because it is not made with good old fashioned rapeseed oil (78%), it is made with fully refined soybean oil (65%). Oil from a soybean? Witchcraft!

It has hints of mayonnaise to it, initially – on the nose there is no discernible difference. A great dead patch hits the midpalate before essence of Real stuff surfaces once more, dissipating to brown Tuesday afternoon in February dried leaves. Finally it leaves you with a slight Coffeemate impression of creaminess. An abomination!

Twelve years of Tory rule, culminating in this. I am not surprised.

I hope they have Hellman’s on Madeira.

Vineyards in the Hunter Valley

One of the reasons I left Australia and my glittering, door-to-door encyclopedia (ask Google) salesman job was their arrogant idiocy in thinking thickened salad cream

Our goal at The Crossings is to leverage our amazing coastal position, and capture that enlivening, refreshing feeling you get from being near the ocean in every single bottle.

The Crossings wines came before Yealands was established but ended up in the Awatere Valley for the same reason – to make the best Sauvignon possible!

The Crossings is a premium offering aimed at independent wine merchants, to bring Sauvignon Blanc to their customers who are looking for classic examples at the quality end of the spectrum. Being under Yealands ownership means we can achieve greater results in terms of sustainability impact and representing Marlborough wines globally.

The Awatere is such a unique region and amazing Sauvignon Blanc is grown here.  It’s cooler and we get a lot more wind, resulting in a slower ripening. The soils are a mixture of alluvial gravel and wind-borne loess, often with a diverse composition of stone materials. All of this helps to create a Sauvignon Blanc with beautifully intense aromatics – typically on the more herbal spectrum (fresh herbs, white flowers) and with lovely minerality.

The Pacific Ocean plays a massive part in both the wines and the lifestyle here in Marlborough. Seafood and summer days are all a key part of living in this special place. The ocean also has a moderating effect on the climate for the more coastal vineyards like ours, reducing the diurnal temperature (the difference between day and night-time temperatures), and reducing disease pressure. Our coastal location allows us to produce a unique Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc that’s really refreshing.

Sustainability is extremely important

The Crossings Pinot Gris 2022

Brimming with concentrated notes of ripe pear, yellow nectarine, and honeysuckle, with underlying spicy aromas. The palate is luscious and generous, showing wonderful balance between fruit and acidity with a long dry finish. Enjoy with poultry and mushroom dishes such as creamy pasta with porcini.

for us and has been in our DNA since the start. In practice it means we’re constantly thinking about how we grow grapes and make our wine with a sustainability lens – making sure we are doing things that set us up well for the future and reduce our carbon footprint. We have invested in modern winery equipment to reduce our emissions and power usage; solar panels supply 20% of our electricity needs and burning our vine prunings generates hot water for the winery. We are certified carbon zero and we’re working towards being carbon neutral by 2050.

We’ve been fortunate to source our Sauvignon Blanc fruit from the same vineyards since 1996, but as the demand grows, new vineyards have needed to be planted, and we’ve been careful to keep to areas that produce the flavours we require for The Crossings Sauvignon Blanc. I’d say our style has become more tropical fruit flavoured, with a riper style. The move to screwcaps in the early 2000s has helped us keep the lovely fresh aromatics in the bottle.

I think Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc has earned a great reputation around the world for its clean and crisp style, plus it is so food-friendly it’s hard to see consumers moving away from it in a hurry. The consistency of quality and style have been critical to its success. People know what to expect when they choose a Marlborough Sav, and the drinkability means they’ll keep coming back for more. I always aim to make wines that make you want that second glass.

The UK is an important market with a lot of opportunity in the on and offtrade for The Crossings. Mentzendorff are very engaged with the brand and eager to grow it off the back of the new-look label. I’ve done a few online tastings with the UK but would love to visit in person soon.

The Crossings Sauvignon Blanc 2022

It radiates purity of site. An enticing bouquet of flowering herbs, tropical fruits and citrus. The palate is brimming with pure fruit and bright fresh acidity that drives a complex and mineral finish. Enjoy with both fresh and cooked seafood dishes.

Wolkenhorst The Crossings Awatere Valley

The Crossings is a pioneer among Awatere Valley winegrowers, and has been part of the Yealands Wine Group since 2011.

The focus is on low yields and achieving good vine balance to produce fruit that ripens uniformly and with maximum flavour intensity. All three vineyards are accredited through the Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand programme.

Imported by Mentzendorff mentzendorff.co.uk

The Crossings Pinot Noir 2021

Bright red berry and cassis flavours, with warming spice aromas. The palate is nicely balanced with fine tannins and an underlying minerality, creating a wine that is elegant, yet structured. Enjoy with dishes such as lamb rack, roast pork and duck breast.

Positive points for New Zealand wines

David Williams looks at the state of play for the Kiwis, both at home and in the UK independent trade, and finds there’s quite a lot of good news – as well as some challenges

1. More wine, please

Not having enough wine to meet demand isn’t exactly the worst problem a wine country could face. Indeed, when some in the New Zealand trade talk about their country’s issues with the short 2021 harvest, it can sound like a flippant humblebrag of the kind you might hear in a work interview. “If anything, we are just too popular!”

For importers in export markets such as the UK and US, however, the shortage of, especially, Sauvignon Blanc over the past year was a very real headache, requiring careful stock management and, in some cases, creative sourcing and labelling to keep up with drinkers’ insatiable demand for all things gooseberry and nettle-scented. And exports, inevitably, plummeted – by 13% in total by volume, with domestic sales of New Zealand wine at their lowest level in nearly two decades, according to New Zealand Winegrowers.

Those problems should be largely corrected over the coming year, and not because New Zealand has, in the interim, become less popular, or because customers have been won over to the offerings of those alternative suppliers they turned to – Chilean, South African – to make up any shortfall. Production has more than rebounded: where 2021 was, at 370,000 tonnes (or 266.4m litres), the smallest Kiwi harvest since 2013, 2022 is the country’s largest ever: 532,000 tonnes, or 384m litres.

