The Wine Merchant issue 125

An independent magazine for independent retailers Issue 125, June 2023

Suppliers warn merchants of summer price increases

Hallgarten will absorb 44p duty hike on selected wines for a month, but most suppliers will pass it on immediately

As the trade braces itself for the August duty increase that will add 44p to the price of most still wines, suppliers are warning they are in no position to help cushion the blow for their retail customers.

Hallgarten & Novum Wines has announced it will be absorbing the increase, across a selection of 148 of its wines, until September. Other major suppliers to indies have been examining their options, with a few still undecided of their response to Hallgarten’s move as The Wine Merchant went to press.

Most have said that they have been fighting to keep trade prices down for some time and margins are far too tight for them to take the pain on duty. Many suppliers have already put prices up by around 7% in recent months and say that their prices will have to rise again in August simply to reflect the duty increase.

However, there may be some better news on the horizon, with suppliers reporting that inflationary pressures – involving everything from wine shortages to logistics, glass costs, wage rises and foreign exchange – may be levelling off and in some cases easing. ABS reports that the cost of a shipping container from Australia has halved since its last price list appeared.

• Analysis, page 12.

Dog of the month: Ned Winyl, Manningtree, Essex

After some frustrating delays with the building work, Vinotopia is now counting down the days until it relocates to its swish new Wine Barn in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, later this summer. Story on page 5.

Meet the winners of this year’s Independent Wine Buyers Awards

4 comings & Goings

Ben Williams is preparing for adventures in a chocolate factory

14 rising stars

Chloe Malone loves the wine trade under Penny Champion’s tutelage

16 tried & TESTED

A close encounter with Georgia’s answer to Malbec, and much more

24 burglary at the bond

When Tuggy Meyer’s wine was stolen, he ended up losing £400k

30 iron & Rose

A profile of the Shrewsbury wine merchant and bar operator

50 spirits special

The categories and brands that would liven up any indie range

54 focus on ITALY

We find something to love about 20 wine regions across the boot

70 supplier bulletin

Essential news from leading wine importers who work with indies

79 Q&A with mimi avery

The scion of Bristol’s famous wine dynasty faces our interrogator

Once again The Wine Merchant teamed up with London Wine Fair this year as media partner for the Wine Buyers Awards.

In the independent section, there were two categories – one for larger independents, with a turnover in excess of £750,000, and one for merchants whose sales are below that figure

Large Independent Merchant Wine Buyer of the Year is Nic Rezzouk, wine and spirits buyer for Reserve Wines in Greater Manchester.

Small Independent Merchant Wine Buyer of the Year is Liz Coombes, director of The Artisan Wine & Spirit Company in Salisbury.

The awards are judged by a senior panel of industry experts, including representatives of the independent trade, such as former winner Hal Wilson of Cambridge Wine Merchants.

Nic and Liz were presented with their awards on the floor of the London Wine Fair.

THE WINE MERCHANT MAGAZINE

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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

The Wine Merchant is circulated to the owners

UK’s 1,025 specialist independent wine shops.

Liz Coombes

Nic Rezzouk

Ben’s chocolate factory adventure

The Old Liquor Store is set to open in York next month. Ben Williams, one of the original founders of In Vino Veritas in Walthamstow, has returned to his hometown to start the new venture in partnership with his wife, Gabi.

Williams secured the premises, which used to form part of the Terry’s chocolate factory, a year ago but it’s taken time to sort out all the “legal and planning stuff”.

Finally refurbishment has begun on the 2,000 square foot space, which will include a restaurant as well as a dedicated wine and deli retail area.

“With In Vino Veritas I started out as a shop and then became a sort of bar with a food offering,” says Williams. “I’m kind of doing it the other way around this time, so it’ll be very much food-led and I’ve got a great chef coming on board. We’ll be a café and breakfast place in the morning, going through for lunch and dinner. We’ll do wine pairings and wine evenings. There’s going to be all sorts of events.”

The factory and offices have been converted into luxury apartments and new housing has been built on the old estate. Williams will be situated on the ground floor of what was once the confectionery firm’s liquor store: hence the name already attributed to the building, and Williams sees no need to change it.

“There’s no other wine retailer for a good 30-minute walk,” he says. “It’s all upmarket residential and it’s right next to the racecourse as well.

“We’re looking for a Champagne sponsor for our garden, which we’re expecting to be packed on race days especially.”

Williams plans to keep his on-trade and retail wine lists completely separate. “At Walthamstow it was pick it off the shelf and pay your corkage, but I’m not going to do that this time. I think that’s fine for your house wines because the margins are

Essex indie starts small with refills

Steve Heminway is setting out his stall with Colne Valley Wines in Essex.

As well as holding wine events in the Earls Colne area, he’s now operate from a concession in Ecolnes Refillery Store.

He’s starting with a range of bottled wines with the intention of working with Sustainable Wine Solutions to provide wine on tap with a refill service.

roughly what you’d expect in a restaurant, but it begins to get difficult on £30-£40 bottles. You’re putting a lot of capital in your stock and you don’t really ever get the margin back. With the current cost of electricity and staffing it just doesn’t work out.”

After selling In Vino Veritas in 2019, Williams started Winehack, an online business which saw him partner up with Jeroboams Trade to fulfill his orders via LCB. Williams says he has continued his relationship with the London wholesaler, which will provide his core range.

“Beyond that, we’ll probably look at a few more quirky, natural options,” he says, “but I don’t want to have too many suppliers. You end up having to meet those minimum orders so your range is naturally flexing quite a lot to accommodate that, and it creates a cash flow nightmare that nobody really wants.”

“Part of our service is going to be sourcing the wines that our customers want,” explains Heminway, “so I think I’ll end up with way too many suppliers.”

No stranger to wine retail, Heminway was with Oddbins in the 90s and went on to own and run bars in London.

“I’m based in Earls Colne, and I know there’s a lot of wine drinkers around here who love the sort of advice and the wines that I’ve given them over the years, so we’re just going to continue to grow that,” he says.

So, will this all lead to his own premises? “Yes,” he says. “I’d do it as a hybrid offer. Wine shop by day and wine bar by night. That’s very much something that I’m looking for it to become.”

• Ben’s Wine & Tapas in Totnes, Devon, closed last month. Ben Watson opened the bar and shop in 2017 as an addition to a business running a number of farm shops in the area. He says: “This has been a difficult decision. However, over the past three years we have faced incredible ongoing difficulty with staffing, with no foreseeable end.”

• The Grape Escape in Ipswich has ceased trading after only five months. Owner Lucy Newton tells The Wine Merchant: “We’ve just not seen the sales we needed. We think that perhaps Ipswich and the specific shop location is just not quite right, coupled with people watching what they are spending money on right now.”.

The premises is on the site of Terry’s of York

Williams has 2,000 sq ft to work with

Vinotopia gets set for barnstorming

Vinotopia’s long awaited Wine Barn in Nailsworth is set to open in late summer.

Managing director Andy Cole says delays have been down to problems with the groundworks, the weather and general vagaries of the building industry.

The pilings (all 92 of them) were drilled before Christmas so, with the footings finally in, a building started to appear out of the ground just a few months ago.

The Wine Barn will comprise wine retail with a luxury farm shop offering cheese and charcuterie.

It’s intended as a destination: somewhere for customers to spend time, relax on a sofa with coffee or wine and enjoy the views of the River Frome.

Meanwhile, the Vinotopia team have continued to trade from The Wine Box, the boutique shop they built nearby when they relocated from their Tetbury premises almost three years ago.

“We’ve been incredibly fortunate to have enjoyed such fantastic success with our boutique Wine Box,” says Cole. “To be in the position to accommodate the growth of the business with a brand-new premises is exciting to say the least.

“We knew that we wanted to enhance our current offering and provide our customers with even more of an experience when they walk through our doors, so the decision to expand our retail focus to include a high-end farm shop was a natural one for us.

“Customers will be able to come along, enjoy the same personalised service when choosing their tipples as they’ve become accustomed to, and grab a tasty bite to either take home or enjoy instore alongside a glass or two from our Enomatic.”

The Wine Barn will also include a refilling station for Sapling gin and vodka.

Jeroboams wants to go to Chelsea

Jeroboams continues to grow with a 10th store opening this summer. The premises in King’s Road, Chelsea, will include an event space and offer weekly in-store tastings.

Jeroboams CEO Matt Tipping says: “We are thrilled to have secured such a fantastic location in one of the most sought-after areas of south west London. Our growth aspirations have long included a shop in the heart of Chelsea and where better than on the King’s Road?”

What planet are they on?

Matt Harris of Planet of the Grapes in London wasn’t present at the Laithwaites Wine Festival at Olympia. Let’s face it, he’s probably not their target audience. But some of his friends were there, and they wondered if Matt may have agreed some sort of buyout with his significantly larger rival.

“Not sure you should be using our company name to sell your wine product,” Harris later tweeted.

Laithwaites has apologised for appropriating the independent trade’s favourite pun. “But they didn’t give me any free wine,” Matt is quick to clarify.

Toodle Pip, Schofield

There’s no point raking over the Philip Schofield saga again here (although the editor does claim to have a friend who works at GMTV, and says the disgraced presenter once threw a tantrum due to her choice of font on a memo). There was talk of Schofield making an appearance at the London Wine Fair, which didn’t happen, as far as anybody can tell, presumably to promote the Italian wine that bears his name. It sounds like it would have been a wasted journey. When in Rome, which sold Schofield’s bag-in-boxes, has now pulled the range from its website.

Chocolate orange wine

We wish nothing but success to Ben Williams as he opens his new wine shop on the site of York’s famous chocolate factory (see page 4). We noticed an intriguing story in The Guardian about London chef Grace Bryson popping a Malteser in a glass of red wine “to create a little treat”. Presumably a similar effect can be achieved with a Terry’s Chocolate Orange segment?

The Wine Barn will combine wine retail with a luxury farm shop

Wolf will bounce back after blaze Graft focuses on Mother Vine bar

Wolf Wine’s shop in Bath, The Cabin, and its adjacent bar, The Shrine, were destroyed by a fire in late April.

The wooden trader cabins at the Green Park Station site remain unsafe for the team to return and salvage anything. The company’s Angus Perkins says: “At the moment, police and fire services have ruled it an accident. With a normal building fire you would be able to find evidence of an accelerant very quickly, but with a wooden structure, it’s much harder because the whole lot is so flammable.”

Happily, the business continues to trade. “We’re a wholesaler first and foremost,” Perkins says, “and we’ve got some subterranean warehousing where we keep the majority of our stock, and we can send wine out and operate online from there.

“We have also been offered a small retail space by one of our local accounts, so we will be doing a pop up about three days a week, which is just lovely.”

Perkins says that definitive answers on insurance matters are tricky, due to the slightly complicated hierarchy of landlords. Wolf Wine is a tenant of Ethical Property which sublets the trader cabins on behalf of Sainsbury’s, the leaseholder of the wider Green Park Station site.

While they wait for the information to filter through, the team remain positive and have established a fundraiser page to help get the business back on track. They swiftly relocated their scheduled tastings and events, and retail pop-ups are in the bag.

“No one was hurt, and we’re lucky because we have other revenue streams and we’ve all still got our jobs,” says Perkins. “I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think we’re sort of cautiously optimistic. The support has been insane, which is marvellous.”

The Fire Fund is at gofundme.com.

The Graft Wine Co has closed its Pip of Manor Farm shop at Seale, near Farnham in Surrey, which it opened in November 2020.

The rural site, which also provided some office space for the team, served its last customer at the end of March.

Graft director Nik Darlington says the company will continue to support its Mother Vine bar and shop in Chelsea.

“It’s really just a matter of pooling resources under one retail brand, which for us going forward is Mother Vine,” he explains. “The ceiling for Pip is very low no matter how much attention and resources one throws at it, whereas we feel the ceiling is very high for Mother Vine.”

• After almost three years at Bradmoor Farm near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Kevin Durrant is closing BeerGinVino. The decision is partly due to family relocation, and Durrant has plans to return to bricksand-mortar retail in the autumn if he finds a suitable premises. Meanwhile he will continue to sell online.

A

bigger taste of Italy in Stockport

Specialist Italian wine shop and deli Vino Buono opened in Heaton Moor, Stockport, last October and owner Davide Puglielli has already expanded the business.

The first week of this month was spent creating a wine garden, ready for the summer, which will seat around 20 people.

Puglielli also has his own winery in Friuli Venezia Giulia called Paradiis, and its wine accounts for almost half of his range.

“I have 10 wines on tap, but over time I want to achieve 20 taps, each representing a region,” he says.

The fire at the Green Park Station site in Bath was probably an accident, investigators say

It’s bed time for Cambridge indie

Grape Britannia, the English wine specialist based in Cambridge, is set to move to a much larger site.

Owner Matthew Hodgson opened the Arbury Road premises four years ago and reports that the business has outgrown the shop. The move to nearby Chesterton Road will allow for a separate bar and retail space as well as a basement area.

“Back when the whole idea for Grape Britannia came about, we were initially going to set up as an online-only business,” says Hodgson.

“In a way it was only happenstance that

real converts to the idea of having a mixed model of bricks and clicks.

“There’s some resilience in that modelling; they balance each other out at different times. The immediacy of customer reactions and feedback on the wines in the shop is something you can’t replicate online. Plus we just really love the interaction and

Hodgson will grow his range of English spirits, beers and ciders. “There are plenty of breweries around Cambridgeshire,” Hodgson says, “so we’ll be looking to focus as locally as possible on the beers.”

Work is yet to start on the former bed superstore, which Hodgson estimates will open in the autumn. “We certainly think this move is a great opportunity to really move the dial on our on-trade,” he says.

“At the moment the bar is a little bit subscale to work effectively, but in the new shop, it’s going to be a good size. It’s in a better location with much better footfall so that will make a big difference.

“We’ll also be able to hold more stock to enable us to ramp up our wholesale. Wholesale is the most rapidly growing part

Hodgson opened in Cambridge four years ago

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We gave it our best shot. But the new Co-op was the last straw

Anthony and Janet Borges have owned The Wine Centre at Great Horkesley, Essex, for a quarter of a century. But two years of losses means it’s time to call it a day, as Anthony explains

Finally, we have decided to close our Great Horkesley shop. We anticipate closing sometime in the summer after our clearance sale, which started in late May.

The shop has been a wine merchant for 60 years, 24 under our stewardship. Until recently, and for almost all those years, we thrived. We grew incrementally every year, adding streams of revenue to our core drinks business, such as Riedel glassware, the deli, cigars, and events.

When the children flew the nest we annexed our house, which is adjacent to the shop, transforming our lounge and study into the Gift Room, selling fashion, handbags, jewellery and toiletries.

We added fashion shows and ladies’ lunches to our increasingly successful events programme. Our wine-tasting dinners and festivals were by then a feature of the village, drawing customers from all around.

We started to win awards, both local and national, including the prestigious New Zealand Wine Growers’ UK Independent Wine Merchant of the Year award. A trip we will never forget. We were invited to swanky Riedel dinners, and we enjoyed the trappings of success in our wonderful industry, which, as we know, is blessed with fine people, doing great things. Best of all, we made friends, and a life of it all, with wine, our passion, at the heart of it.

That’s not to say we didn’t have difficult times. We did. But throughout all the challenges we always held our nerve,

maintaining what was always a highmargin, service-orientated business. Sometimes the temptation was great, to cave in and partake in the discount culture surrounding us. But always we resisted. Then came Covid 19 which saw the closure of The Gift Room, and this was

followed by the cost-of-living crisis. In such times the allure of discount is potent, and sure enough a Co-op opened just up the road from us, offering discounts galore. Colchester’s Majestic had already eaten into our sales, as had the local Waitrose, but now this was on our doorstep.

We responded by increasing our events, which were ever popular, and a year or so ago we introduced for the first time a 20% discount “for seasonal wines”: we’d buckled, finally.

We called the in-store feature “Twelve Wines”, limiting the discount to a few. At the same time, we spent £5,000 improving our website, and we took on a shop manager to bring in new blood. Lucy proved to be excellent, motivating us all.