With importers very much ready and waiting to re-stock their inventories, sales and consumption look set to rise again. Indeed, according to figures released by New Zealand Winegrowers at the end of 2022, volume for the year until September 2022 was down by 4% overall, but value has never been higher. New Zealand wine exports were worth a record NZ$2.03bn for the full year, up 6% on 2020, with the month of September 2022 setting a new record of NZ$287m for a month, the first time a single month’s exports of New Zealand wine has exceeded a quarter of a billion dollars.

2. More staff, please

New Zealand’s famously strict Covid-19 protocols finally loosened over the southern hemisphere winter, with the country’s border

finally reopening to all international travellers on July 31. That came too late for many New Zealand grape growers, however, who had to battle as they had in 2021 with a considerably reduced labour force as they brought in the 2022 harvest. Indeed, according to New Zealand Winegrowers, the manpower shortage was so acute that some wineries were forced to close for some periods during the vintage – an “unprecedented situation”.

But if the re-opening of borders is likely to cause a measure of relief for the upcoming 2023 vintage, there is a sense in New Zealand that Covid-19 merely exacerbated an already-existing problem. Even with a return to a full, pre-Covid level flow of migrant labour (which has yet to happen) to complement the industry’s 7,300 full-time staff, with unemployment in the country at historically low levels, there is a structural lack of skilled full-time and seasonal workers available to the country’s 744 registered wineries, and 706 registered wine grape growers.

While other problems, such as ongoing shipping delays and the spiralling cost of dry goods, remain acute, New Zealand producers can at least comfort themselves that they are not the only country having to deal with them.

The labour issue feels different, however. No wonder New Zealand Winegrowers has identified “labour supply as a key concern for growers and wineries. If not resolved, it will curtail future growth and export earnings for our sector […] it remains a major focus for the year ahead”.

Free-trade agreement will have benefits for both sides

3. New Zealand unchained?

The British government may be predictably, pitifully far from signing sufficient trade deals to replace those lost after Brexit. And trade between the UK and the EU may still be considerably tougher than it was before December 31, 2020. But the UK wine industry does at least seem to be happy with an agreement in principle for a free-trade deal signed with New Zealand in March 2022.

The removal of tariffs on New Zealand wine is the headline win touted by both the UK’s Wine & Spirit Trade Association and New Zealand Winegrowers, with both bodies also expressing satisfaction that New Zealand wine will avoid a staged removal of the tariffs, as will be the case for other agricultural products such as meat and dairy: for wine, tariffs will be removed from day one of the agreement’s adoption into law, whenever that happens. The savings work out at around 10p to 12p on a bottle of still wine, and 22p on a bottle of sparkling.

Other significant provisions in the agreement cover regulatory issues, with the WSTA celebrating the removal of import

certification, while the agreement’s text calls for “recognition by the UK of New Zealand winemaking practices which are confirmed as substantively the same as those the UK already recognises for other countries. The UK will also assess other practices requested for recognition by New Zealand with the aim of recognising as many as possible before signature of the FTA.”

According to the WSTA’s Miles Beale: “This is a great deal for the UK’s wine importers and the jobs supported across the UK, which rely on over £750m in sales of New Zealand wine in the UK annually – from bottling and logistics to hospitality and retail. This modern FTA not only eliminates many tariff barriers, but permanently removes wine import certification for New Zealand wines and broadens the accepted list of New Zealand’s oenological practices permitted.”

New Zealand Winegrowers CEO Philip Gregan’s official take on the deal is equally upbeat. “This will help remove technical barriers to trade, and minimise burdens from certification and labelling requirements,” he said. “It will also support future growth in the market, and encourage exporters to focus on the UK.”

Autumn in Hawke’s Bay

I have always been interested in the family business, even as a child. The process of growing grapes, making wine and selling wine has always had an attraction, and vintage, with all the activity, was always a special time.

I did a small amount of work in Australia as part of my wine making degree from Roseworthy College, but the rest has been New Zealand-based.

Babich Wines was among the early adopters when sustainability started being formalised and standardised through official accreditation in the late 80s and early 90s. But in a sense, we’ve been operating sustainably for well over 100 years. My grandfather, Josip Babich, started making wine in 1916 and even back then he had a reputation for integrity and treating his team, suppliers, customers, and of course his land with great respect. I think he knew that if he wanted his winery to thrive for generations to come, he needed to take a long-term, sustainable business mindset.

Our contribution, along with other New Zealand wineries, to the introduction of sustainability certification in the 80s and 90s was really a continuation of that, culminating in our Irongate Vineyard in Hawke’s Bay being the first in New Zealand to be independently certified as sustainable.

I’ve always said, “I may not meet my great-grandchildren, but I’m always thinking of them”, so for us, sustainability is about finding ways to produce great wine today, without compromising our ability to make great wine tomorrow. To do that, we’re focused on water conservation, organic winemaking, sustainable certification, and packaging, while making sure we’re also supporting the communities we operate in – both here and abroad.

Sustainability as a term has become devalued to a degree, but the flipside of being a marketing buzzword is that businesses have been promoting the need to run our businesses and live our lives more sustainably, to the point that sustainability is now a widely held, mainstream concept. People are looking at claims more critically and holding businesses more accountable for the way they operate. And because of its adoption by marketing departments, sustainability is a journey we’re all on together now, so ultimately you could argue it’s a good thing.

The geographic distribution of our vineyards can present some operational challenges but the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. We have a distinct style we try to achieve for each of our wines and ranges, so having access to grapes from company-owned vineyards in a variety of sub-regions gives us a lot of flexibility to assemble a blend that achieves the quality and style we’re after.

Meanwhile, the diversity in terroir means we can find some really exciting and distinctive flavours with our single vineyard wines. I think we have the best of both worlds.

Our aim has always been to sustainably craft wines that are stylish and refined, and have easy-drinking appeal. Flavour, complexity and craft are important, but not at the expense of approachability. That philosophy still rings true today. To us, the second (or third) glass should always taste just as good, if not better, than the first.

New Zealand wine is entering an exciting phase in the UK market as consumers have matured and the free-trade agreement comes into place. In the past, the view has been that any New Zealand wine is good enough, but today that’s no longer the case. There is more diversity and excitement in the category than ever with organic wines becoming more and more popular for their sustainability and unique flavour profiles. Consumers are exploring different styles and expressions from different regions, and they’re seeking out wines that have a unique provenance and a story behind them.

The mainstream producers will always be there, and will always be popular, but consumers are increasingly learning that not all New Zealand wines are created equal and New Zealand wine is far from being a one trick pony.

David Babich

Babich Wines

Croation immigrant Josip Babich made his first wine in Auckland in 1916 and his descendants are still going strong with the third generation of the family, David Babich, now holding the reins. Babich boasts an impressive 428 hectares under vine, spread across 13 vineyards in Auckland, Hawke’s Bay and Marlborough.

Imported by Berkmann Wine Cellars

berkmann.co.uk info@berkmann.co.uk 020 7609 4711

Babich Black Label Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir

Both of these wines have been crafted to be best enjoyed with food. We have worked hard to retain complexity and preserve the intense varietal characters in the wines, without losing our hallmark subtlety and drinkability. It’s a fine line to tread but the result is two beautifully structured wines that really over-deliver on quality and flavour.

Sauvignon’s getting more interesting

4. Sauvignon on song

The importance of Sauvignon Blanc and Marlborough to New Zealand wine cannot be overstated. The numbers tell their own story. Sauvignon Blanc covers 26,559ha, or 64% of New Zealand’s total 41,603ha of vineyards, and accounts for 80% of the country’s exports. Marlborough is by far the biggest wine region, with its 29,415ha making it almost six times the size of second-placed Hawke’s Bay, which has barely moved from its 4,786ha over the past decade, a period in which Marlborough has added around 6,500ha of vineyards to its total.

While one of the keys to Marlborough Sauvignon’s success has been its consistency, offering consumers a similar level of reassurance and predictability to brands in other sectors, there is plenty of scope for diversity, with producers experimenting with terroir-driven, single-site wines; with barrel and concrete egg fermentation and ageing; with extended lees and skin contact; and with such out-there additions to the winemaking process as tannins extracted from green tea leaves (Loveblock Tee) and oysters (Vandal).

Sparkling Sauvignon is also establishing itself as a distinctive genre of fruit-driven fizz that is defined on its own terms rather than by its resemblance to Champagne and other bottle-fermented sparkling wines.

with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir especially punching above their weight in terms of places, is a good illustration of the independent sector’s faith in New Zealand’s “other” varieties.

With 5,807ha, Pinot Noir is New Zealand’s second-most-planted variety overall, and it remains the clear leader of New Zealand red plantings, ahead of Merlot with 1,077ha, Syrah (444ha) and Cabernet Sauvignon (207ha). For whites, Chardonnay (3,187ha) is just ahead of Pinot Gris (2,809ha) with Riesling (619ha) some way back in fourth. Distinctive Kiwi versions of all these varieties have their followings in UK indies. But some of the most promising New Zealand wines The Wine Merchant team has tasted over the past year are produced from grape varieties that are yet to break into the Top 15 most-planted varieties: Albariño, Grüner Veltliner, Cabernet Franc and Gamay all look well-suited to both New Zealand’s growing conditions and modern consumer preferences.

5. Sustaining the sustainability message

When you ask UK suppliers to pick out which winemaking country is taking sustainability most seriously, most will include New Zealand at or near the top of their list.

The country’s reputation is partly based on being an early adopter: its Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand certification initiative was the first of its kind when it was launched in 1996. Signatories are required to follow a strict auditing and reporting regime, which collates information on vineyard and winery practices, including an “annual spray diary” detailing all the agrichemical applications used that year.

Some 96% of the total New Zealand vineyard is now managed in accordance with the scheme, which also provides personalised greenhouse gas reports for all its members, as the industry closes in on its target to be carbon neutral by 2050. Organic production also growing fast in New Zealand, with 10% of New Zealand wineries are now certified organic or biodynamic.

5. Varietal plenitude

The New Zealand that consumers get to see in UK independents is very different to the overwhelmingly Sauvignon-dominated one they find in supermarkets. Of course, Sauvignon remains important outside the multiples. But the balance of styles given places in The Wine Merchant New Zealand Top 50 by our panel of independent wine merchant judges (see last month’s supplement),

The annual sustainability report issued by SWNZ shows the industry still has a long way to go on a number of measures, from water use and carbon footprint, to waste and soil health. Crucially, however, and unlike many of their peers in other wine-producing countries, the transparent approach demanded by SWNZ means we are able to see just how far they have to go.

All of which means that, while the industry’s environmental commitments are seen as an important part of maintaining the clean, green New Zealand wine brand, it would be wrong to dismiss them as greenwashing. When it comes to sustainability, collectively and individually New Zealand wine producers are clearly heading in the right direction.

How’s life at Hunter’s? It’s been growing ... does it still feel like a family business?

Ed: Jane is still the owner and managing director of the winery, 40+ years on. We are one, if not the only, original winery from the 1980s in Marlborough to still be owned by the same family. That is something we are fiercely proud of as it seems every winery is tagged as “familyowned” these days.

Absolutely it feels like a family business. I have my office sandwiched between Jane (Aunty Jane) and Peter Mac (Dad). We are constantly calling down the hall to each other to ask a question or comment on something.

James is the head winemaker but also has a fair bit to do with the vineyards. I would say that is where he finds the most satisfaction, growing quality grapes to make into quality wine.

How would you say things have changed recently in terms of the way you make wines and the way they taste?

James: We are constantly tweaking our wines to make them more appealing in market and to adapt to changes in consumer trends. This is easy to do in Marlborough as we do not have the heritage of other wine regions. We like to spend a lot of time with the people tasting and talking about our wines. In recent years, we have made changes to our wines to be more fruit forward, softer and more approachable at a younger age.