Too many people would comment at Christmas how they loved the shop, and then we wouldn’t see them until the next Christmas

Borges pictured with a member of the team in 2017

In short: we met the cost-of-living crisis head on.

And yet, the business has just chalked up its second consecutive annual loss, and our incomes have shrunk to the point we simply can’t go on. Despite our love for what we do, and even in the face of our community’s desire that we keep going, we choose retirement. For us, as new grandparents, we feel it is time.

We reflect endlessly on our sudden, brutal demise. Was there anything we could have done to have prevented it? For a while we felt aggrieved. During Covid we had done well, because so many people staying home had brought us new custom. Yet when those new faces returned to work, we didn’t see them anymore.

When we were able to start up our events again, a few came back, and we always sold out. But these were costneutral, and we always depended on our customers buying wine afterwards. The problem was they were not doing that anymore in the numbers we needed. Those who did purchase did so from our 20%off selection. Therefore, not only did our turnover drop, so did our overall margin.

We wonder why more people in our neighbourhood didn’t support us. If only fewer people turned to the internet, the national multiples, and the big merchants. Far too many would comment at Christmas how they loved the shop, and then we wouldn’t see them until the next Christmas.

Then again, why should they buy from us? If we are not doing what it takes to win their custom, then surely we shouldn’t complain about it. Certainly, we shouldn’t judge them, right? It’s up to us, as independents, to shine, and to compete.

When we lost the Gift Room, we lost a big draw and footfall to our shop from which we didn’t ever recover. This was an unfortunate circumstance of Covid. In this respect our shop is not necessarily reflective of the industry and independents

elsewhere. There’s life in the sector, we have no doubt. And we wish you all well.

At any rate we leave our industry this summer with mixed feelings, but also with an overriding sense that we have served our community well, and that now it’s our time. And there it is. We wouldn’t have done any of it without our fantastic suppliers. Therefore, it remains for us to thank all of you who have served us, for the many happy years, and especially thanks to Peter Rowe of Liberty Wines, for his unstinting support of late.

And we applaud The Wine Merchant for the editorials, updates, chat, gossip, news, stats; for the tastings, the trips, and for the promotion and encouragement you give our sector. It’s hard now to imagine indie life without the magazine.

Cheers, everyone!

The business attempted to go head to head with bigger rivals by offering discounts

Robert

There’s no point crying over spilt wine.

LWF

Chris Porter c.porter@kukla-spedition.com

NOT YOU AGAIN!

customers we could do without

I maintain a series of logbooks of all the wines I taste … yes … I find it’s an invaluable record of the wonderful bottles I’ve purchased over the years … at the last count there were four hundred and fifty-eight red wines, three hundred and seven white wines, ninety-five sparkling wines, fourteen rosé wines and thirty fortified wines … what do you think of that? I award points out of twenty for bouquet, colour and palate, and I apply gold, silver or bronze stars to the wines that have made me a particularly happy chappie, as it were … I buy them from the stationer’s across the way … so far I have bestowed one hundred and twelve gold stars, one hundred and eighty-eight silver stars and three hundred and eleven bronze stars … you would be most welcome to examine my reviews yourself and perhaps take one of my spare sheets of stars to apply to the bottles here in your wonderful emporium … I have photostats of every page of my books in case of fire and these you are at liberty to peruse, if they might be of service to you … I notice you open tomorrow at 10am … I shall see you then!

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ANAGRAM TIME

Can you unscramble these Italian grape varieties? If so, you win an outsize 1980s Haig bottle full of brown coins.

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48. Desmond Wannock

DAVID PERRY

Irregular Thoughts

We switched to paper bags when plastic got embarrassing. I’m reluctant to charge

The other day it suddenly all went dark. The sky was blocked by a huge lorry pulling up outside.

It wasn’t for me. It was delivering a couple of pallets of boxes to the gift shop next door. They were all carrier bags –posh, printed, paper ones in various sizes. That has to be a big on-cost if they give them away.

The little deli the other side has paper bags too. Theirs have tape handles which rip under the weight of anything more substantial than a bag of crisps. They charge 20p for them.

We have paper bags too but with twist handles which easily support three bottles. We get through quite a few and I recently realised they cost us about 30p each. I’m reluctant to charge for them, though. They aren’t plastic so we don’t have to. If they were pre-printed we would have to order in volumes too big to store: volumes far greater than printed plastic bags, for reasons I have never understood. Without our logo and telephone number, they would be hard to justify as a marketing cost. I got around this by having a rubber

stamp made and we print them up as required. Very artisan looking, too.

We changed to paper quite a few years ago when the town moved towards being plastic-free. Plastic bags were becoming a bit embarrassing. The ones we used were pre-printed and looked very smart. They were quite substantial and certainly not single use. One old chap, who buys a bottle of sherry every week, still proudly produces his vintage bag from his coat pocket. I once spotted two separate families by the seafront in Weymouth using my bags to carry wet swimming costumes.

I used to point out to people that they were bio-something so that was OK. I found out though that they were degradable, but not bio-degradable. They would turn to dust if left in daylight for any length of time. Basically they turned into micro-plastic, which is not good. It was a customer who gently pointed it out. She happened to be a bio-chemist professor specialising in

bio-degradable materials. So now we use paper bags.

If we go out shopping we take bags with us. I am constantly amazed by the number of people who pick up a few bottles and then stand looking at them wondering how they are going to carry them. They can’t all be impulse shoppers. Some are reluctant to ask for a bag in case it costs them 5p. Frequently they wait until after they have paid before asking for a bag, just in case. Most of the time I ask if they might like a bag. Sometimes, out of devilment, I don’t. If they are buying more than three bottles I’ll pack them in a pre-loved cardboard box. Sometimes I will pop the bottles into the free bag and hand it over only to be asked if it is strong enough. Of course it is, or we wouldn’t use them, would we? They’ll look at it and then either ask for two bags (no!) or cradle it like a baby, saying “I’d better hold it underneath”. No, that way the bottles are likely to spill out the top. Just hold it by the handle like a normal person. “Look,” I say, holding the bag and jerking it up and down, “it’s very strong – it’s made for the purpose!” If they are still not convinced I add: “I tell you what, if you get halfway down the street and the bag breaks and your bottles smash, then bring it back and I’ll replace the bag free of charge.” And to myself I think, “or better still, next time bring your own bag!”

Here’s a tip if you want to have fun driving me mad. If you are ever being a tourist in north Dorset, come into our shop. Make sure that you have young children and that they have been fed blue Smarties and orange squash until they are hyperactive. If possible include a large and muddy undisciplined dog – but no lead. Then, after 20 minutes looking, ask for my advice on whether to buy the medium-dry or medium-sweet small bottle of local cider. After a further 20-minute deliberation, come to the counter to pay for your £3 purchase but first ask me to gift wrap it as it’s a present. Pay by American Express … and then ask me for a free carrier bag.

David Perry is the owner of Shaftesbury Wines in Dorset

One old chap, who buys a bottle of sherry every week, still proudly produces his vintage plastic bag from his coat pocket

Duty’s going up. But maybe some other costs are now coming down

From August, most wines will be 44p more expensive, thanks to the Chancellor. It presents a new challenge to a trade already struggling with rampant inflation. But better news could be on the way

Wine is getting more expensive for everyone. In specialist independent shops last year, the average price per bottle shot up by 60p to £15.70. This year, we can expect that figure to leap by at least another 44p, thanks to the duty increase that will hit most still wines in August.

It’s unwelcome news for the wine trade, in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis and at a time when almost all costs are increasing. Hallgarten & Novum Wines has indicated it will not be passing on the extra duty until September, anticipating the chaos that the rise will create, particularly for its on-trade customers, in the height of the summer season. Other big suppliers say they are considering their options. But the vast majority just don’t have the wherewithal to swallow a tax hike of this size, even temporarily. Their margins are fragile enough.

Doug Wregg of Les Caves de Pyrene spells out the inflationary pressures facing wine importers. First, there is the cost of the juice itself: “So many disaster vintages leading to growers needing to purchase grapes, which pushes up the price.”

Glass is experiencing “enormous increases”. Bureaucracy is more timeconsuming and expensive. Pallets are dearer. Bonded warehouses are charging more. Wineries are passing on the increases they’re seeing in their own rent, utility and wage bills.

Cash flow is under pressure because “producers are increasingly asking us to pay upfront, in full or in part”. Freight companies are offering spot rates rather than fixing tariffs for the year.

Wregg adds that importers are being forced to hold excess stock. “Increased shipping times and other costs mean that we have to order larger quantities to make shipping worthwhile,” he says. There’s still a global shortage of 20-foot shipping containers, which doesn’t help. Exchange rates remain volatile, with sterling’s crash against the dollar last autumn adding to the UK wine industry’s woes.

Les Caves de Pyrene published its list in April, with prices going up, on average, by 5% to 7%. “We had a lot of favourable feedback about how reasonable the increases were, given the massive inflationary pressures,” Wregg says.

“In certain cases, we must accept that glass ceilings will be shattered. The price rises in Burgundy – Chablis, in particular – have been marked, and there is no point depressing the prices of these wines anymore.

“We now roll with it, keep our own costs as low as is practicable and hope that our internal efficiencies can offset some of the bigger price rises.” Les Caves is now working on some own-label projects in a bid to preserve margins and to offer customers best value.

Nik Darlington of Graft Wine says “greater costs of production and transport” are the main inflationary pressures. “While

the additional challenge of duty increases is unhelpful, it has to be considered as just one factor among many,” he says.

“After holding our prices for two years during the pandemic, the general inflationary pressure could be absorbed no longer – neither by us, nor by our producers. This is an experience we share with most if not all competitors.

“In light of all this, I’m pleased to say that we have managed to keep recent price changes of our own, most recently in March, significantly below the rate of inflation. We will continue to work hard with our producers and logistics partners to do our best to manage these cost pressures on behalf of customers throughout the UK.”

Andrew Bewes, MD of Hallgarten & Novum Wines, describes himself as “an eternal optimist” and sees some glimmers of light amidst the gloom.

“We pass on changes to taxes when they take effect. On June 1, for instance, we will remove the tariffs on Australian and New Zealand wines from our prices when new trade agreements take effect. This means the cost of the wine will be reduced by about 10p a bottle. Similarly, we will pass on the changes in duty from August 1. Where duty has fallen, we will reduce prices; where duty has increased, we will increase prices.”

Tom Platt, MD, Liberty Wines

“We have a reputation for very modest price rises,” he says. “We wince a bit at 2% or 3%. This year, it probably averaged about 7%, so still below inflation. Obviously, there were some extreme rises from some areas, as a result of a real combination of things coming home to roost. In particular shipping FX wasn’t great when we set our pricing.”

Bewes reports that shipping costs are starting to come down. “It wouldn't be an overstatement to say there was an international shipping crisis with millions of containers sitting on the sea trying to get into Chinese ports or trying to get out of Chinese ports, and that had a knock-on effect, particularly on deep sea,” he says.

“After Brexit, some transporters did really not want to divert their drivers into a crossing that was fraught with time delays etc. So we have had issues on the shipping side from all directions, but that is starting to ease.

“In terms of internal distribution, of course prices went up in line with the oil prices; one would hope that that will soften

out a little bit. So many of the UK drivers stopped working for trade distribution and went into retail distribution – Amazon etc. That has eased a bit.

“So all round it’s starting to ease. We haven't seen any real improvement in the FX rates for the euro, but it’s starting to look a little bit better with the Australian and New Zealand dollars. I think the US dollar has peaked as well and it looks to be going in the right direction.”

While not downplaying the pressures facing independents, Bewes believes that stratospheric price increases in some categories could be good news for others.

“Certain traditional areas of fine wine have become very expensive. Burgundy is an extreme example, but that does open up opportunities for independents. If someone's looking for Meursault, for example, most independents can now recommend wines from Greece or from various other regions that offer spectacular value for money.”

For the first time in 40 years, ABS published its list in November with a separate slip of paper containing prices. Director Elliot Awin says this may have seemed like a cynical ploy to allow an extra increase before the next list was printed. But it also anticipated that some prices could decrease, or at least not rise as much as much as feared.

“Freight prices have come down, and so we have every intention of bringing the freight element of our prices down,” he says.

“A container from Australia has actually halved in price from the point at which we costed it, so that of course will come down.

“We’ve always treated duty as a cost of goods. It’s something that we fund for our duty-paid customers for the period of time that we offer them credit, so 30, 60 days. It is no different to the freight price, or the warehousing costs that we incur. And because we do everything through thirdparty logistics, we just pass on exactly what we are being charged for each of those.”

He adds: “We like to operate on an everyday, fair, honest price that we can give our customers for as long as possible.

"This year, we released our list with an intention of revisiting it after six months. But of course, with the duty change coming into place in August, we’ve extended that to August 1."

ABS will pass on savings as Aussie costs come down

Every part of the supply chain has been hit with cost increases

Rising Stars

Retail can be a challenging career, but environment is everything. Chloe Malone had a background in fashion retail and was working in Bluewater when she applied for a position at Champion Wines in 2017.

Moving from a bland and corporate mall to a wine shop and bar in a pretty suburb of south east London has ensured Chloe’s love of retail has flourished, along with her wine education.

“I think I’ve been very lucky here,” says Chloe. “I’ve come from dealing with customers who don’t know you and don’t want to know you, to working with people who want to come in and chat. They want advice and our customers are just really, really sweet.

“I think even before I started WSET I was naturally learning about wines, just talking about them every day, either discussing them with Penny or working in the shop.

“I genuinely enjoy all the aspects of my job. I really love the wine bar side of it, but I just love everything about the trade – I think it’s absolutely wonderful. It wasn’t too hard for me to fall into and I think that’s why I took it all on board so quickly. I fell in love with it pretty much instantly. I’ve never been so passionate about anything.”

Although owner Penny Champion admits she was initially looking for someone with wine knowledge, she says: “Looking back now, for me it was brilliant because it was lovely to be able to train Chloe up. She did her WSET Level 2 with Liberty and then I put her through Level 3.

“Chloe started working in our wine bar with no wine knowledge at all, but now she is up there. She’s got to where she is today through working hard.

“She is now assistant manager and has a lot of say in the buying. She does our wine club every month and writes up all the tasting notes for that and pretty much does all the buying for it as well. So her role has really changed and I want to keep developing that, and back off a little more.

“You know, with trips, I’ve been there and done all that, got the T-shirt. It’s really important, especially with her responsibilities, that Chloe gets a chance to see the vineyards and have those experiences.”

So where would Chloe like to visit?

“I’ve visited producers in Kent and Sussex … but that’s a bit close to home,” she laughs. “I want to go everywhere, but if I had to pick, then I think I’d choose to go to Italy. My favourite wine is Amarone. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s my go-to, because it’s not always affordable, but Amarone knocks everything else out the park for me. Having said that, now the summer is here, I do love a nice Provence rosé.”

Chloe wins a bottle of Errazuriz Don Maximiano 2019

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

Chloe Malone Champion Wines, Chislehurst

Candover Brook Rosé NV

The top scoring English rosé at the 2022 Decanter World Wine Awards, which is no mean feat for the debut release from this Hampshire winery, owned by the Sainsbury family. It’s a blend of 54% Chardonnay, 33% Pinot Noir and 13% Pinot Meunier, and it feels like those proportions have been paintakingly calibrated. Gorgeous summery red fruit with toasty depths.

RRP: £39.99 ABV: 12%

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

Quinta da Pedra Alta Reserva 2019

Ed Woodward’s Douro project delivers consistently impressive wines at reasonable price points. This blend of 54% Touriga Nacional, 35% Touriga Franca and 11% Sousão is no exception. It’s still young, of course, with a certain stiffness. But those rich blackcurrant and iron notes are beginning to bloom.

RRP: £21 ABV: 14%

Bancroft Wines (020 7232 5450) bancroftwines.com

Castello di Montep JeT 2020

Pale rosés come and go without generating much excitement, but now and again there’s one that grabs you by the lapels and demands a proper conversation. The Toscana IGT wine is made with a rare Sangiovese clone, grown at altitude in Maremma. It’s fresh and floral and definitely a crowd pleaser, but its firm structure and salty minerality are nice bonuses.

RRP: £20 ABV: 14%

Vinicon (07920 195183) vinicon.co.uk

Royal Tokaji Mézes Mály Dry Furmint 2020

Royal Tokaji owns 11 of the 19 hectares of the Mézes Mály vineyard, one of the region’s two Great First Growths. The site is prized for its deep loess soil on volcanic bedrock, typically yielding wines with elegance and finesse. This wine is a minor masterpiece, full of stone-fruit richness, spice and refreshing acidity.

RRP: £32 ABV: 13%

Bibendum (0845 263 6924 ) bibendum-wine.co.uk

Giorgi Solomnishvili WE Saperavi 2018

Giorgi Solomnishvili is one of Georgia’s most admired winemakers, achieving great things with Saperavi, aka “the Malbec of the Caucasus”. Matured in qvevri and then oak barrels, this example has some refined forest fruit and sweet spice, but also some loveable rustic edges. Solomnishvili’s advice? “Drink – life is short.”

RRP: £30 ABV: 13.5%

Cachet Wine (01482 638877) cachetwine.co.uk

Domaine Gérard Millet

Menetou-Salon 2021

New world producers have occasionally done to Sauvignon Blanc what Disney did to Winnie the Pooh, and it’s worth returning to the Loire periodically to remind yourself how pure, simple and effortlessly delightful the variety can be. White flowers, ripe fruit, a citrus twang and a subtle leesy richness are all here.

RRP: £20.49

ABV: 13%

Hallgarten & Novum Wines (01582 722538) hnwines.co.uk

Domaine Jeremy Villemaine Chenonceaux Rouge 2021

Villemaine is in the Cher Valley in the heart of the Loire region, with 15ha of vines in the Touraine and Chenonceaux appellations. This new arrival is 80% Côt and 20% Cabernet Franc, and it’s impossible to imagine it not being a big hit, with its supple, glossy fruit and a just the gentlest crunch on the finish.

RRP: £20 ABV: 13%

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

Glenelly Estate Lady May 2017

Merlot normally forms part of the blend in the Stellenbosch estate’s flagship wine, but not in 2017: the winemakers thought it detracted from the “purity and precision” they were achieving with Cabernet Sauvignon, with Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot playing minor roles. The wine is on a journey, but already exuding lush dark fruit and tobacco flavours.

RRP: £37.50 ABV: 14.5%

Seckford Agencies (01206 231188)

seckfordagencies.co.uk

the new faces of chablis

are focused on the future

Arguably the most important factor in Chablis’ greatness is the region’s terroir. The fossil-rich clay and marl Kimmeridgean soils are 150 million years old. Cistercian monks arrived in the region in the early 12th century region and quickly saw the potential of the vines they encountered. We can all agree that Chablis’s origins are ancient, but Chablis is also forwardthinking and home to a motivated gaggle of “new face” winemakers.

Today, almost 25% of wineries in Chablis are being managed by youthful under-40s: they’ve travelled internationally, have a strong commitment to the environment and organic viticultural practices, and are benefiting from an increasingly balanced presence of female employees in both the vineyards and the wineries.

Armed with the knowledge passed down through the generations, determination to make their mark in the 21st century and a passion to protect what they have for their children’s children, the vignerons of Chablis are living exciting and dynamic times.

Take, for instance, the trio of siblings at Domaine de Chaude Ecuelle (above).

Guillaume Vilain studied at the Lycée Viticole in Beaune and was the first to

join the family winery. His two sisters, Marianne and Marie-France, took more circuitous routes via the theatre and a career in audio-visuals respectively.

Now united, the siblings are focused on developing the estate that was founded by their great-great grandfather and his brother in the early 20th century. At this time the vineyard was planted for the purpose of making wine for the family alone, with excess being sold on. With each generation there has been an increase in estate bottling from their now 60ha-strong vineyard holding. The family is also keenly aware of its environmental responsibilities, which informs its choices in vineyard management and winemaking.

Another family that has pulled together to commercialise its own wines are the Robins, at Domaine Antoine & Laurent Robin (right).

Laurent had steadily increased the size of the estate, making astute purchases in the Grand Cru vineyards of Blanchot, Vaudésir and Bougros, as well as in the Premier Cru sites of Vaillons, Montmains and Montée de Tonnerre. Given the ingredients, it’s hardly surprising

that when Antoine joined in 2018 (before Laurent’s daughter, and her mother, came on board in 2020), they took the decision to label the wines under their own name.

Léa Schaller joined her family estate in 2017 and embarked on sweeping changes. The property was given a name, Domaine Orion (inspired by a song by heavy metal band Metallica) and with it she labelled the family vineyard’s wine for the first time.

Schaller is one of an increasing number of viticulturists and winemakers in Chablis who are determined to secure the region’s resources for future generations. Consequently, she uses no herbicides in the vineyards, and takes a low-intervention approach to vinification in the winery.

It is producers and estates like these that are keeping Chablis in the forefront of the wine world. They are embracing the region’s enviable resources and working to preserve them for generations to come.

They are introducing new wines and interpretations to the consumer: increasing choice and variety. They are also bringing energy and new ideas and finding ways to add their stories to centuries of fine winemaking experience.

Pictures: BIVB/S. Boulard

this prestigious region has an ancient viticultural history. but today’s winemakers

Favourite Things

Bonfire of EU rules to ‘boost UK wine’

Scrapping retained EU laws will “put a rocket under” the UK’s domestic wine industry and potentially boost vineyards by £180m, according to the environment secretary, Therese Coffey.

A host of regulations that were retained after Brexit will be binned as part of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill.

Coffey said the changes being introduced through the legislation would give vineyards the “freedom they need to thrive”.

Favourite wine on my list

I am really enthusiastic about a recent addition on the list, Saint-Péray Saute-Mouton Domaine de Lorient, a Roussanne and Marsanne blend by Laure Colombo. It is packed with fruit, honey, butter, dried herbs, spices and layers and layers of flavour. It has a vibrant acidity, which elevates it.

Favourite wine and food match Oysters and Chablis. As Chablis grows on Kimmeridgian soil, which is basically a mix of clay, limestone and ancient marine fossils like oyster shells, it seems that this pairing was meant to be.

Favourite wine trip

I love the Languedoc. Amazing weather and so many landscape variations from mountains to seaside. I love the smell of the garrigue and the large and increasing number of organic winemakers.

Favourite wine trade person

If I have to say one name only it’s Caroline Krey-Jacobsen at Jascots. I have worked with her for years, wherever she works. She is a smart woman who really knows her stuff.

Favourite wine shop

Dynamic Vines in Bermondsey.

A lot of wines made by legendary winemakers, and a quite impressive selection of outstanding organic and natural wines. And the shop under the train arch is worth the visit.

Restrictions which currently prevent the wine industry from producing new blends will be removed, and bottlers will be able to turn imported wine into sparkling wine. Packaging requirements, such as the stipulation that certain sparkling wines must have foil caps and mushroom stoppers, will be lifted. Independent, May 21

Treasury shares fall after warning

Australia’s Treasury Wine Estates has warned that inflation is squeezing demand for its commercial-grade wine and driving up packaging costs, sending its shares nearly 8% lower.

The country’s biggest winemaker flagged

challenging market conditions and the consumption outlook for commercial wine, especially in Australia and the UK, and said it was undertaking a review of its domestic supply chain and considering divesting selected assets, either individually or in combination.

Reuters, May 25

• The England & Wales Cricket Board has signed up Laithwaites Wine as its latest sponsor in a multi-year agreement which makes the brand the official wine partner of England Cricket.

Sportbusiness, May 30

Luxury travel brand CV Villas has analysed Instagram data from around the world to identify the 20 most beautiful vineyards.

Boschendal in South Africa has taken the top spot, followed by the Penfolds Magill Estate in Australia.

Popular destinations in Italy, France and Spain also feature alongside Nyetimber, the only English vineyard to make the list. Metro, May 29

Carole Bryon Lady of the Grapes, London

Boschendal is the most beautiful

Le Rhone House at Boschendal

London vineyard is victim of weather

Forty Hall Community Vineyard in Enfield, north London, may have to close after three years of bad harvests.

Founded in 2009, the social enterprise relies on a team of more than 100 volunteers and uses its income to maintain the vines, while also delivering health and wellbeing activities.

The vineyard has issued an online appeal to raise funds to purchase a tractor and a new spraying system.

The 10-acre site claims to be London’s only commercial scale vineyard “since the Middle Ages” and is part of the wider Forty Hall farm, an organic farm run by Capel Manor College, London’s specialist agricultural college.

Over the last three years, grape yields at the site have been ravaged by bad weather and powdery mildew. BBC, May 10

Majestic revamps subscription plan

Majestic has relaunched its Lock It In subscription service.

More than 100 of Majestic’s most popular white, rosé, red, Champagne and sparkling wines will be available for shoppers to order through this scheme, which customers can manage through the new online portal.

Chief operating officer Rob Cooke said: “We know that everyone is feeling the impact of the cost-of-living crisis right now, but we also know that our customers still want to treat themselves to their favourite wines. Many of our customers buy their wines by the case, and our Lock It In proposition offers the cheapest and most convenient way for them to do that.”

Retail Gazette, May 30

? THE BURNING QUESTION

What are your busiest trading days of the week?

�Our shop is in the centre of York and there are visitors to the city all week looking for good wine and food. We can often get a higher spend per head from American and French visitors. We’re also lucky to have lots of locals who prefer to visit us on weekdays rather than the busy weekend. Off-trade is still best on Thursdays and Fridays as customers are looking for something good to drink at home at the weekend.”

Adrian Stancer Yards Wine Bar & Merchants, York

�Saturdays were hit-or-miss in March and April, with Thursday afternoons tending to see an uplift in footfall. But since May, Fridays and Saturdays have been the biggest days in store, with online sales generally quite heavy midweek. We tend to find the first three days of the week are customers who buy in bulk to keep their stocks full and the weekends are for those who are entertaining – or simply celebrating that they have made it through another week.”

Nicholas Payne H Champagne winner H Corks & Cru, Tiverton

�We haven’t really noticed much of a change in buying habits, despite more working from home and drinking-in. Our shop is away from the city centre so most of the time our customers are making a special journey in the car. So I would certainly say that Fridays and Saturdays are still our busiest days, but we are quite happy with that as we have an awareness for responsible drinking during the week and hope people are enjoying their wine mostly at the weekend.”

Patrick Jouan Le Bon Vin, Sheffield

�We have noticed an increase in sales on Wednesday and Thursday due to bank holidays and people staycationing. We’ve noticed a distinct increase in those not wanting to go abroad and heading for the Highlands. Often Thursdays have taken the place of a busy Friday with holidaymakers stocking up before a long weekend. Our Sundays have become busier because we’ve started tasting events. We noticed a customer need to engage again in person and enjoy talking about the wines rather than just popping in for a bottle or two.”

Champagne Gosset

The oldest wine house in Champagne: Äy 1584

Jamie Dawson, Cork & Cask, Edinburgh

ALBERTO TAKES CHARGE AT CALITERRA

Alberto Eckholt is new chief winemaker at the Colchagua producer with an unrivalled reputation for innovation, experimentation and sustainable practices

Chile is gaining a reputation as a land of well-travelled, cosmopolitan winemakers. These are worldly, technically adept professionals whose international experience has ensured that Chile takes its rightful place at the top table of global wine production.

Alberto Eckholt, who had just taken the reins at Caliterra, has a CV that namechecks Bordeaux, Mendoza, the Napa Valley and Limarí. A graduate in agricultural engineering, you sense he regards his career as an endless opportunity for learning. The roles he’s had have included creating successful mainstream wines as well as more premium fare, and he’s served his time on the commercial side of the industry too. He’s at home talking to trade customers and consumers just as much as he is with vignerons and winery technicians.

In Caliterra he has joined a business that was established in 1996 as a joint venture between Robert Mondavi and Viña Errazuriz, but is now 100% owned by the Chilean company. Based in a 1,000ha estate in the Colchagua Valley, it’s a producer that has been relentless in its experimentation, seeking out the optimum sites for a wide range of varieties. The process is complicated but the ambition is simple: to make authentic wines that reflect their terroir.

“Caliterra for me is a place where I can continue learning from a company that specialises in brand building and super high quality wines,” Eckholt says.

“It’s a great opportunity to be in a winery that’s trying to push the Colchagua style in a different way, making fresher, easier-to-drink wines in a valley that’s very warm and tends to be known for big tannins and big structure.

“It’s a big challenge to continue building on what’s already been achieved, and showing the world that we’re continuing that legacy. Hopefully we’re creating a portfolio of wines that can be well recognised and understood and find a place in the independents. It's a niche that we fit very well.

“I think we need to keep experimenting a little bit. But we also want to be talking to consumers about the things we’ve been trying to do.”

Caliterra almost literally wrote the rule book when it comes to sustainability: the targets that it set itself for things like herbicide and pesticide use, water conservation, canopy management and carbon emissions went on to be adopted by Wines of Chile for the industry as a whole.

“Today it seems very obvious to talk about sustainability,” says Eckholt. “Not everyone realises that Chile’s sustainability code was based on what Caliterra was doing in 1997, 1998, in terms of the land and the environment – concepts that are very much integrated into the industry today.

“Working with a company with so much experience of building brands but also working sustainability makes so much sense for me at this stage of my career.”

Tributo Single Vineyard Chardonnay 2020

From the Santo Tomas Vineyard in the Casablanca Valley, where the soil is granitic, with some clay and quartz. The wine is 100% whole bunch pressed and fermented in used French oak. Just over a quarter of the wine undergoes malolactic fermentation. There’s a beautiful minerality and freshness, with aromas of pear and white peach, and soft citrus notes, as well as almond shell and white flowers. On the palate, it’s balanced and elegant.

Tributo Single Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2018

From the Caliterra vineyard in the Colchagua Valley, a wine that’s aged for 12 months in French oak. Ruby-red, the 2018 is elegant and expressive, with a great fruit intensity. Its aromas of blackberries, currants and cassis give way to spicy notes of cinnamon, black pepper and tobacco leaves. Slight hints of mocha, complemented by sour cherries, emerge little by little as the wine opens up in the glass. Its soft tannins and crisp acidity give shape to an impressive structure on the palate and suggests long ageing potential.

Pétreo Carmenère 2020

This special Carmenère, from the Mediterranean-climate Caliterra vineyard, is both intense and surprising. 100% barrel fermented using native yeasts, it’s aged for 18 months in second and thirduse barrels. The rocky slope where its fruit is grown yields aromas with pleasant and fruity aromas of sour cherries and blueberries. It is juicy and bracing, with a medium yet deep structure; the unique texture of its tannins makes this an outspoken and elegant wine, which gradually shows its whole personality as it’s being served.

45: The Gin Nest

Paul Firman The Wine Box, Torquay

In a nutshell: The Gin Nest is more cosy retreat than formal school, offering a fun and educational gin-making experience for Wine Box customers, adjacent to the shop.

Tell us more.

“We wanted it to be as interactive as possible. It’s a two-hour experience and we split it up into three parts starting with putting the recipe together, followed by the distillation part where we explain the science behind it. We round off with a discussion of what makes gin gin. We talk about juniper and the general history of gin including the period synonymous with Hogarth and ‘mother’s ruin’. We explain how Sipsmith changed distilling in the UK and about the growth of the category. Each customer takes home their half a litre of gin that they’ve created themselves. They also come up with a gin name and label it.”

Have there been any memorable names?

“I’ve got a Hall of Fame of names. I’ve heard every gin pun under the sun. I think my favourite one came from a guy who had a thing about making his gin with a strong lime profile. So he called it Vergin’ on the Sublime, which I thought was a genius name. And then we had lovely Anne, who got to the end of her gin distillation and couldn’t think of anything. Her mind was blank. And then suddenly inspiration came to her: Anagin Skywalker.”