Does Marlborough still seem like a young region? Are people like yourselves still innovating and experimenting?

Ed: For us it certainly still feels young. Innovation and experimentation are still high on everyone’s agenda. Due to the sheer volume of Sauvignon Blanc produced in the region today, wineries really need to battle to make a product that stands

Hunter’s Sauvignon Blanc 2022

The nose shows passion fruit and citrus characters along with grapefruit and green herbs. Dry and saline, the lively palate has a creamy texture, dense complex fruit and a hint of flint.

out from the competition. Other than traditional Sauvignon Blanc, everyone is always looking for the next big thing, whether that be canned wine, or low/no alcohol wine.

We are particularly proud of our Offshoot Pet Nat Sauvignon Blanc, which has gone from strength to strength since it was first produced in 2018. Our 30-plus years of experience making MiruMiru™ Methode sparkling wine lent itself well to the production of the Pet Nat style.

Which varieties are most exciting at the moment?

James: Sauvignon Blanc is the variety that brings me the most joy. It is exciting to see how far we can push the quality of this variety. At Hunter’s we put a lot of emphasis on growing good grapes. We do extra work in the vineyards such as shoot thinning, cover cropping and not using herbicides to enhance the quality of the final product.

I am also excited by Pinot Noir. The Hunter’s Pinot Noir seems to get better with every vintage as we secure better vineyards and learn better viticultural techniques.

Tell us about the Offshoot project and what it’s all about.

Ed: We always wanted a label that we could produce wines under that were a bit different from our estate Hunter’s range. We looked at making a reserve label, Hunter’s Reserve Chardonnay etc, but it has been done by so many other wineries. The Offshoot label allows us to make wines that aren’t necessarily marketed as a “level above” the Hunter’s range. More of a step to the left. This was particularly helpful with the Pet Nat wines as the playful nature of the Offshoot packaging lends itself well to the style of the wines.

What does Hunter’s hope to achieve in

Macdonald Hunter’s Marlborough

Hunter’s is the dream of Ernie and Jane Hunter, a fiercely independent, family-owned winery established in Marlborough over 30 years ago.

“Hunter’s goes from strength to strength … it is a winery of world standing,and certainly among the top dozen in Australasia”

James Halliday Wine Companion

Imported by Jeroboams Trade jeroboamstrade.co.uk

the next five or 10 years?

Ed: We want to take the mantle as New Zealand’s best Sauvignon Blanc producer. Very few wineries in Marlborough are focused on being the best, only the biggest.

Hunter’s Offshoot PetNat 2022

Classic Sauvignon Blanc characters are expressed on the nose that is complemented by beautiful apple and ripe citrus aromas. Lightly sparkling, the palate is vibrant and fresh with passion fruit and pear notes.

Hunter’s Chardonnay 2020

This has a complex, gun-flint nose with beautiful flavours of white peach and citrus undertones. The palate shows ripe orchard fruit, some vanilla notes and linear acidity, leading into a complex and lengthy finish

Sponsored feature

It’s fair to say Joe Wadsack is enthusiastic about the wines of Victoria. Over a three-hour lunch, he barely stops to draw breath as he tells stories about his adventures in the state and the winemakers he so admires.

Whether it’s Yarra Valley Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Sangiovese and Arneis from King Valley or the legendary Muscat of Rutherglen – or indeed any of the other varieties and regions that make cameo appearances – Wadsack seems to have an anecdote to hand.

“You can talk about Victoria very successfully, either region by region or variety by variety,” he says. He proceeds to do a bit of both, but we also hear tales of the characters whose sometimes maverick beliefs have made modern Victoria the success story it is today.

“If you want to find wines that are sitespecific, characterful and very food friendly and you know will go with certain dishes ... if you want to buy wines made in a finewine, region-by-region style, Victoria is the first place you’d look,” he says. “Show wines; medal-winning wines. Wines we used to drink in this country on their own as a bit of a treat.

“For people that understand European fine dining, they’re more inclined to buy wine from Victoria than any other state because those wines are made with the same philosophy.

“Almost everyone who’s there is like an artisanal winemaker in France, and they’re just making the product they want to make. They just want to know, if they build it, will people come? With corporate winemaking, the first conversation is with the accountant – and that doesn’t apply very often in Victoria.

The verve and variety

“There’s no doubt that, in the beginning, it was almost young guns against everyone else.”

There’s also a cultural dimension, with Melbourne’s now international reputation for gastronomy and the arts. “If you’re going to go to one city in Australia for a vacation, it’s got to be Melbourne,” says Wadsack. “The culture, the food, the music – it’s awesome.” With no budget to head there ourselves, our venue is Swain’s, a wine-led eaterie adjoining Hampstead Heath, owned by Victoria native Victoria Sharples. She and her team have put together a menu that begins with eggplant chips, inspired by the Gypsy Bar in Melbourne, and is followed by burrata with peach, figs and almond and then a main of saffron risotto with beef short rib. Dessert is almond and amaretto cake.

We experiment a little with the wines and find that King Valley Sangiovese is pretty much tailormade for the beef.

“There are people all over the world trying to make Sangiovese, and the vast majority of them are failing really badly,” says Wadsack. “Good Sangiovese has all those wonderful umami notes. If Sangiovese is doing its job properly there’s a little bit of Worcester sauce in it that makes it the ultimate companion for beef. For me it’s an inexpensive hit.”

Wadsack reminds us that “there are 22 separate sub-regions in Victoria, and some of them have been making great wines since the 1920s”.

“The soil structures in this part of the world are crazy,” he adds. “Obviously, being Australia, these are ancient soils. They have high water retention which means low-yield vineyards and concentrated fruit. What we get here are wines that come from relatively temperate vineyards, in the main, though the further inland you go in, the more continental it gets. It’s not uncommon in King Valley to hit 41˚C on

A group of independents experiences a whistlestop tour of the Australian state of Victoria in the company of Joe Wadsack. It proves to be a memorable three hours

of Victoria

a harvest day, so everything is picked at night.”