Is there a natural synergy between the

shop and the Gin Nest?

“When guests arrive, they walk through the wine shop, so immediately they’re exposed to the other side of the business. We have about 150 different gins in stock in our wine shop so they can talk about what they like as they see their favourite gins on the shelves. We run the gin school four days a week and there are two sessions available on those days. It means we can run the wine shop and the gin school at the same time. We didn’t want to go down the route of being a hybrid bar, as that requires a lot of staff and being open a lot of hours.”

What’s the set-up?

“We have eight mini pot stills and you can produce two bottles off each still. So we can have a maximum of 16 people in at

one time. A pot still for one person would be £70 and for two people we charge £50 each. We do special rates for groups.”

Let’s talk botanicals.

“When we first started we used to go down to the beach and get samphire and navelwort and all kinds of weird and wonderful things. I think 85 was the most we had at one time but people got overwhelmed by the choice. We’re at 60 now. Some of them, such as lavender and rosemary, are sourced from my garden. We have tiny glasses of five gins and people can smell them to understand their citrus or floral or herbal profiles. It helps them to realise what they do and don’t like and decide on their recipe, to make a gin that’s unique to them.”

Has this been a slow burn or an instant hit?

“We had this big plan of having the gin school and then lockdown came along about seven months after we opened. But when lockdown lifted, people were just champing at the bit to have experiences. Because we’d sold a lot of tickets that we couldn’t honour because we had to close, on re-opening we had a big queue of people ready to use it. And those people who came first effectively became our marketing team, because they went out and told everyone else. People come back to bring friends and family and they buy the experiences as gifts.”

Paul 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

There are eight pot stills to play with

Stars of Setúbal

2. Castelão in a blend

As we discussed in last month’s issue, Castelão is the Setúbal Peninsula’s hallmark red variety. But many producers prefer to use it in a blend rather than as a single varietal, either in tandem with other Portuguese varieties or perhaps as a foil for an international star such as Cabernet Sauvignon.

We tasted a selection of these blends, all of which had discernible Castelão character but went off on some often unexpected tangents thanks to the influence of one or two partner varieties.

Setúbal Peninsula’s red blends are among its most exciting wines. Here are four that particularly stand out for us.

Fontanário de Pegões

Tinto 2021

Hallgarten & Novum Wines RRP £9.99

Touriga Nacional and Cabernet Sauvignon each contributes 10% of the blend in this DO Palmela wine, which has the kind of soft, approachable character that will win it no shortage of admirers.

There’s a deep, rounded, ripe-cherry personality to the nose as well as the palate, and a touch of vanilla from the oak maturation, but also a racier hint of blood that would make it a success with all kinds of red meats.

Overall, it’s a likeable, unpretentious wine at a very attractive price.

Reserva 2020

Marta Vine RRP: £9.50

This family-owned producer has opted for a 30% Touriga Nacional component in its blend, and there’s a floral, perfumed dimension to the aroma that gives the game away.

It’s a wine you don’t have to work very hard to get to know. Its vibrancy is evident from the first sip, darker fruits mingling with the redder ones we associate with Castelão, with a keen line of acidity pinning the whole thing together. Six months in French and American oak adds some spice to proceedings.

Raymond Reynolds RRP: £14.99

The name translates as “vineyard of sparrows”, as it seems the local birds are as fond of the grapes as the winemakers are, but thankfully they leave enough to produce this intriguing site-specific blend. Castelão is joined by Touriga Nacional and Alicante Bouschet, all foottrodden in the traditional way. The finished wine is no less rustic, with a wild character suggesting natural ferment and minimal intervention. Earthy and herby, with sour cherry and ripe plum notes.

Portuguese Story RRP £24

Another walk on the wild side, this time with Touriga Nacional and Cabernet Sauvignon joining the fun. The vineyards are just 10km from the coast and the wine is as bracing as the Atlantic breeze, with some sour cherry notes and a beautifully fresh acidity. There’s also something deeper and darker going on, suggesting coffee and dark chocolate, but the finish is clean and tangy. A wine you can easily imagine working perfectly with cold cuts and an alfresco summer lunch.

In association with Setúbal Peninsula Wines

José Maria da Fonseca

Quinta do Piloto Vinha dos Pardais 2021

Herdade do Cebolal Tinto Colheita 2021

Fortunately the Champagnes really stood out in our tasting with a style that is elegant and expressive from long lees ageing and low dosages, as well as fine, complex singlevariety Pinot Meunier cuvées which are quite unique.

We followed up the tasting with a visit to meet Hugo and better understand the family estate and his vision for it.

We launched Champagne Serveaux at our portfolio tastings in February and Hugo joined us for those, as well as spending time with some of our sales team. This of course is vital to ensure they are well-informed and as enthusiastic as me about this addition to our range. Interest and feedback from our customers was very positive and sales are steadily growing but, as with any new producer we take on, we see this very much as a long-term relationship which we hope develops to our mutual benefit.

Boutinot & Champagne Serveaux fils

“The famous grape variety of the Marne Valley is Pinot Meunier. We choose to promote this variety because it has great potential for ageing, and it brings a lot of freshness and salinity to our wines.”

Hugo Serveaux, Champagne Serveaux Fils

Out of our 15 hectares under vine, nine are dedicated to Pinot Meunier. When my grandfather started out, the first vine he planted was Pinot Meunier. My grandfather was a visionary, who invested in vineyard land without knowing if it would secure a future for him and his family. He was a pioneer in his passion as a winegrower.

Minerality, freshness and salinity: these are the three words which characterise Champagne Serveaux Fils. We invested in a new winemaking cellar in 2016; we have a lot of stainless steel tanks to separate each plot, and each grape variety. The majority of our wine is vinified in stainless steel tanks and around 10% is vinified in oak barrels.

Our first Boutinot order was at the start of 2023. We hope to have a very long relationship, and make a name for our family business and our Champagne in the UK market.

Established in 1952, Champagne Serveaux Fils is based in the Marne river valley and run by three siblings, Hugo, Elodie and Nicolas, the third generation of winemakers, sharing a passion for Pinot Meunier

“Before we tasted the Champagnes, much already seemed right – a wellpriced récoltant-manipulant with a proud focus on Pinot Meunier and a young, dynamic team with the potential to grow.”

Sally Holloway, Boutinot

d’Antan Extra Brut NV RRP £48

WHEN LCB INFORMED TUGGY MEYER

that 140 cases of his wine had been stolen from its Cambridgeshire bond, the Huntsworth Wine owner thought he’d be compensated for his losses. He never was – and, despite a court agreeing that LCB had failed to properly look after his wine, Meyer ended up £400,000 out of pocket.

By Graham Holter

February 2019. The weather is icy, Theresa May’s administration is in its death throes, and interest rates have just been pegged at 0.75%. At the EHD bond in Sunbury-on-Thames, a lorry draws up. It’s there to collect several wooden boxes of en primeur wines, bearing labels such as Lynch-Bages, d’Yquem, Lafite and Mouton, belonging to the Huntsworth Wine Company in central London.

The wines are temporarily moved to LCB’s Olympus warehouse in Barking but are ultimately destined for the company’s bond in rural Linton, Cambridgeshire, where they are stacked on shelving in a mezzanine area. Huntsworth owner Tuggy Meyer has gradually been transferring his stock here since October 2018. He’s had some disagreements with EHD and decided it is time for a change. His conversations with LCB convince him that his stock will be in safe hands.

Yet within a week of arriving at Linton, 140 cases of the wine are stolen, with an estimated value in the region of £121,000. He’s entitled, it transpires, to a pay-out of just £1,000. Meyer sues LCB, confident of more realistic compensation. Yet even though the High Court agrees that LCB has failed to take reasonable care of his property, it is Meyer who ends up out of pocket. He is presented with the bill for all legal fees – his own, and LCB’s – as well as for the duty payable on wine he bought but will now never be able to sell. Meyer’s total losses, by his current estimates, amount to at least £400,000.

It’s the night of Saturday, February 9, 2019. At least two people approach the Linton warehouse on foot, carrying ladders. Some of the intruders use black paint and shrink wrap to disable external security cameras. They climb onto the roof and cut two holes, both directly above the mezzanine area where Meyer’s wine was recently stacked. After gaining entry, the intruders pass the wine up through the roof a case at a time, relay it down into

the yard, and load it into a waiting van. By 1.45am on Sunday, the wine has been driven away.

It seems pretty clear that the thieves know exactly what they are looking for, where it is located, and how to avoid detection. Even LCB managing director Alf Allington, in the evidence he will later give in court, agrees that the holes have been made in “just about the perfect point”. Not only is the access point very close to where the wine is stored, it is also conveniently out of sight of the CCTV cameras.

The intruders seem aware that the warehouse alarm system does not cover the roof, and that motion sensors inside the warehouse can be bypassed if they stand on boxes. They also appear confident

that no staff will be on duty that weekend.

In court, Allington agrees that the thieves are aware of the value of the wine they are stealing, and probably have a buyer lined up for it. He accepts it is likely that the burglars have been assisted by someone who has been on site before.

So was it an inside job? In court, the question is put to LCB. Security manager Steven Pattison admits that this is a possibility, but no investigations have been instigated as it was assumed that police would be making their own enquiries. John Lambourne, the site’s operations manager, says that staff have been questioned. The “feeling” is that no one knows anything about how the theft took place.

Judge Pearce, sitting in the High Court in July 2021, said that LCB had acted appropriately on the night of the theft by locking the warehouse and setting alarms. But in other respects, he questioned whether “reasonable care” had really been taken to protect its client’s property.

The fencing at Linton was “basic”, he said, and “below the standard that [Meyer] was entitled to expect”. He also referred to inadequacies in the warehouse’s CCTV and motion detectors.

The court heard that about a quarter of the warehouse – some 10,000 square feet –was not covered by CCTV cameras.

burglary at the Bond

It seems clear the thieves know exactly what they are looking for. Not only is the access point very close to where Meyer’s wine is stored, it is also conveniently out of sight of CCTV cameras

Recordings were not checked until the following Monday: no one had been monitoring the cameras, even occasionally.

At the time, the LCB website claimed: “With a dedicated team working under an ex senior police officer, our security is best in class. Each building is protected through integrated physical and electronic surveillance systems.”

In an earlier letter, LCB had assured Meyer that “all our sites are protected by extensive CCTV systems which cover operations on a 24/7 basis”. Meyer took this to mean that, even if the cameras weren’t being watched all the time, they would at least be checked periodically when nobody was on site.

The judge thought he had a point. “I cannot anticipate a reasonable system of security that did not involve someone looking at footage … at some point between [cameras] being blacked out and the end of the theft,” he said. “Had they done so, there would have been an opportunity to interrupt a theft either before it happened or whilst it was in progress.”

It’s a damning conclusion, on the face of it. But it wasn’t enough to help Meyer win his case. LCB’s security arrangements may have left much to be desired, but it did not follow, legally, that LCB was “vicariously liable” for any wrongdoing on the part of its employees.

A detective remarked to Meyer he had no doubt it was an inside job. But there seemed little enthusiasm for a proper investigation, and nobody was ever charged with any offence. The judge observed that police had presented no evidence to back up any speculation they had casually shared.

For LCB to be vicariously liable, Meyer would need to prove a direct link between the responsibilities the company gave its employees and the methodology of the theft. He employed a private security firm to make its own investigations, but LCB’s lawyers refused access to any Linton staff.

“It is more likely than not that … the information [that assisted the thieves with the break-in] was provided by one or more of the defendant’s employees,” the judge said. But he added: “The evidence does not lead to the conclusion that the information that was passed on had been specifically entrusted to whoever did so.”

The court ruled that although LCB had failed to take reasonable care of Meyer’s wine, it was not liable for losses caused by any involvement of its employees. This meant that LCB only needed to pay Meyer £1,000, under the terms of the industry-standard UK Warehousekeepers Association (UKWA) contract.

LCB argued that Meyer had been made aware of these terms in June 2018, something that Meyer himself did not dispute. But he argued that he

had accepted the contract after being persuaded that LCB’s security provisions were better than they turned out to be.

LCB was obliged to pay £3,662 in excise duty and £14,285 in VAT on the stolen wine. The company was able to reclaim the VAT, and counterclaimed against Huntsworth for the duty element.

LCB sales director David Hogg rejects any suggestion that theft of stock is a common occurence. “We know of no other incidents at the Linton warehouse or within any of the LCB sites,” he says.

“As far as security is concerned, you can be assured that all the latest technology available is in use in all our sites, together with 24/7 manned attendance.”

He adds: “Mr Meyer had failed to insure his stock, an option under the standard UKWA contract which we had in place with him. This included the option to request the warehouse to insure. This is an industry-wide contract.

“Had he attended to such an obvious matter, we all could have avoided four years of our time being wasted, three years of litigation – as you are probably aware, the ‘winner’ never wins – and finally three whole days in the High Court for the hearing.”

Hogg points out that “the owners of LCB have a total of 100 years of experience in bonded warehousing” and the legal dispute with Meyer “could have been easily avoided”.

So why wasn’t Meyer insured? In fact he had been insuring all his stock, via the same broker, for almost a decade. Normally he signed his annual renewal in person, but this time, for various reasons, it had been posted, with paperwork including details about the transfer of wines to Linton.

There was no suggestion that insurance cover had not been activated. Indeed, his broker was part of the group that inspected the warehouse, in the company of the appointed loss adjustor, a week after the theft.

‘We know of no other incidents at the Linton warehouse or within any of the LCB sites. All the latest available technology is in use in all our sites’ David Hogg, LCB

Tuggy Meyer

“Why on earth would he take a day out to drive up to Linton to investigate if I had zero cover?” Meyer asks. Only later was Meyer informed by his broker that no claim would be honoured, despite the premium being paid, because of a quibble over the terms and conditions of the policy.

Meyer is still in dialogue with the insurance company. But he says: “For LCB to dismiss the overall episode as a mere insurance issue to me shows utter contempt.”

After all, he points out, the judge agreed that LCB had not taken reasonable care of his goods and that at least one of its employees must have been involved in the theft. Yet still he ended up losing out. “To any wine trader storing hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds of stock, that should make them somewhere between mildly concerned or sick to their stomach,” he says.

He questions why “a business that is presumably concerned with its reputation in the trade, with a limitation of £1,000 in contract yet experiencing a theft of well over 100 times that value” did not try to reach some sort of settlement beyond the strict terms of its UKWA obligations.

Meyer fears that other wine merchants are not aware of the way insurance works in bonded warehouses and could find they are not fully covered if, like him, their wine goes missing.

“This isn’t a personal sob story,” he says.

“My biggest concern is the increased risk to fellow wine traders. I really believe the majority of the trade have no clue about this enhanced risk.

“Say LCB has 1,200 customers, all with their own insurance cover. That would mean at least 200 different insurance brokers or companies, each with their own terms and conditions for things like types of lock and thickness of bars and so on.

“Whatever the unit, insurers would realistically be able to say that that myriad T&Cs cannot be met unless it is Fort Knox. LCB Linton is certainly not that. You will only ever know when you apply after a loss.”

says. “There are a lot of people looking to create a bond. But one of the problems is, when Covid came along, Amazon and the like were snapping up warehousing and costs doubled overnight. The majority of merchants just say they don’t have any alternative.”

Meyer’s losses break down like this. About £250,000 went on lawyers. The wines themselves had a value at the time of £125,000, he says; this is slightly higher than the court accepted. “That’s certainly £150,000 now,” he maintains. Then there was the excise duty, plus three years of forking out on private security, transport “and a myriad of other costs”. So the final deficit on the balance sheet, for the storage of wines that should have earned Meyer a healthy profit, just tops the £400,000 mark.

Whether Meyer was unwise, unlucky, or unfairly treated depends on your perspective. It’s possible that things would have turned out very differently had his own insurance cover been quite what he assumed it was.

But would his particular policy have guaranteed full compensation, given the worrying security set-up at Linton? We’ll never know. Just as we’ll probably never know who stole his wine in February 2019, the identity of those they sold it to, and whether they’ll try their luck another time.