In Wadsack’s opinion, Beechworth, towards the north of the state’s wine country, makes arguably the best Chardonnay in Australia, with “steely minerality but also real flavour”.

Mornington Peninsula has earned a reputation as the home of the country’s benchmark Pinot Noir, and the best Shiraz can compete with anything in the northern Rhône.

“Shiraz is a story that isn’t well told in Victoria but it’s a very important variety,” Wadsack says. “The good ones are absolute bangers. The top wines taste almost like Hermitage. Those wines keep for 20 years. They have that wonderful minerally, smoky almost bacon-fat sort of smell.”

Then there is the crowning glory of the Victoria winemaking tradition: its fortified Muscat. Wadsack puts these wines on the highest pedestal, arguing that the best are comparable with anything from the Douro Valley, and ready to drink younger.

Our indies are impressed

Mark Wrigglesworth, The Good Wine Shop, west London

What regions of Victoria is Mark most enthusiastic about? “Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula and Beechworth,” he says.

“The individual regions have so much to offer and are so diverse it makes it difficult to create a single Victorian identity – other than for good wine, I think.”

Wines that particularly stood out were SubRosa Nebbiolo 2018 and a white Grazia blend from Vinea Marson – “both unique and great quality for the price”.

So do the wines of Victoria have a promising future in the independent trade? “Definitely. Their unique identity and individual character give lots to please the consumer across a broad range of varieties and styles.”

Lisa Owens, Liquorice, Shenfield, Essex

“All the wines were of an excellent standard, especially in terms of their balance,” says Lisa.

“A personal preferences was the Handpicked Chardonnay from Yarra Valley. It paired beautifully with the burrata, peach and fig, complementing the sweeter elements of the dish but not overpowering the creaminess of the cheese. Wonderful!

“A red I found interesting was Pizzini Pietra Rossa Sangiovese from King Valley. It was so well balanced. If I’m honest my expectations were lower, imagining bigger, bolder fruits and not the silky smoothness typical of an Italian Sangiovese, but I was pleasantly wrong.

“Finally, the Stanton & Killeen Classic Rutherglen Muscat was a true delight. My tasting notes simply say ‘delicious’. It felt a treat to have something reminiscent of ‘Christmas in a glass’ in January. I would happily drink this all year round.

“I have been familiar with the most famous regions such as Yarra Valley for many years now. More recently, though, I feel Mornington Peninsula is having its moment and I seem to hear this region being talked about more and more.

“Rutherglen really impressed me, having been a fan of dessert wines for years.

“I am particularly grateful to be introduced to King Valley. The diverse grape varieties here make for interesting tasting and I will be exploring more in this region.

“I believe there will always be consumer appeal where there is quality and there is no doubt Victoria produces some outstanding wines. The variety of grapes and the wildly differing terroir ensures a USP for Victoria and will pique interest for the keener wine consumers.”

WINE VICTORIA

For more information, contact secretariat@winevictoria.org.au

The wines representing a famously diverse state

A line-up selected for our guests to showcase Victoria’s versatility

Redbank Wines Prosecco 2021

King Valley, seeking distributor RRP £12

Rob Dolan White Label Chardonnay 2020

Yarra Valley, Enotria&Coe RRP £22

Vinea Marson Grazia 2017

Heathcote, Vagabond RRP £17

Pizzini Pietra Rosa Sangiovese 2019

King Valley, Enotria&Coe RRP £18.50

Even Keel Pinot Noir 2019

Mornington Peninsula, Graft Wine Co RRP £23.99

Brown Brothers Orange Muscat & Flora 2022

Victoria, Enotria&Coe RRP £8.50

Stanton & Killeen Classic Muscat Rutherglen, ABS RRP £30

Vinea Marson Friulano #7 2017

Heathcote, Vagabond RRP £17

Pizzini Verduzzo 2021

King Valley, Enotria&Coe RRP £13.50

Symphonia Arneis 2021

King Valley, seeking distributor RRP £14

Ringstone Pinot Gris 2021

Victoria, seeking distributor RRP £19.95

Glenlofty Chardonnay 2017 Pyrenees, seeking distributor RRP £10

Handpicked Chardonnay 2018

Yarra Valley, Portal, Dingwall & Norris RRP £20

Redbank Wines Pinot Noir 2021 Pyrenees, seeking distributor RRP £13

WINE VICTORIA

Buller Wines The Nook Pinot Noir 2021

Rutherglen, seeking distributor RRP £13

Rathbone Yering Station Village Pinot Noir 2019

Yarra Valley, Walker & Wodehouse RRP £19

Levantine Hill Pinot Noir 2019

Yarra Valley, seeking distributor RRP £21.50

Rob Dolan White Label Pinot Noir 2019

Yarra Valley, Enotria&Coe RRP £22

Rathbone Mount Langi Ghiran Cliff Edge 2018

Grampians, Walker & Wodehouse RRP £25

Brown Brothers Tarrango 2022

Victoria, Enotria&Coe RRP £12

SubRosa Nebbiolo 2018

Pyrenees, seeking distributor RRP £17

Taste Spain: Wines from Spain Annual Tasting

As we report on pages 33 to 35, this year’s annual Spanish event will feature more than 30 suppliers and 20 Spanish estates.

In all there will be 930 wines from 62 DOs available to taste, made from 85 grape varieties.

Masterclasses will be taking place at both events.

To register, email winesfromspain@ otaria.co.uk.

Tuesday, February 28

RHS Lindley Hall

Elverton Street

London SW1P 2PB

Monday, March 13

Ibérica, 17a E Parade

Leeds LS1 2BH

Raymond Reynolds Spring Tasting

A free-pour tasting designed to showcase the diversity and quality in the portfolio of this specialist importer. Known for its Portuguese wines, Raymond Reynolds also offers a range of wines from Spain and Germany. For more information and to register, email info@ raymondreynolds.co.uk.