Although Meyer’s case is extreme, it’s not unusual to hear gripes from merchants about the bonds they deal with. Brexit and Covid certainly created complications in the supply chain that were largely out of the control of the industry. But even now, independents complain of deliveries from various bonds that are slow, incomplete, inaccurate, damaged or dirty.

Meyer bemoans the lack of bond options in the UK, and rails against “archaic institutions whose security has quite simply not kept pace with the exponential growth in values”.

“There’s nowhere else for wine companies to move their business to,” he

Through conversations with others in the trade, Meyer has become convinced that theft from bond is not as uncommon as might be assumed. (The Wine Merchant has seen correspondence in which a bond admits to a client that more than £3,000 worth of wine has somehow “gone missing”. In this case, fair compensation was immediately offered.)

“When a wine merchant is on the wrong end of something like this, they tend to suffer it on their own and don’t get around to telling people about it,” Meyer says. “Sometimes it’s covered by insurance and sometimes it’s not. They take it on the chin and then they move on. And then it happens to someone else.”

The judge agreed that LCB had not taken reasonable care of Meyer’s goods and that at least one of its employees must have been involved in the theft

MCLEAN Northabout

Honesty is the best policy so I’ll tell you my story, even though it may raise an incredulous eyebrow amongst certain readers. And it’s OK if you give a wee snort of derision: we’re all friends here. Anyway, I’m in Orkney, I won’t hear you.

Last Thursday a customer phoned asking for 12 bottles of rosé. Decent quality rosé, £15 or so. Something with a bit of fruitiness, and some colour.

“We can manage that,” I said. “So maybe three bottles each of four different wines?’”

No. All 12 had to be the same.

Mental klaxons honked. While telling the customer we’d deliver it the next day, I was simultaneously thinking: “There’s no way we have 12 bottles of the same £15 rosé!” (So why did I say we had? Because our goal is making customers happy, and we trust to providence or ingenuity to come up with

ways of achieving that. Daft, but it seems to be our nature.)

While reading The Wine Merchant each month, especially the columnists and merchant profiles, I’m often reminded of an astonishing experience I had in an indie in Chelsea a few years ago. I was straggling home after a tasting, and popped in to get something to take to the friends I was staying with. Just ahead of me was a smartly dressed guy in his 20s. He pointed at a bottle behind the counter, the staff member wrapped it, and the guy paid and left.

“That was incredible!” I cried as the door closed behind him. “That guy just bought a £99 bottle of Champagne without even blinking!”

She shrugged. “We sell a dozen of those a day.”

In our shop in the northern isles, we

average one bottle of Champagne a week, and there are whoops and high fives if it’s vintage rather than the cheapest NV.

Our experiences of running wine shops are very different, depending on where we’re based, the catchment area, the demographics. We generally have in common the things we can control – range, display, marketing, staff training – but we can’t control whether the average income in our area is £20k or £80k. We must cut our business coat according to the customer-cloth we’re given.

This is particularly true on an island or in a small town. You can’t attract hundreds of new, bigger-spending customers with deals or events, not when those potential customers are a ferry ride and miles of twisty road away.

The way we cut our coat is by having as wide a selection of wines as any shop of a similar size, around 800. But we generally only buy in six of each. Except for consistent best sellers like everyone’s favourite Riojas, Sauv Blancs and crémants, where we might buy a dozen. When three of the six, or eight of the 12, have sold, it’s time to order from our wholesalers again. For the popular wines that might be a fortnight later, but for a posh Pic St Loup or an orange Georgian, it might be a year.

It’s a business model that works for us. Until someone wants 12 bottles of a £15 rosé.

Providence intervened when I remembered I’d squirreled away a case of excellent Seehof Spätburgunder rosé, for a Rheinhessen dinner I was planning in the autumn. The autumn could wait: my customer couldn’t.

That evening, as I drove to my home a dozen miles out of town, I passed one other car. Two hares ran alongside me for a while, before veering off onto the moor. That sounds about right: twice as many animals as humans. If only hares drank Charles Heidsieck Brut Millésimé.

In a place where humans are a minority, we can’t be hare-brained with our stock

Duncan McLean is proprietor of Kirkness & Gorie, Kirkwall

My father was a viticulturist, and I grew up in a house where wine culture was part of our tapestry. Wine was a familiar path to embark on, and I enrolled for a BSc in viticulture and oenology at the University of Stellenbosch. I immediately fell in love with wine and everything it encompasses. After the first practical tasting at university, history unfolded. I remember coming home the first weekend and saying to my family: “Now this is something that suits my personality!”

Within the larger KWV cellar you will find a special corner. It’s a tiny space made up of small tanks and hand-labelled barrels, home to The Mentors wines. This is where the magic is created.

Since its launch in 2006, The Mentors has established itself as one of the most sought-after premium brands in South Africa. It’s built on the philosophy of optimally expressing terroir and pioneering new frontiers. It includes new and innovative winemaking techniques, and a portfolio of wines that showcase the founding philosophy of KWV.

Initially, The Mentors cellar was created as a space where we could push boundaries and tap into our collective winemaking knowledge. It led to groundbreaking experiments, trying different coopers and winemaking techniques, and discovering the best way to showcase every cultivar passing through our cellar. We utilised new yeasts and perfected natural ferments. The accumulated insights from this unique cellar also attracted postgraduate oenology students, trialling new techniques that we could incorporate into KWV’s extensive range of table wines.

The Mentors Grenache Blanc 2021

This layered wine shows aromas of white, fleshy pear, orange blossom and pineapple with hints of minerality, oak and roasted almonds. The fresh and textured palate has hints of peach that is supported by a linear acidity that enhances the mineral and concentrated finish.

Personally I favour working with niche varieties, such as Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc, Mourvedre, Nebbiolo and Carménère. These give me the opportunity to expand boundaries and develop additional winemaking skills, understand the vineyards and discover what I want to achieve with each variety. Each is exceptional on its own; what one can achieve when blending them is even more exciting.

For years I had a love/hate relationship with Pinotage. I have come to love it. I made an effort to really understand it. My advice: treat Pinotage like Pinot Noir and Cinsault, with gentle pump-overs to extract finer tannins and to enhance the red fruit spectrum, rather than dark fruits. Pinotage is an excellent wine to enjoy any time and with a lot of dishes, even with dessert.

We have an exceptional brand manager doing marketing on The Mentors. She works closely with the winemaking and design team. I trust the marketing team to dress these beautiful wines in suitably beautiful attire. The new labelling for The Mentors reflects this legacy and was undertaken by the renowned Bravo design company.

Expect the unexpected with The Mentors. We will always keep it exciting; the brand stands for innovation and experimentation. This is the nature of the game. Some interesting varieties we are experimenting with are Mourvedre, Carignan, Grenache Noir, Sangiovese, Tempranillo, Carmenère and Nebbiolo. Every year we release a new limited edition, something exceptional, with a unique story to tell.

The Mentors Nebbiolo 2017

This full-bodied wine explodes with aromas of rose petals, red cherries and raspberries with hints of lavender. The palate is focused, with an undertone of cloves, dried fruit and leather. The grippy tannin structure and zippy acidity are well integrated and deliver an intense, lasting finish.

Izele is responsible for The Mentors, KWV’s premium portfolio which is intended to honour the people and the landscapes which have inspired South African winemakers to reach new heights.

Imported by North South Wines

The Mentors wines will be available to taste at the WOSA annual trade tasting on July 4 on the KWV stand.

The Mentors Petit Verdot 2020

This intense, ruby-red wine is concentrated and leads on the nose with perfume notes, red berries, cranberries and sweet spice followed by black olives and aniseed. The palate is rich and juicy with plums and dark cherries. Like the Nebbiolo, the tannins are firm but harmonised, and the finish is deep and lingering.

Merchant Profile: Iron & Rose

The other Shrewsbury wine merchant

You would only open a specialist wine shop in the county town of Shropshire if you were planning on doing something completely different to Tanners, one of the nation’s most revered merchants.

That’s exactly what Robin Nugent has done with Iron & Rose, based in the upper reaches of the market hall, specialising in sometimes funky wines that share his personal philosophy of an ethical, sustainable approach to everything in life.

Not everybody loves Shrewsbury Market Hall. Its grand Victorian predecessor was torn down in the 1960s to make way for a building that, at street level at least, looks far less interesting than the black-and-white timber framed buildings for which the Shropshire town is famous.

Inside, it’s much more invigorating. Natural light floods into the buzzing ground floor area, where you can find fresh fish, Indian and Thai street food, flowers, meat, produce, books, vinyl records … pretty much anything that would help somewhere like this get voted Britain’s favourite market, as Shrewsbury’s was in 2018. Provincial market halls can feel quiet and unloved, but this one seems like a genuine centrepiece of the town.

Upstairs, on the balcony area, Robin Nugent has a good view of the bustling trade below. His Iron & Rose wine shop began its life at street level but now occupies a position up in the gods.

There’s a colourful space adjacent to the retail area known as PetitGlou. It’s the baby sister of GlouGlou, Nugent’s wine bar located a short walk away, near the station. Here, shoppers can pause for thought and enjoy any of the wines on the shelves, most of which are natural, organic or biodynamic, or are at least heading that way.

Nugent began life in the UK wine trade at Oddbins, before spells at Lay & Wheeler and Shrewsbury’s most famous merchant, Tanners. From there he joined Alliance Wine, looking after national agency sales. Sensing a change of direction was needed, he enrolled on an MBA course.

“I wanted to do an MBA, rather than an MW, partly because I wasn’t necessarily in a good position to do all the tasting and stuff,” he says.

“This MBA has a specific focus on strategy. I think the wine industry, with all due respect to it, can be very navel-gazing and introverted, and not looking to see what other people do.”

Nugent thought about leaving wine. “I considered doing something where I was going to get paid lots of money for my opinion,” he jokes.

By Graham Holter

“Then I thought, actually I’ve spent a long time building connections and building knowledge. And I just felt that Shrewsbury was ready for something like this. I thought the market for organic, natural wine was something I could really tap into.

“Tanners are here and they’re really good at what they do. But they tend to be much more traditional and they’ve got a 150-year head start.

“We came along with something that was a bit of a niche, a bit different. It started in the market

because there’s no long-term commitment.

“We launched Iron & Rose in 2016, just two days a week, as a kind of side hustle in a space that a fishmonger sublet to us. We had that space for about six months until we got a permanent spot downstairs on the main market floor, and then we moved up here in 2021.”

When did you sense you were onto a winner? It’s been very gentle, quite slow progress. The real growth came when we opened GlouGlou in 2019. That bumped things along quite a lot. And actually Covid bumped things along again, on the retail side of things. When the first lockdown happened, I tried to turn everything back into cash. I just tried to sell all our stock, get rid of it. Then people kept on ordering.

Kitsy had joined just before Covid as assistant manager of GlouGlou. She wasn’t on the payroll so I couldn’t furlough her. She’s really good. She spent the first four months of lockdown putting everything onto a new website, finding out all the details and just building an e-commerce site that we should have had before, but never had the time or the urgency to do.

Tell us about the range and how that evolved. I came from doing quite a lot of stuff in multiples, and I really fell out of love with that. A lot of it was just about coming up with wine that was always going to be consistent – and there’s nothing wrong with that. It just does not light my candle.

What I loved, and what got me into wine in the first place, was wine with a sense of place, identity, individuality. Small-scale wine.

I have quite a strong personal thing about ethical, organic, sustainable produce and that way of living, so I wanted to start something like that. I’d been to a few tastings like RAW and Real Wine Fair; I just loved the vibe, that kind of atmosphere. It’s exciting and enthusiastic. Some of the natural stuff is too far out there for me. But I just love that enthusiasm for exploration, and like that authenticity.

So I wanted to give that go. It’s not something that multiples can do, because by the time you’ve got it listed, paid the listing fees and sorted out the promotions, the vintage will have changed and the wine will have changed.

And that is both the benefit and the problem. Wines can take a couple of months to settle down, then go through a phase and six months later they’ve gone back a little bit.

Did you sneak any of those kinds of wines into your selection?

We’ve got some more funky stuff, yeah. You just need to be careful about who sell them to and how much explanation you give. We have people who seek us out because we’ve got some really funky stuff. But I’m more interested personally in natural wines that are clean and pure and well made. The funk doesn’t get in the way of the fun in that expression. Shrewsbury’s not Shoreditch, and we need to tailor our offer accordingly.

Some people argue that natural winemakers can get away with making bad wine.

The natural winemaking process amplifies the realness of the wine, but it also amplifies any faults, and any issues like mildew taint. There is definitely some poor winemaking, but there’s also poor winemaking involved in the more mainstream agrichemical stuff.

There were a few wines we bought where

“I’m interested in natural wines that are clean and pure and well made. The funk doesn’t get in the way of the fun. Shrewsbury’s not Shoreditch”

Robin Nugent, Shrewsbury, May 2023

there’s been just a bit too much bottle variation. You open one and it’s amazing; you have another one that is just shocking. The real worry of that is that a person buys one bottle and it’s the shocking one, and it’s the first time they’ve bought from you. They just think all your wines are weird shit.

Something I did learn quite quickly to explain to people is “this white wine is a little bit hazy, that’s fine, it’s not going to kill you”.

Wine is not naturally clear, it’s naturally hazy, like apple juice, like any kind of juice. But people have been so conditioned into thinking wine should be clear and bright. Even the WSET is teaching that.

You seem to have a good business brain. But are you also interested in the science behind wine?

I worked in Alsace after I left university, for Rolly Gassman – not for very long. I’ve visited quite a few producers over the years and did my Diploma a while ago.

We’re involved now with a winemaker in Shropshire called Commonwood, making the wine and helping manage the vineyard, which is just a hectare of vines producing 3,500 to 4,000 bottles a year: red, white and sparkling. The reds are mainly Regent with a bit of Dornfelder. Some Pinot Précoce was planted last year. The whites are mainly Phoenix.

And you’re not spraying those vines at all? We just spray them with organic anti-mildew treatment. We try to manage the vineyard well. We’re getting all prunings off the vineyard so there’s no kind of build-up of problems. The grass is mowed.

We actually make the wine on site as well. We’ve got a little crusher-destemmer and a little hydro press. With the fizz we make the base wine, and then send that off somewhere to get made into sparkling wine.

I don’t spend as much time there as I probably should. But the team will get involved at vintage and at various periods through the year to help with the canopy management and stuff. So it’s really cool for them.

Your website looks good. It gives a decent impression of the physical shop. What we want to try and do is replicate someone walking in here. Ben is spending a lot of his life working on “if you like this, you might like these” recommendations.

Shopify will do them automatically. But some of the things it picks up are a bit random. So we’re selecting things that will either be from the same producer or the same region, or the same grape variety or the same great pricing from a different country. There’ll be some kind of connection. So if someone says, I like Malbec, you can say, OK, so we’ve got these: this one from Cahors, or Argentina, or you can try this crazy Côt from the Loire.

Do you sell some textbook examples of wines people are likely to ask for – like Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc – that you can then use as a starting point for a deeper dive?

Yeah. We try to offer a classic that ticks the boxes but still conforms to our ethos: better for you, better for the planet. But then have something more interesting around the edges as well.

The area we really struggle with is Bordeaux. We’ve got some really cool stuff from the fringes, like Côtes de Blaye and those kinds of areas. But Médoc, unless it’s hundreds of pounds a bottle, which isn’t really our bag, is really hard.

What new discoveries have you made from elsewhere recently?

Well, this month, southern Spain. In the bars we like to have some kind of focus just to keep things fresh. So we did a sherry tasting last week, which was really cool, with some tapas. It’s things like Bobal from Manchuela and there’s some really cool stuff from Andalusia, and then some of the Languedocy kind of things.

Can you take anything from the shelves and drink it here for a corkage fee?

Yeah, we have eight or so wines on by the glass all the time here, but you can just pick a bottle and pay the corkage. For bottles under £15 it’s an additional tenner, and anything over £15 it’s an additional £15.

How do you find new wines?

Over the years, I’ve been lucky to travel a lot. When we go on holiday we tend to go and stay in places where they produce wine. Not necessarily visit a lot of vineyards but drink some really nice wines and buy as much as we can that’s hyper-local.

We’ve not really got into much direct importing yet. Although because we’re doing more trade business, supplying restaurants, bars and stuff, it’s something we probably will look at.

“London is all about 125ml glasses now, but here the 250ml still exists. And 175ml is kind of the standard size we do for pretty much everything”

Which suppliers do you tend to use the most?

I’m still using Alliance a lot, because I’m quite familiar with the range and they’re very good. Indigo; we also use Les Caves de Pyrene a lot. Modal are really cool for organic and biodynamic wines that are really clean, really well made. They’re sometimes a little bit more left field, and their interpretation of by-the-glass pricing is sometimes a bit more London-focused than our by-the-glass pricing. Although that’s creeping up, actually, as people gain confidence in what we’re doing. You know, London is all about 125ml glasses now, but here the 250ml still exists. And 175ml is kind of the standard size we do for pretty much everything.

We can have five shelves of wines around the tenner mark, retail, because that’s what we do. And we do have a monthly case that is, like, six bottles at £82.50 or whatever it is. In order to have enough variety, so that we don’t keep repeating the same thing again and again, we need to be able to buy at a sensible price to make enough margin.

Do you go to tastings very often?

I do actually. I try just to go to tastings where there are lots of producers. We took quite a crew down to Indigo just to meet a bunch of people we work with. And that’s really cool. I tend to go to the Modal ones as well, because I like the way they do it. They sit you down, talk through the wines and then you move onto another table. I think that’s great.

I think it’s important to keep in touch with what’s going on in the market and taste lots of stuff.

I am very unlikely to take on a new supplier just for one or two lines now. It just doesn’t work logistically. I want to work with suppliers consistently over a period of time and build a relationship.

How do your revenue streams break down?

Retail is probably about 50% and the rest is split amongst the rest, I guess.

Where do you think growth is most likely to come from?

I think the bars have room to expand and to be busier. That’s kind of been happening over the last 12 months or so; it’s been really good. I think I’d like to do a bit more wholesale trade business, but just with people who kind of get what we do.

It drives better volumes but it can also create problems; they phone you on Tuesday and want

Seating at PetitGlou

The view from the balcony

Customers can explore behind the counter

something on Wednesday. But it kind of feeds back. People who eat at Wild Shropshire [in Whitchurch] might get fed back into Iron & Rose or GlouGlou, and that helps build your tribe. It’s about having that identity and individuality.

Where does the Iron & Rose name come from?

My brother is an IP lawyer and says that you build a stronger brand if you have two words that are apparently unconnected. I didn’t want something like The Shrewsbury Wine Company or whatever because it just kind of limits you. I really love Barolo, which has the taste of roses and iron. I thought about Tar & Roses but there’s a book called that and there’s also a very litigious restaurateur in the States. So I thought maybe not.

I told Tony [the designer] I needed a logo like a Nike swoosh that people are going to recognise on its own and become like this thing.

How often do you find yourself explaining the name GlouGlou to customers?

Quite frequently. It’s from Molière, the French playwright. Petits glouglous: it’s like “delicious lovely little things”. It became part of the French language, and got involved in French drinking songs. I guess it got picked up by the natural wine world as something that was super refreshing, easy to drink and you don’t need to take too seriously.

How big is Shrewsbury?

The population is 80,000, 90,000, maybe a bit more. We get quite a big draw of people coming into town from outside because if you go west into Wales, there’s basically nothing between here and the coast. A lot of people come in from Telford, which is quite a big town. At weekends you get people coming in from the Wolverhampton area. Flexible working has made a massive difference. Increasingly, customers seem to spend a week or a couple of days in London, and come back for long weekends.

What size is the team these days?

Customers can buy branded Iron & Rose/ GlouGlou clothing. Nugent says the profits pay for the T-shirts that the team members wear

It’s around 10 or 11 full time. The students who work here are a mixture: some are between university and going off to do something else and some are keen to do WSET exams. They’re all encouraged to taste a lot and just build up that library of knowledge.

Taste is so personal and we need to find the right things for the right people. I’m pretty conservative in some ways in terms of what I like and if people like YellowTail, good on them. If people like the kind of wines I was selling to supermarkets, why not? But personally, I think increasingly people are getting a bit bored of that, and want to experiment and try something a bit different.

Some people reach a certain point with their wine repertoire and then hit a plateau. Some may only encounter cheap supermarket wine and decide they don’t like wine at all. Yeah, I think so. Some people try one orange wine and say they don’t like orange wine. It’s a bit like saying they don’t like red wine because they tried maybe YellowTail, for example. That’s one reason we opened GlouGlou, because we want people to be able to come in and have a glass of wine, with the right kind of food in the right kind of atmosphere, and not make it seem like some kind of weird exam.

Before you opened, had you seen something similar that inspired you?

I really love those enotecas in Italy. I was in one last summer, where they had this amazing selection of wine just from Campania. And it was brilliant. It was like a slow food restaurant: you can go in and just have a bowl of olives and a glass of wine. It was really cool. Just sort of making it part of life, rather than being a particularly special-occasion thing. So you could get off the train and go for a glass. If you liked that you could come back for a bottle and then maybe have someone say, “if you liked that, try this”, and getting a conversation going.

What kind of food do you offer?

The wines are international but the food is hyperlocal. The cheeses are from within about 10, 15 miles. The charcuterie is made by Will in his shed five miles north of town and a lot of the bread is sourced from the bakery across the road, using flour that’s milled across the border in Welshpool. We do buy some Mediterranean veg to have a more vegan offer.

How have recent cost increases across the business affected you?

Some have been quite scary. But to be fair we buy all our electricity from Ecotricity and they’ve been quite good actually.

Wine pricing has jumped up quite a bit generally. But I think people are so used to seeing prices going up that actually it’s not too much of a shock.

One big problem is that online businesses have is the cost of fulfilment. You’re paying a courier: that’s 15 quid. And then buying a box that’s courier-proof: that’s another five quid. Profitability is not great. And then the courier loses it or they break it and they won’t insure it.

Have you seen your wine prices increase across the board?

Pretty much. There are a few producers where, bizarrely, prices have come down. Just the odd producer in different bits of Spain or France, where the cost of distribution has gone back down.

I had a couple of really interesting trips last year, to southern Italy and to Austria, and I heard the stories about the rising costs of glass and capsules, and all that kind of stuff.

Will you open another GlouGlou or another Iron & Rose?

I think I’ll probably do something that is kind of synergistic for all of them. I thought about another GlouGlou in another city. But it’s about managing that distance and having a team who would run it well.

At the moment, because it’s just over the road, we’ve got a kitchen here so we make stuff that goes down to GlouGlou, like cheesecakes and bread. And wine is stored here mainly because there’s no storage down there.

I thought about opening something in Birmingham, but it is about managing that distance.

When you look at what you’ve built up over the past seven years, have you got to the point where you wanted to be?

I’m really pleased with where we are. I mean, it’s not straightforward – nothing goes in straight lines. It would be nice to be a bit more profitable. But it’s fun. It’s a real thing. It’s got value as a business and as a brand. And it’s quite exciting. I feel we’ve made a difference in Shrewsbury. I think people would miss us if we weren’t here.

“

Wine pricing has jumped up quite a bit generally. But I think people are so used to seeing prices going up that actually it’s not too much of a shock”

Ready for Riesling fun

31 Days of German Riesling is almost upon us, one of the trade’s favourite fixtures in the promotional calendar. Charlotte Dean of Wined Up Here will be taking part as always. Here’s why …

Tell us a little about what you did for last year’s campaign.

Last year we did a variety of events which helped reach different groups of customers. Our German wine dinner at a local pub, and our tutored wine tasting with Gernot from GK Winehouse, were hugely successful. I think our customers really loved that they could actually meet the wine producer and ask questions directly – it brings wine to life. We also did informal tastings on Saturdays with open bottles for customers to try before they buy; a good chance to chat and explain the wines. We are looking forward to building on that this year, with customers already asking what events

we will be doing to promote 31 Days this time. It’s such a memorable promotion as it is so experiential. As retailers I think it’s really easy to forget that unless we give our customers the chance to try different wines, then they don’t get that opportunity. This gives them to chance to explore the category and the confidence to choose their own Rieslings going forward.

What do you love about German Riesling? Do you have a favourite?

I’ve loved learning about German Riesling and appreciate that it is changing a lot with the younger winemakers coming through with more modern

labelling. I love the purity of Riesling as well as its complexity, and it is lower in alcohol. My favourite Riesling is Paulinshof Spätlese because it has a really long, complex finish with the taste evolving. An intense marmalade character comes through at the end.

What does your current German Riesling range look like?

We currently have five German Rieslings, ranging in price from £11.99 to £32.99. July will help me expand my range and introduce new wines. It also allows my customers to tell me what style they like so I can get more examples of that style in at different price points.

Did you see an increased interest in Riesling following the campaign?

During the promotion, German Riesling sales increased by an incredible 800%. We now have regular customers coming in specifically for entrylevel Rieslings. It’s definitely one of those wines that people come back for, which is wonderful. Having a good Riesling selection makes us a destination for foodies who want a good pairing with their Asian cuisine. With the rise in people entertaining at home, having something that is not Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay enhances their dinner party.

What advice would you give to other merchants on how best to source, list and sell Riesling?

We use a variety of suppliers: Hallgarten, Jascots, Liberty, Enotria and Delibo. One of our current favourites is 50 Degrees Riesling, made by Schloss Johannisburg at an entry-level price which helps people try Riesling and explore the category. The best way to sell Riesling is through food and wine pairing when people ask for recommendations.

By having Riesling open to try it allows customers to get over the perception that it is only a sweeter style of wine. We focus on the fact that people are entertaining at home much more where they are trying to impress their friends and relatives. Riesling is very versatile and a great match with so many different cuisines. We love that in our little corner of the world we’ve managed to introduce so many people to German Riesling and set them on a path where they then recommend it to their friends. It’s a great promotion to really change consumers’ perceptions.

Maybe this time the pessimists are right

There have always been doom-mongers lurking on the fringes of the wine trade. But this time, suggests David Williams, the reasons to be fearful are there for all to see, mainly as a result of changes in duty and demographics

The British wine trade’s pessimists are always more vocal than its optimists, and their catastrophising tendencies will always find a subject to latch on to.

In my 25 years of reporting on what has, over that period, been a basically sound, and for most of that time, growing business, I’ve grown used to end-of-thewine-world warnings based on excessive discounting and excessive duty and on people drinking too much and not enough.

I’ve heard that wine is dangerously cheap and dangerously expensive and that it has been destroyed by both the baleful industrialising influence of the new world and the hidebound traditions of the old world.

There have been lectures about the damaging inflexibility of the British wine trade caused by EU membership and the red tape, increased costs and isolation of Brexit. Sometimes, the threat to wine has come from pandering to younger drinkers and alienating established ones, at others it’s been about not taking the youth vote seriously.

Despite all the dire, frequently contradictory, predictions, however, the

British wine world hasn’t come to an end. Moments that felt like they offered an existential threat have generally turned into moments of transformation, whether that’s the demise of the multiple specialist (which set the scene for the boom in independents) or the Covid years triggering a move into online and a boom in interest in wine education. The wineselling landscape may not be the same as it was pre-Covid, pre-Brexit, pre-2008 or whichever key historical date your political affiliations compel you to choose. But we still have one of the most diverse and vibrant wine scenes in the world.

For all that the lessons of recent wine trade history suggest we should try to ignore the weirdly alluring siren’s song of the pessimists whenever it strikes up, I have to say that’s never been more difficult than it has been over the past couple of months. It’s not just that the pessimists themselves have got bolder, louder, more masochistically sure of themselves. Sometimes, as I’ve made my way around various trade events in the spring and early summer, it’s seemed that that there were vastly more of them.

The pessimistic tone was there in this year’s Wine Merchant reader survey, published in the March edition, which saw a new high for respondents who are either fairly pessimistic (13%) or very pessimistic (2%) about the year ahead. It was also very much in evidence at the London Wine Fair in May: confined to a single floor, and with many key players absent, this was a downbeat affair that, when set against the thriving Prowein and Wine Paris trade fairs, felt, for many I spoke to, symbolic of a wider UK wine market malaise.

But it was at the recent round of supermarket tastings that I had the most strikingly downbeat conversations. Supermarket buyers are by their very nature pragmatists, attuned to making the most of situations, and with a politician’s skill for spinning any development into a good-news story. When even they are struggling to come up with a positive angle, it may be time to start worrying.

The following conversations, scribbled in the margins of my tasting books, give a flavour of the mood wherever I went.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever been more concerned about the future of wine in this country.”

“In August, we’re going to see the start of the most horrendous race to the bottom.”

“You can forget about buying trips, most wine buyers will get a trip to the bulk wine fair once or twice a year and that’ll be it.”

“I don’t think you can look at the current direction of travel and not worry that we’re going the way of tobacco over the next generation.”

“Young people just aren’t drinking wine anymore, and that old idea that they will switch to wine as they get older just isn’t happening … they’re just not.”

The worries here are a mix of the long-ish and the short term. As the ballooning size of their noand-low ranges (a development that was also very much in evidence at the LWF) shows, the supermarkets are taking falling consumption of alcohol, and the rise of outright teetotalism, particularly among younger drinkers, very seriously indeed. At the same time, I have yet to speak to a supermarket buyer responsible for no-low ranges who has the same enthusiasm for their no- or low-alcohol wine as they do for their beers and other drinks. Some are very much better than others. But there is a real need to finally crack the code and create no or low-alcohol wines that are genuinely indistinguishable from the normal-abv originals.

Concerns about a future in which alcohol consumption is increasingly regulated and socially unacceptable, while real enough,

are rather less pressing than those caused by the imminent August duty hikes, however. What’s worrying the buyers I spoke to isn’t just the fact that the 44p rise is taking place during a cost-of-living crisis. It’s the way the rise is structured, which they believe will have a baleful effect on the quality and style of wine.

As Ben Cahill, a wine buyer at the Co-op, explained, one way of getting around the duty rise is to switch more of your wines to sub-11.5% abv, the point at which the higher duty rate kicks in (in 2025, things will get even more complicated).

There are of course, a couple of ways a producer who might normally produce wines in the 11.5% to 14.5% bracket could go about doing that. They could harvest radically early, before the sugars have accumulated, and therefore produce a wine that is much greener, leaner, and more acidic; or they can harvest at their usual moment of ripeness, but stop the fermentation at 11.5%, leaving several grams of sugar in the wine.

Neither is very appealing, says Cahill, and he says his business will look to other ways of keeping prices down. Speaking to other buyers, it seems that the expectation

is that there will be an increased reliance on the bulk market as well as on less fashionable regions (tendencies, along with consistently higher degrees of residual sugar, that were all already in evidence at many of the supermarket tastings I attended). Either way, the implication is that supermarket wines are about to get a lot more expensive, and/or a lot less interesting.

Independents, meanwhile, with their £15.70 average price point floating high above the £6.35 market average, may feel all this mass-market mess is some way beneath them, their still-resilient market of connoisseurs happy to pay the extra for quality. But the path from supermarketusing beginner to independent-frequenting enthusiast is well-worn and vital to the health of the independent sector.

If a mixture of rising prices and falling quality leads, as many expect, to a dropoff in consumption, as drinkers switch to other categories or just never get the wine bug at all, it’s worth asking where the next generation of independent consumers will come from. And it’s hard, right now, to feel too optimistic about the answer.

Supermarket buyers are by their very nature pragmatists. When even they are struggling to come up with a positive angle, it may be time to start worrying

Wine faces a turbulent immediate future in the UK market

SIGN UP NOW FOR

BORDEAUX WINE MONTH

Bordeaux Wine Month returns this September, giving indies across the UK the chance to promote their wines from this iconic region. The campaign is all about boosting sales, at the same time as increasing consumer knowledge – and showcasing the broad and unexpected range of styles that today’s Bordeaux has to offer. A nice way to surprise regular but also new customers!