Monday, February 27

The Beeswing

Kampus MCR

24a Minshull Street

Manchester M1 3GL

Specialist Importers Trade

Tasting

SITT returns with a wide array of wines from importers specialising in the independent trade.

For more information and for registration, visit sittastings.com.

Monday, February 27

St Mary’s Church York Street

London W1H 1PQ

Wednesday, March 1

11 Portland Street

Manchester M1 3HU

Alhambra, Spain

Mentzendorff Annual Portfolio

Tasting

Join the Mentzendorff team for a day of tasting and masterclasses.

The company’s portfolio includes big names such as Champagne Bollinger and Ayala, Taylors and Fonseca port, Bodegas Hidalgo-La Gitana, Jean-Luc Colombo, Hamilton Russell Vineyards, Klein Constantia and Kilikanoon.

For more details or to book a masterclass email eve@mentzendorff.co.uk.

Thursday, March 2

One Great George Street

London SW1P 3AA

Wines of Chile Trade Tasting

Edinburgh and Manchester will be hosting Wines of Chile next month.

Both events will showcase wine from some of the country’s most exciting wineries.

The tasting format will be themed freepour tables. The dates will each include a masterclass, hosted by Patrick Schmitt MW, giving an update on the Chilean wine scene.

To register for either the Edinburgh or Manchester tasting, email info@ winesofchile.org.uk and state if you will be joining the masterclass, which in both venues starts at 2pm.

Monday, February 27

The Assembly Rooms

54 George Street

Edinburgh EH2 2LR

Thursday, March 2

The Castlefield Rooms

18-20 Castle Street

Manchester M3 4LZ

All Points North

This collaboration between North South Wines, Richmond Wine Agencies, Vinicon, Wines of Ukraine, WoodWinters, Hatch Mansfield and Walker & Wodehouse means merchants can taste their way around the world at this benchmark event in Edinburgh.

Email Sophie Wren: sophiewren@hatch. co.uk.

Monday, March 6

The Balmoral Hotel

Sir Walter Scott Suite

1 Princes Street

Edinburgh EH2 2EQ

Les Grands Chais de France Private

Wine Days

Les Grands Chais de France will be showcasing its on-trade and indies portfolio at two events in Birmingham and Leeds.

Expect to see wines from leading French domaines and châteaux, a selection of exclusive crémants and international award-winning properties alongside new additions to the portfolio including South Africa’s Neethlingshof.

RSVP to ontrade.uk@lgcf.fr.

Tuesday, March 7

Burlington Hotel

126 New Street

Birmingham B2 4JQ

Thursday, March 9

Aspire

2 Infirmary Street

Leeds LS1 2JP

Sangiovese RESET

Tasting

A host of top estates will participate in Sangiovese RESET, which organisers say will come from every denomination where this famously fickle grape is grown.

These include Brunello di Montalcino, Chianti Classico, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Romagna’s shooting star Modigliana and historic Predappo, as well as Montecucco, Val d’Orcia, Umbria and Marche.

The event is being organised by Hunt & Speller, who will also be running four seminars on the day.

For more information about taking part in any of the seminars, and for registration details, contact Jane Hunt at jane@ huntandspeller.com.

Tuesday, March 7

RHS Lindley Hall

Elverton Street

London SW1P 2PB

Discover Neethlingshof wines at the Grands Chais events in Birmingham and Leeds

Armit Wines Italian Portfolio Tasting

Join the Armit team and their Italian producers for a day of tasting and masterclasses.

Walter Speller MW will present the morning session: Single Vineyard Sangiovese at Querciabella. In the afternoon, Tenuta San Guido Guidalberto Vertical will be presented by Priscilla Incisa della Rochetta.

Around 20 producers will be showcasing their wines, including older vintages, and large formats from Armit’s library stocks will be open on the day. A big bottle prize is also on offer for the best assessment at the blind tasting table.

To RSVP and book a masterclass, contact events@armitwines.co.uk.

Wednesday, March 8

One Great George Street London

SW1P 3AA

Humble Grape & Fortyfive10 Tasting

A collaboration between Humble Grape, Italian wine specialist Fortyfive10 and California wine expert Tiger Vines.

The three specialist importers champion sustainable, organic and biodynamic wines. Email Nicola@humblegrape.co.uk to register.

Wednesday, March 8

Humble Grape Fleet Street

1 St Bride’s Passage

London EC4Y 8EJ

Wines of Nova Scotia Tasting

This is the UK’s first ever masterclass and open-pour tasting dedicated to the wines of the Canadian province.

It’s presented by Sarah Drake from Flint Wines, and Simon Rafuse, head winemaker at Blomindon Estate, who will be hosting five of Nova Scotia’s most exciting wineries: Benjamin Bridge, Blomidon Estate, Lightfoot & Wolfville, Luckett Vineyards and Planter’s Ridge.

The masterclasses will start at 10am and 3pm. Register at westburycom.co.uk/events.

Thursday, March 9 Carousel

21 Charlotte Street

London W1T 1RL

Washington State Wine Tasting

An opportunity to sample a huge range of Washington State wines and meet the winemakers behind them.

Visitors will discover what this region has to offer, from wineries already represented in the UK market as well as those seeking to team up with importers in order to get a foothold here.

There will be 20 producers represented on the day, including Airfield Estates, Betz Family Winery, Double Canyon, Seven Hills Winery, 14 Hands and Spring Valley Vineyard.

Contact Laure Tchiknavorian at ltchiknavorian@sopexa.com for more information.

Monday, March 13

Tanner Warehouse

50 Bermondsey Street

London SE1 3UD

Richmond Wine Agencies Regional Spring Tasting

The specialist importer will be in Bristol to showcase new wines from countries including Spain, the USA, Italy, Greece and South Africa.

The new 2022 vintage of Whispering Angel will also be on taste.

Email tim@richmondwineagencies.com for registration.