In 2022, 91 UK wine merchants took part. Participants used Bordeaux Wine Month to showcase a diverse selection of wines. Bordeaux delivers, after all, everything from crisp dry whites to fresh and fruity rosés, luscious sweet wines and world-class reds.

In-store tastings across the country promoted Bordeaux wine in all its guises and demonstrated that – as everyone knows – the chance to try before you buy is the guaranteed way to grow sales.

Read more overleaf about how to get involved.

Share Bordeaux's good news stories

Bordeaux winemakers are increasingly sensitive to the need for fresher, more fruit-forward red wines and are making adjustments in the cellar to meet market demands: for instance, less oak and careful management of acidity to keep the wines fresh. It’s also not uncommon to spot amphorae in Bordeaux wineries, their role in emphasising the grapes’ fruit flavours being well recognised.

Bordeaux has an impressive sustainability story to tell too. In 2022, 75% of the Bordeaux vineyard had some sort of environmental accreditation with a 43% increase in organic/in-conversion estates being recorded between 2013 and 2020. Certified biodynamic estates are currently less common, but numbers are rising perceptibly.

Bordeaux’s dry whites reflect the nature of their terroirs. Benefiting from the freshness of the Atlantic Ocean and strong westerly winds, they offer unique characteristics with their liveliness and natural fruitiness. The 12 AOCs are planted on a wide variety of Bordeaux soils, resulting in an exceptional range of styles. Wines can be lively and fruity, or they can be structured and generous.

Bordeaux’s new reds are challenging some of the region’s oldest perceptions. Fresh and fruit-forward, they combine historic varieties, unexpected blends and modern practices, to offer earlier-drinking, single-variety or vegan wines. This evolution of Bordeaux’s style is a reflection of the region’s response to changing consumer preferences. Crafted to drink when young, but still with great ageing potential, the modern wines of Bordeaux are the result of innovative winemakers exploring new styles.

Unexpected styles include Bordeaux’s light, fruity and elegant rosé wines – and Crémant which, although a century-old tradition, has met with record success in recent years. With its delicate bubbles and freshness. It is the perfect choice for any celebration

In short, there are plenty of great reasons to be both selling and drinking Bordeaux wine. Getting involved in Bordeaux Wine Month in 2023 is your chance to share the joy and boost the profit line.

“Over the past six years Bordeaux Wine Month has gone from strength to strength and has proven to be popular with retailers and consumers alike,” says Cécile Huvé, UK Marketing Manager at the Bordeaux Wine Council.

“Bordeaux Wine Month is a fantastic opportunity to get creative and showcase the diverse range of wines coming from Bordeaux to customers in a fun, engaging way. As well as this, each year we receive excellent feedback from participants, with several retailers reporting an increase in their sales, sometimes doubling compared to the same period the previous year.”

Increase sales and maybe win a prize in the process

Taking part in Bordeaux Wine Month is a great way to increase in-store footfall and grow sales of Bordeaux wines.

• You will receive a digital toolbox that will support and amplify your individual marketing efforts

• A comprehensive publicity and point-ofsale pack will be sent to all participants

• There will be social media and digital assistance for your campaign

• You will get £250 cash to put towards your Bordeaux promotion.

Criteria

Indies who sign up for Bordeaux Wine Month will be asked to:

• Have impactful, easily visible displays, focused on Bordeaux wines in-store. These visual promotions should extend to your online presence too

• Hold at least three tastings of Bordeaux wines for customers, during two weeks in September 2023

• Include at least four different Bordeaux wines in each tasting. The wines chosen should include a dry white, and a young, accessible red priced under £30

• Ensure a minimum of 60 attendees across the three tasting events.

You could win!

Being a part of Bordeaux Wine Month means you are in with a chance of winning one of these great prizes:

• The winner of the Best Independent Merchant campaign in 2023 will be presented with an all-expenses paid educational trip to the Bordeaux wine region in 2024

• Four runners-up will receive £250 in cash towards new Bordeaux listings

• £250 cash for new Bordeaux listings will go to the merchant who makes the best use of digital media.

Joe Gosling of Bottles Wine Shop in Worcester was the overall winner of last year’s campaign.

“At Bottles Wine Shop we've taken part in Bordeaux Wine Month twice and have always had an excellent experience with it," he says. "We were provided with a superb array of POS including posters, vinyl decals, information booklets and printed tote bags among many other materials. There is also access to a fab educational app run by Bordeaux Wine School that I have referred customers to if they want to learn some more about a fascinating part of the wine world.

“We found it highly beneficial for driving sales, as customers can sometimes find wine from Bordeaux a little intimidating. The promotion placed gentle focus on the region, allowing us to run tastings (both on-barrel and larger events) and engaging social media, leading to increased interest.

“Customer feedback was great, with many saying they'd be willing to try Bordeaux wines more regularly and in a greater variety. It certainly helped that we could smash the myth that all Bordeaux was only purchasable at premium prices. A lot of people were surprised that you could find excellent quality at reasonable prices.”

Greece: a WINE country whose time has come

Jamie Goode is your guide to one of the world’s most exciting sources of wines in a range of styles

The narrative plot behind most wine articles seems to be that everything is getting slightly better. A wine journalist travels to a region, visits a range of producers, and comes back and pens 2,000 words telling the world that there have been improvements, the wine scene is progressing, and there are some new producers emerging. But the thing about Greek wine is that this narrative doesn’t work: things have got a lot better, for sure, but they have got better fast, not gradually. It’s a wine country whose time has come, and the noise that’s being made about Greek wines in the UK market is justified. There’s a lot to be excited about.

A diverse landscape

One of Greece’s strengths is its diverse viticultural landscape. As well as the many mainland areas, there are the islands, and together this makes for quite a patchwork quilt of wine regions, with altitude and proximity to the sea proving excellent ways to moderate what otherwise is quite a warm climate. Currently there are 33 PDOs (protected designation of origin regions) and 120 PGIs (protected geographical indication regions). Of the islands, Santorini is currently the one in the spotlight, partly because it has become a top tourist destination. The popularity of the wines, made from grapes grown in volcanic soils in a rather extreme form of viticulture, has led to significant price increases, both in the wines and the grapes – especially for Assyrtiko. But the real reason behind the Santorini surge is that the wines are just so good, and so consistently good. Crete is a large island making a lot of interesting wines with numerous indigenous grapes, and Cephalonia is also home to several good producers, although the wines are less well known internationally. Samos is

Vines growing in Aegio, in the Peloponnese

famous for its sweet wines, but some producers are now making smart dry wines too.

Then in the mainland, we have two main areas. Down south is the Peloponnese, with several notable regions, including Patras, Slopes of Aegialia, Nemea and Mantinia. Then in the north we have the regions of Macedonia: Naoussa, Amyndeon (aka Amynteo), Epanomi, Goumenissa and Drama. There’s also central Greece, which is garnering more attention.

Local grape varieties

One of the great appeals of the modern Greek wine scene is that it’s largely about Greece’s indigenous varieties. That’s not to say that international imports don’t do very well in Greece when they are intelligently chosen and planted in the right areas. After all, it’s often part of the development of a wine country that’s beginning to look beyond its own borders. Winemakers love to work with famous varieties, and show their ability (and the ability of their terroirs) in producing creditable examples of the famous varieties that are qualitative peers of the wines that are made in more famous wine countries. They prove themselves with foreign grapes, and then have the confidence to re-visit their own country’s varieties and do something interesting with them. The international market also begins to have confidence in Greek wines when it sees that the winemakers there have skill that can be demonstrated in this way. Export markets like the UK seem to have a special love for wine countries that do well with varieties unique to that country. We don’t really want another Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon, but we are thrilled by local grapes.

Of these, Assyrtiko has taken central stage, and this has expanded from its home in Santorini to be a major player across many Greek wine regions. It is a variety that offers focus, freshness and good acidity, but also plenty of flavour. It isn’t fazed by warm conditions, and the name is relatively easy to pronounce. It’s also one of the Greek varieties that has excited international attention for its ability to fight ever-warming climate conditions. Assyrtiko has truly helped put Greece on the map, and it deserves all its plaudits.

Following hot on the heels of Assyrtiko is the red grape Xinomavro. This is often likened to Nebbiolo, with its talent for making wines that are lighter in

colour but which pack a good tannic punch, as well as maintaining acidity.

Another star red is Agiorgitiko, which finds its home in Nemea, in the Peloponnese. This makes a fruity red with some structure. Moschofilero is a pink-skinned variety usually used to make white wines, and is native to the Peloponnese. It’s really appealing. Roditis is another pink-skinned variety also native to the Peloponnese, although the berries are less pink than Moschofilero, and only tend to be fully pink when they see direct sun. Malagousia is an ancient variety that almost became extinct before being rescued by Evangelos Gerovassiliou in the late 1980s. It’s a terpenic variety that makes full flavoured whites and it’s a great success, grown widely all around Greece.

Vidiano is the flagship variety of Crete, with good acidity, often minerality and promising ageing potential. It produces many different styles from fresh stainless steel to oak-aged to sparkling.

Savatiano is noteworthy as the main grape of Attica, in the southwest of the mainland. It’s currently undergoing a revival, and as well as making lovely dry whites, it’s also famous as the main grape of retsina, a resin-flavoured wine that is being modernised by some to good effect. Robola is a very promising grape from the Ionian island of Cephalonia, producing complex wines with crisp acidity and mineral notes.

This is just a snapshot of the diverse viticultural landscape of Greece, and a critical mass of qualityminded, export-focused producers now exists to make this a happy hunting ground for merchants and buyers.

• See our Greek winery directory overleaf.

A vineyard at Naoussa in Macedonia

DIRECTORY OF GREEK WINERIES

MACEDONIA

ALPHA ESTATE

Region: Macedonia

alpha.gr

Alpha Estate, founded in 1997 by viticulturist Makis Mavridis and chemist-oenologist Angelos Iatridis, is situated in the heart of the PDO region of Amyndeo, where Xinomavro reigns. The privately-owned 220 hectares of vineyards follow the rules of sustainable viticulture while the gravity-flow winery is designed to apply the minimum possible stress to the raw material.

Imported by Hallgarten & Novum Wines and Maltby & Greek

BOUTARI

Regions: Macedonia, Santorini, Peloponnese, Crete www.boutari.gr

Boutari was established in Naoussa in 1879 and is one of Greece’s most famous producers, with wineries also in Santorini, Mantinia, Goumenissa, Attica, and Crete. Boutari played a decisive role in preserving the Xinomavro variety and promoting the PDO regions of Naoussa, Santorini and Mantinia.

Imported by Aspris & Son

DIAMANTAKOS WINERY

Region: Macedonia

diamantakos.gr

In 1978, the Diamantakos family purchased a winery in the heart of Naoussa. Today it is run by third-generation family member George Diamantakos. The vineyards are planted on limestone and schist soils, and the winery predominantly focuses on the indigenous varieties Xinomavro and Preknadi.

Imported by Clark Foyster Wines

DOMAINE COSTA LAZARIDI

Region: Macedonia

domaine-lazaridi.gr

Costa Lazaridis planted the first vineyard in Drama’s Mount Falakro in 1979 and built the first modern winery in the region in 1986. Since 1992, Domaine Costa Lazaridis has expanded from 100 acres to over 2,800 acres across four sites. Additionally, a second winery called Oenotria Land was built in Attica in 2003.

Imported by Private Cellar

KIR-YIANNI ESTATE

Region: Macedonia

kiryianni.gr

Kir-Yianni was founded in 1997 by Yiannis Boutaris, one of the leading figures in the Greek wine industry. Today, fifth-generation Stellios Boutaris runs the estate with two wineries and vineyards spreading from Naoussa over to Amyndeon, on the western side of Mount Vermion.

Imported by Enotria&Coe

KTIMA VOYATZI

Region: Macedonia

ktimavoyatzi.gr

Although the Voyatzis family has been making wine in the region since the early 20th century, brothers Yiannis, the winemaker, and Nikos, an engineer, returned to their family’s land to create Ktima Voyatzi in the 90s. The 40 hectares of organically-grown estate vineyards are located on the foothills of the Pieria mountains, near Lake Polyfytos. Currently seeking representation

NOEMA WINERY

Region: Macedonia

facebook.com/people/Noema-Winery

Noema Winery is based in the most remote, mountainous PDO region of Amyndeon, Macedonia. It was established by American investor David Wittig. Noema is one of Greece’s newest wineries producing distinctive expressions of the Xinomavro variety which flourishes in this region.

Imported by Winetraders

CENTRAL GREECE

AVANTIS WINERY

Region: Central Greece avantisestate.gr

Avantis Winery is a 20-hectare estate located on the island of Evia. Apostolos Mountrichas and his wife Lenga established the winery in 1994, although the Mountrihas family has been growing grapes since 1830. Their wines are made with indigenous and international varieties and the family has also established a second winery in Santorini.

Imported by Amathus Drinks

GREEK WINE CELLARS

Region: Central Greece

Greek Wine Cellars, formerly known as Kourtaki Wines, is a historic wine producer in Markopoulo, just a few kilometres outside of Athens. The company was founded in 1895 by Vassili Kourtakis, one of the first Greeks to gain a diploma in oenology. It produces several brands: Kourtaki, Apelia, Calliga and Kouros.

Imported by Bibendum

HATZIMICHALIS ESTATE

Region: Central Greece

hatzimichalis.com

Located in the Atalanti Valley, Domaine Hatzimichalis is run by its founder Dimitris L Hatzimichalis and sons Leonidas and Panagiotis. They own 220 hectares of vineyards, capitalising on the ideal microclimate of the cool breezes of Mount Parnassus and the Euboean Gulf of the Aegean Sea.

Imported by The Oxford Wine Company and Marathon Food

MUSES ESTATE

Region: Central Greece musesestate.com

Muses Estate was established in 2005 by third-generation winemakers Nikos, Stellios and Panayiotis. The winery’s vineyards are located in the Valley of the Muses, in Viotia at the foot of Mount Helicon. Muses Estate works with both international and indigenous varieties including the rare Mouhtaro grape, grown only in this valley.

Imported by Hallgarten & Novum Wines

SAMARTZIS BROTHERS

Region: Central Greece samartziswines.gr

The Samartzis family-owned vineyards and winery are located in the communities of Askre and Vagia, on the southern slopes of Mount Helicon in Viotia. The estate’s vineyards are planted at an altitude of 350-550 metres with Kontoura white (a rare clone of Savatiano), Savatiano, Malagousia, the local red Mouhtaro, and some international varieties.

Currently seeking representation

ATTICA

PAPAGIANNAKOS WINERY

Region: Attica papagiannakos.gr

Domaine Papagiannakos was established in 1919 in Mesogaia, Attica, one of the most important and historic winemaking regions of Greece. The winery is now run by third-generation winemaker Vassilis Papagiannakos. At the outset, the Savatiano variety was the winery's sole focus, but other varieties have been introduced since. Papagiannakos is the first bioclimatic winery in Greece.

Imported by Boutinot

PELOPONNESE

CAVINO

Region: Peloponnese cavino.gr

Cavino was founded in 1958 on the slopes of Aegialeia in the Peloponnese, and includes a winery in Patra and the Mega Spileo Estate. Their main vineyard is located on a plateau above the picturesque Vouraikos Canyon planted with Mavro Kalavritino, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Lagorthi and Assyrtiko.

Imported by Kingsland Drinks

DOMAINE SKOURAS

Region: Peloponnese skouras.gr

Domaine Skouras was established in 1986 by Dijontrained winemaker George Skouras, whose name became synonymous with the emblematic Megas Oenos, a blend of Agiorgitiko and Cabernet Sauvignon. The new Skouras winery is located in Malandreni within the zone of Nemea, the largest PDO red wine region of Greece.