Tuesday, March 21

The Airstream

Main Courtyard

Paintworks Event Space

Bath Road

Washington State

Bristol BS4 3EH

New South Wales Trade Tasting

New South Wales is Australia’s second largest wine producing state with 34,000 hectares under vine, accounting for 32% of the country’s $44bn wine economy.

This event will offer a snapshot of the wines emerging from the region recognised as the birthplace of Australian wine. With 13 producers presenting 52 wines, the tasting is a chance to zoom in on six New South Wales wine areas including Canberra District, Hunter Valley, Orange and Tumbarumba.

New South Wales brand ambassador Bert Blaize will be leading masterclasses. These include The Path Less Trodden at 11am; Hunter Valley Semillon & Chardonnay at 3pm; and Hunter Valley Shiraz at 3.15pm.

Contact Emma@eviva.co.uk.

Wednesday, March 22

67 Pall Mall

London SW1Y 5ES

H2Vin & The Wine Treasury Trade Tasting

H2Vin and The Wine Treasury are joining forces to present what they describe as 250 extraordinary wines from around the globe.

The companies will be introducing many new vintages, some new producers and exclusive under-the-radar gems.

Wednesday, March 22

St Martin’s Hall & Lightwell Trafalgar Square

London WC2N 4JH

Vineyards of Hampshire Annual Tasting

All members will be present including Hambledon, Hattingley, Pommery England, The Grange, Exton Park,

Raimes, Danebury, Cottonworth, Black Chalk and the group’s newest member, Quob Park Estate, which is based near Fareham.

Email sarah@vineyardsofhampshire. co.uk.

Wednesday, March 29

67 Pall Mall

London SW1Y 5ES

Bodegas Riojanas

Tasting

This event is an opportunity to taste a range of wines from across the north west of Spain.

These include Rioja, Ribera, Rueda, Toro, Rías Baixas and Monterrei.

Organisers say that registration is essential. Contact daveroles@ bodegasriojanas.com.

Thursday, March 30

Westminster Kingsway College

76 Vincent Square

London SW1P 2PD

Quob Park Estate in Hampshire

LOUIS LATOUR AGENCIES

12-14 Denman Street

London W1D 7HJ

0207 409 7276

enquiries@louislatour.co.uk

www.louislatour.co.uk

hatch mansfield

New Bank House

1 Brockenhurst Road

Ascot

Berkshire SL5 9DL

01344 871800

info@hatch.co.uk

www.hatchmansfield.com

@hatchmansfield

Three wines to watch out for from Louis Latour Agencies at SITT Spring: Monday, Feb 27, London; Wednesday, March 1, Manchester

2019 Banfi Poggio alle Mura Rosso di Montalcino

The culmination of Banfi’s work exploring the Sangiovese clones and viticultural approaches most suitable for their vineyards complemented by innovations in the winery. From selected vineyards surrounding their medieval castle Poggio alle Mura; an enjoyable, fruit-forward yet elegant red.

2019 Smith & Sheth Heretaunga Syrah

From the Gimblett Gravels district of Hawke’s Bay, made by contemporary negociants Steve Smith MW and Brian Sheth. It comes from hand-tended, low yielding vineyards and is made gently, with 14 months’ barrel ageing resulting in a finely tuned wine. Ready to drink, with red berry and savoury notes, but with a good decade ahead of it.

2021 Viu Manent Tiny Trials Cinsault

From the cool Itata Valley ,a corner of Chile where, amongst forests and ravines, you can find twisted Cinsault vines adapted to the sandy granite soils. Viu Manent are working with two 30-year-old vineyards whose location, 20km from the sea, allows for a slow gentle ripening. Vibrant and perfumed with ripe cherry and strawberry fruit notes.

gonzalez byass uk

The Dutch Barn Woodcock Hill

Coopers Green Lane St Albans AL4 9HJ

01707 274790

info@gonzalezbyassuk.com www.gonzalezbyassuk.com

@gonzalezbyassuk

walker

109a Regents Park Road

London NW1 8UR

0207 449 1665

orders@walkerwodehousewines.com www.walkerwodehousewines.com

@WalkerWodehouse

Join

We are delighted to be exhibiting at the upcoming All Points North fine wine tasting March 6. We will be showcasing some of the very best wines from our portfolio.

All Points North Fine Wine Tasting

The Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh –Sir Walter Scott Suite 10am-5pm RSVP: Sophiewren@hatch.co.uk

vindependents

Jessica Hutchinson

jessica@vindependents.co.uk

www.vindependents.co.uk

@vindependents

hallgarten wines

Mulberry House

Parkland Square

750 Capability Green

Luton LU1 3LU

01582 722 538

sales@hnwines.co.uk

www.hnwines.co.uk

@hnwines

In 2023 Hallgarten Wines celebrates 90 years since Fritz Hallgarten, father of Peter Hallgarten, arrived in the UK and started selling wine to restaurants and retail outlets across the country under the name Hallgarten Wines.

Specialising in wines from Germany and the Rhône Valley, Fritz was one of the country’s experts of these wine regions, and built relationships with suppliers that continue at Hallgarten Wines to this day.

In 1947 the company was officially incorporated – and the rest is history!

Famille Helfrich Wines

1, rue Division Leclerc, 67290 Petersbach, France

chris.davies@lgcf.fr

07789 008540

@FamilleHelfrich

malux hungarian wine

020 8959 2796

Visit us at SITT: London February 27

Manchester March 1

To discover our portfolio and exciting NEW wines for 2023 contact: sales@hungarianwineandspirits.com www.hungarianwineandspirits.com

@maluxhungarianwine_ spirits

They’re all smiles to your face …

BERKMANN wine cellars

104d St John Street

London EC1M 4EH 020 7609 4711

info@berkmann.co.uk

www.berkmann.co.uk

@berkmannwine

@berkmann_wine

buckingham schenk

Unit 5, The E Centre

Easthampstead Road

Bracknell RG12 1NF

01753 521336

info@buckingham-schenk.co.uk

www.buckingham-schenk.co.uk

@BuckSchenk

@buckinghamschenk

NEW 2023 WINE LIST

We’re delighted to announce the launch of our 2023 wine list. The list is aimed at Independent merchants and the on trade. This year we’re delighted to bring you an exciting, new and unique list from our portfolio, to complement your range. Please contact our on trade team at sales@buckingham-schenk.co.uk to receive a copy.

Fells

Fells House, Station Road

Kings Langley WD4 8LH

01442 870 900

For more details about these wines and other wines from our awardwinning portfolio from some of the world’s leading wine producing families contact:

info@fells.co.uk www.fells.co.uk

@FellsWine

je_fells

richmond wine agencies

The Links, Popham Close

Hanworth

Middlesex TW13 6JE

020 8744 5550

info@richmondwineagencies.com

@richmondwineag1

Richmond Wine Agencies

Bristol Regional Spring Tasting

Tuesday, March 21

With lots of lovely new wines from Spain, USA, Italy, Greece, South Africa and more along with some of our old favourites Richmond Wine Agencies would like to invite you to our 2023 Spring Tasting.

NEW 2022 Whispering Angel will be available to taste.

DATE: Tuesday, March 21

VENUE: The Airstream | Main Courtyard | Paintworks Event Space | Bath Road | Bristol | BS4 3EH

TIME: 10am to 3.30pm with a light lunch and coffee available

Please RSVP to: tim@richmondwineagencies.com

liberty wines

Look to Spain for elegant and expressive whites

The arrival of spring calls for elegant white wines with revitalising acidity and fresh aromatics. We’re looking to Spain, where cooling Atlantic influence, prime high-altitude sites and an intricate patchwork of soils provide immense potential for producing exceptional white wines. Across the country, producers are championing indigenous grape varieties and unearthing forgotten regions. Well adapted to their local climate, soils and topography, the vines produce distinctive white wines with a sense of place, which have successfully moved from curiosities to firm favourites.

From Ribeiro in Galicia, the “Manar dos Seixas” 2019 from Gallina de Piel – an exciting winemaking project from David Seijas, former head sommelier at El Bulli – is an unoaked blend of the local Treixadura, Albariño, Godello and Loureiro, with savoury complexity, nervy acidity and wonderful texture. Sourced from an 80-year-old vineyard at 820 metres in the cool area of Segovia, the unoaked Flor de Vetus Rueda Verdejo 2021 is bursting with tropical, white stone and citrus fruit balanced by refreshingly crisp acidity. And El Coto’s vibrant, unoaked Rioja Blanco 2021 sees 85% Viura blended with Verdejo and Sauvignon Blanc to add freshness and aromatic intensity. El Coto is the largest vineyard owner in Rioja and its new Finca Carbonera estate, with parts reaching almost 900 metres above sea level, is the highest vineyard in the region – perfect for the new white varieties (Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Verdejo) recently authorised by the Rioja Wine Board.

Q&A

David Gleave MW Liberty Wines

Do you have any sporting loyalties?

Crystal Palace by adoption, the Toronto Maple Leafs by birth.

Who’s your favourite wine critic?

Hugh Johnson’s wonderful prose turned me onto wine, while Jancis Robinson has written the books to which I refer most.

Andrew Jefford’s new book, Drinking With The Valkyries, is an awe-inspiring collection of some of the best prose ever written on wine. But Matt Walls, Julia Harding and Neal Martin, among many others, are the leading lights of the successive generation, and are inspiring a vibrant younger generation.

What’s your most treasured possession? My bicycle – a Pinarello Dogma I bought second hand in Italy almost 10 years ago.

What’s your proudest moment?

In retrospect, the decision Luciann and I took in late 1996 to start Liberty Wines in 1997. At the time, it was a bit of a white-knuckle ride, but with the benefit of hindsight it makes me very proud to look at what I was involved in creating.

What’s your biggest regret?

That I don’t speak more languages, and that my Italian isn’t better. Languages are the key to understanding countries, so I miss out on a lot by not speaking more.

Born and educated in Toronto, David Gleave became an MW in 1986 and founded Liberty Wines in March 1997, starting with a team of four including Tim Tweedy and Luciann Flynn. He stepped down as MD in 2022 and is now the chairman of the company.

What’s the first wine you bought?

In my first role as a buyer for an importer, the first producer I brought in was Isole e Olena, and the first wines we bought were the 1983 Chianti Classico and 1982 Cepparello. Not a bad place to start but more by luck than judgement, I’d say.

What job would you be doing if you weren’t in the wine trade?

I stumbled into wine after the year I took off university to travel became five years. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.

How do you relax?

I hop on my bike if I can. As I need to focus solely on the road and traffic, it means I

shut out most other things from my mind.

What’s the best book you’ve recently read?

Mussolini in Myth and Memory: The First Totalitarian Dictator by Paul Corner. Given recent political developments, and not only in Italy, I thought it important to understand how Mussolini came to power. With Giorgia Meloni in power in Italy and with right wing populists strident in the UK and the US, we need to understand what happened in the past if we are to have any idea of how to deal with the future.

Who’s your favourite music artist? That is a bit like being asked what your favourite wine is – impossible to answer. I can only reduce it to Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Miles Davis.

Give us a Netflix recommendation. The Offer. It is a fictionalised account of the making of The Godfather and is a brilliant look at a great cultural creation.

Who’s your hero?

The person I learned the most from since I started out in wine, and who has had the greatest influence on my career, is Nick Belfrage, who recently died. He taught me the importance of both words that define our industry, the wine business

Any hidden talents?

I’m a London taxi driver manqué. I used to love discovering all the cut-throughs – until they were closed off.

What’s your favourite place in the UK? London.

If we could grant you one wish, what would it be?

If I could wave a magic wand and turn the clock back to early June 2016 when we were members of the EU, I’d do it. Leaving the EU has made us poorer in economic, social and cultural terms, so I’d grasp with alacrity any wish that gave me the power to overturn that decision.

“I thought it important to understand how Mussolini came to power”