Imported by Eclectic Wines

GAIA WINES

Region: Peloponnese & Santorini gaiawines.gr

The pioneering Gaia Estate was first established in 1994 by Greek agronomist Leon Karatsalos and agronomist and winemaker Yiannis Paraskevopoulos. Gaia has wineries in both Nemea and Santorini where it produces terroir-driven Agiorgitiko (Nemea) and Assyrtiko (Santorini).

Imported by Hallgarten & Novum Wines

KTIMA SPIROPOULOS

Region: Peloponnese ktimaspiropoulos.com

The Spiropoulos family has been cultivating vines for five generations in the mountainous region of Arcadia. This modern winery was built in 1987 inside a traditional Arcadian stone tower. The family owns over 35 hectares of organically-certified vineyards, mainly planted to Moschofilero. A second winery was built in 2007 in the Nemea PDO and focuses on 12 hectares of organicallygrown Agiorgitiko.

Currently seeking representation

MONEMVASIA WINERY

Region: Peloponnese monemvasiawinery.gr

Monemvasia Winery was founded in Monemvasia, Laconia in 1997 by George and Elli Tsimpidis with the goal to revive the historic Malvasia-Monemvasia wines and terroir. The first years were devoted to the study of native varieties and experimental vinifications. Today the winery owns 30 hectares of organic vineyards.

Imported by Hallgarten & Novum Wines

PALIVOU ESTATE

Region: Peloponnese palivos.gr

Palivou Estate was established in 1995 by George Palivos in ancient Nemea, an area continuously producing wine for 3,500 years. The estate has 40 hectares of organicallycultivated vineyards focusing mainly on Agiorgitiko but also Roditis, Moschofilero, Malagousia and some international varieties. Today the estate is run by the founders’ daughters, Evangelia and Vassiliki.

Currently seeking representation

PARPAROUSSIS WINERY

Region: Peloponnese parparoussis.com

Parparoussis Winery was founded in 1974 in Achaia by oenologist Athanassios Parparoussis and is now run by Athanassios and his daughters Erifili and Dimitra. The winery is located at the family estate in Bozaitika, Patras. The privately owned vineyards include 10 hectares in Movri Achaias and Bozaitikia, producing Assyrtiko, Athiri, Sideritis, Mavrodaphne, and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Imported by Cava Spiliadis

ROUVALIS WINERY

Region: Peloponnese rouvaliswinery.gr

Rouvalis was founded in Aigialeia in 1990 by Angelos Rouvalis, an oenologist who comes from a local vinegrowing family. The estate is now run by Angelos’s daughter Theodora Rouvalis and husband Antonio Ruiz Pañego. The vineyards are planted on extremely steep terraces overlooking the Corinthian gulf at an average altitude of 862 metres.

Imported by Bibendum and Maltby & Greek

Wine has been made in Nemea for 3,500 years

TSELEPOS WINERY

Region: Peloponnese tselepos.gr

Yiannis and Amalia Tselepos founded Tselepos Estate in 1989 in the PDO zone of Mantinia, and now look after 65 hectares of vines. In 2003, Tselepos created the nine-hectare Driopi Estate in Koutsi, Nemea, where he focuses on Agiorgitiko. In 2013 the winery joined forces with the Chryssou family in Santorini, producing different expressions of the island’s wines.

Imported by Cava Spiliadis

DIRECTORY OF GREEK WINERIES

CEPHALONIA

OREALIOS GAEA

Region: Cephalonia

orealios.gr

Orealios Gaea has over 300 vine growing members on the island of Cephalonia, between the Ionian sea and Mount Aions. The semi-mountainous steep terrain, and the limestone and gravelly soils, are very well suited to Robola, a variety that gained PDO status in 1982. The 180 hectares of vineyards are planted at an altitude of 300-800 metres.

Imported by Maltby & Greek

SAMOS

UNION OF COOPERATIVES OF SAMOS

Region: Samos Island samoswine.gr

The history of winemaking in Samos dates back to early antiquity. Founded in 1934 by Samos vine growers and farmers, the aim of this co-operative is the preservation of viticulture and trade. The co-operative is the largest in Greece with over 2,000 members focusing mainly on different expressions and styles of the local white Muscat of Samos.

Imported by Eclectic Wines

VAKAKIS WINERY

Region: Samos Island vakakiswines.gr/en

Vakakis Winery was established in 2011 and focuses on the indigenous varieties of Samos; mainly the White Muscat grape planted at an altitude of 600-1,000 metres. Vakakis produces a range of nine wines made with Assyrtiko, Muscat and the rare Black Muscat variety. A large percentage of the vineyards are cultivated organically. Currently seeking representation

SANTORINI

ARTEMIS KARAMOLEGOS

Region: Santorini artemiskaramolegos-winery.com

Although the Artemis Karamolegos winery was officially founded in 2004, the Karamolegos family has a winemaking tradition that stretches back to 1952. It is the third largest winery in Santorini, producing a range of wines using indigenous grape varieties, predominantly Assyrtiko.

Imported by Amathus Drinks and WoodWinters

ESTATE ARGYROS

Region: Santorini

estateargyros.com

Established in 1903, Estate Argyros is the largest vineyard owner on Santorini with more than 120 hectares of ungrafted vines, between 70 and 200 years old. The focus

is mainly on Assyrtiko. Since 2004 the winery has been run by fourth-generation winemaker Matthew Argyros, who built a new winery in 2015 in Episkopi.

Imported by Clark Foyster Wines

SANTO WINES

Region: Santorini santowines.gr

Santo Wines was founded in 1911 with the goal of protecting Santorini’s farmers through sustainable agricultural development. The promotion of local PDO Santorini products focusing mainly on wine was a key factor in the formation of the co-operative. Santo Wines built a state-of-the-art visitor centre and welcomes more than 500,000 visitors per year.

Imported by Bibendum

SIGALAS WINERY

Region: Santorini sigalas-wine.com

Sigalas Winery, founded in 1991 by visionary Paris Sigalas, is located in the plain of Oia, on the volcanic terroir of Santorini. Paris was closely connected with the development of the island’s vineyard and the rise of Santorini wines to international stardom. The winery works with 40 hectares of vines, focusing mainly on Assyrtiko.

Imported by Enotria & Coe

VENETSANOS WINERY

Region: Santorini venetsanoswinery.com

Overlooking Santorini’s caldera, the Venetsanos winery

HOW THE DIRECTORY WAS COMPILED

is located just above the port of Athinios. The Venetsanos family has been producing wine for generations and built the first industrial winery on the island in 1947. Initially, the wines were just made for the island, but are now widely exported.

Imported by Cava Spiliadis

CRETE DIAMANTAKIS WINERY

Region: Crete diamantakiswines.gr

Diamantakis boutique winery was founded in 2007 by third-generation vine growers Ioannis, Michalis and winemaker Zacharias Diamantakis. Located just outside the village of Kato Asites at an altitude of 450 metres, the winery sits on the eastern foothills of the Psiloritis mountain. The focus is largely on indigenous varieties such as Liatiko, Vidiano and Mandilaria.

Imported by Vindependents and WoodWinters

DOULOUFAKIS WINERY (CRETE)

Region: Crete douloufakis.wine

Douloufakis was established in 1930 by Dimitris

Douloufakis in Dafnes, a few kilometres south of Heraklion. The estate is now run by Dimitris’s grandson Nikolas, who trained in the oenology school of Alba in Italy. Douloufakis owns 80 hectares of vineyards and focuses mainly on indigenous Cretan varieties such as Vidiano and Liatiko as well as some international varieties. Currently seeking representation

Santorini vignerons know how to protect their grapes from the wind and sun

The Greek Wine Federation invited all its members to participate in this promotional activity, and the 32 producers described here represent those who signed up for the programme.

Outside the box

We like to keep our fingers on the pulse at WBC. In that spirit, I was reading an article in Packaging News about a wine that was being launched with no front or back label.

All the required information is printed on the capsule, and I was left wondering what the point of it was. The same thought went through my head when we were assessing the potential of “paper” bottles that are seemingly the next big thing in the drinks trade. And don’t get me started on the flat bottles that can fit through a letterbox.

Although I am not in the wine trade, I have had a lifelong fascination with wine, starting from a holiday job stacking shelves in the now defunct Peter Dominic. I also remember the thrill of going into one of the early Oddbins stores, stacked floor to ceiling with a bewildering display of wonderfully labelled bottles.

For me, the bottle and the label are an intrinsic part of buying wine. Are they really such a big environmental problem that needs to be solved? Are the days of glass bottles numbered? I personally do not think so. For a start, glass bottle recycling was around before recycling became popular and is one of the truly successful stories in our quest to cut waste.

Nowadays, recyclable is defined (apparently) as something that can be reused again and again in the same form. For example, a glass bottle can be ground up and a new glass bottle made from it as many times as you like. A card box can be shredded and used to make another card box, again and again.

This differs from downcycling (yes, it is an actual term) where the original product, once reworked, can only be used to make a different product. An example would be a plastic bottle that can be ground down and reused to make another plastic item; but, importantly, not a bottle. This process can also only happen a limited number of times until the final product has to be disposed of, which is not the case with glass, cardboard and aluminum. So glass bottles still come up smelling of roses.

Is a “paper” bottle better than a glass bottle? Firstly, it is only the outer layer that is paper: the inner layer is plastic, or made from a plant-based polymer. The “paper” bottle cannot be thrown into standard home style recycling. In this respect it is no different from Tetra Pak, which also requires specialist recycling to separate the different layers.

If you manage to separate the inner film from the outer film, it is still only good

for downcycling and not recycling … and personally I am always wary of whether biodegradable claims are true. Clearly the paper bottle is lighter, so has a smaller carbon footprint. But in my mind the glass bottle, with its limitless recycling potential, still wins the eco argument.

Lightweight bottles are increasingly popular, and they certainly have their place. However, a note of caution needs to be applied for those of you who sell online and send cases via couriers. In all the transit testing we do at WBC on our packaging, the breakage rate on lightweight bottles is noticeably higher than with standard bottles. Nothing could be more environmentally wasteful than delivering broken bottles to the customer. In that regard, “paper” bottles would probably win over glass, but we have never actually transit tested them.

A well-known brewer (probably the best!) launched a range of its beers in “paper” bottles, but it turns out this was a very limited edition. The intention is not to replace glass bottles or aluminum cans but to simply provide another option. The brewer’s aim is to develop “paper” bottles with the same carbon footprint as glass ones. Which begs the obvious question: why not just stick with glass?

Perhaps I am missing something. Could it be that the paper bottles are a gimmick to make the company look environmentally friendly and hit its corporate and social responsibility targets? I am not convinced that consumers are demanding an end to glass bottles, and once they try to recycle a “paper” bottle they will quickly realise it is potentially a step backwards, rather than forwards. Greenwashing is, I think, the term that’s used.

These are my personal thoughts. I do not profess to be an expert, just an interested observer. I am happy to be put right if I am wrong. We spend a lot of time at WBC trying to make genuine improvements to our products and ensure they are as ecofriendly as they can be while still being fit for purpose. On that basis, we will not be promoting “paper” bottles in their current form.

Are these supposedly green bottles even worth the paper they’re wrapped in?

Andrew Wilson is chairman of WBC

Beware greenwash gimmicks

Wood-aged gin

Producers are turning to wood to give gin some of the top-end panache of Cognac or whisky. Devon’s Salcombe Distilling has produced the Victuallers Special Edition Snapes Point (RRP £40) sloe gin. It’s a blend of gin cask-aged for nine months with sloes and damsons that have been steeped for two months and then distilled in copper pot stills. The result is a sloe gin with a port-like character with a touch of vanilla from the wood on the finish. Salcombe has also made the first release in five years of its Finisterre gin (RRP £50), aged for three years in fino casks in a partnership with sherry house Bodegas Tradición.

Scottish island distiller 57˚ Skye has produced a version of its Earth & Sea gin (RRP £44.99) finished in French oak casks that have previously been used to mature Banyuls, a fortified aperitif. The gin is made with “earth” botanicals including heather and rowan berries, and “sea” ingredients such as smoked laminaria and kelp seaweeds.

White rum

Spiced and golden rum have been the buzz segments for longer than’s decent but more niche producers are growing in confidence, taking them into the territory traditionally dominated by Bacardí and Wray & Nephew. Duppy Share, one of the most high profile independent brands of the past decade, has made its White Rum (RRP £20.50) in partnership with the grime artist Kano, who signed off on the label design and flavour profile.

While white is usually viewed as a base for long mixing, Duppy Share sees it as having a more refined taste that’s suitable for sipping neat or shots.

John Paul Jones is sensing an opportunity to reach out to jaded gin fans with its Ranger white rum (RRP £35), which has

SPRING CLEAN YOUR SPIRITS

Nigel Huddleston looks at some of the micro-trends and businesses whose innovations will help shape the category in the months ahead

been specifically designed to be mixed with tonic for a drink that wine communicator Tom Surgey thinks has “more energy and verve than a classic G&T”.

Like its wood-aged sister brand Lowland, Ranger is steeped in spiral wrack seaweed but then flavoured with slices of apple and lime for a lighter, citrus profile.

Black-owned businesses

Fawn Weaver set up the US whiskey business Uncle Nearest in 2017, honouring the 19th century Tennessee whiskey pioneer Nearest Green, aka the Uncle Nearest that the brand is named after.

The original Green was the first known African-American master distiller, and his great-great-granddaughter and awardwinning master blender Victoria Eady Butler is on the present day Uncle Nearest team.

The brand has just launched in the UK through Mangrove, with two iterations available: 1844 (RRP £55) and 1856 (RRP £65).

Spearhead Spirits is a UK company founded by Chris Frederick and Damola Timeyin to market African spirits. Its first two products are Vusa (RRP around £25), a vodka distilled with sugar cane from Kwazulu-Natal, and Bayab (RRP around £30), a gin made from Zambian

baobab – also known as the tree of life –and African juniper, coriander, rosemary, cinnamon, salt and citrus peel.

Frederick says: “Our brands not only increase diversity and challenge cultural bias in the sector but, being produced on the African continent, allow us to show the world what Africans have always known about this culturally and resource-rich continent.”

Wine-influenced vodka

Louis Latour Agencies began shipping the French vodka Cobalte (RRP £47) last year. It comes from the Iconic Nectars stable which also includes Cognac Frapin and Champagne Gosset. It’s made in Aÿ-Champagne from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes from Montagne de Reims, which Latour says

gives it “minerality, roundness of fruit and freshness,” with a silky-smooth finish. The grapes are vinified before being distilled with the lees five times.

Meeghan Murdoch, operations manager at the Glenrinnes Distillery in Speyside, studied at Plumpton College before working as a winemaker in Germany, France and New Zealand. This led her to experiment with barrel-ageing the producer’s Eight Lands Organic vodka. Virgin oak casks were first filled with brandy, and then 31-year-old Muscat wine, before finally being

filled with vodka. The finished BarrelAged Organic (RRP £37) is unmistakeably a vodka but with subtle layers of apricot, vanilla and raisin.

Café culture

If there’s one flavour trend that’s having its moment it’s coffee, partly as producers and distributors respond to Bacardí’s controversial decision to take its cult Patron XO Café brand off the market to preserve tequila stocks.

Tequila brand Bandero is aiming to fill the void with Bandero Café (in the region of £43), a 35% abv small-batch coffeeinfused tequila available through Deckers Trading.

Mentzendorff has launched Luxumus (RRP £29), a liqueur for coffee lovers made in small batches by blending five-times

distilled alcohol with sugar, cocoa, vanilla and citrus fruit. It’s recommended served with espresso coffee on the rocks in the Mexican carajillo serve.

Kent’s Copper Rivet – maker of Dockyard gin – has also entered the coffee liqueur market with Son of a Gun Coffee Liqueur (RRP around £23).

Italy’s Luxardo is launching its Espresso Liqueur (RRP £26-£28) through Amber Beverage UK. It’s made through a 30-day heated infusion of mainly arabica coffee from Brazil, Colombia and Kenya with neutral spirit.

Genre-bending brands

Never Say Die is a whiskey described by its makers as “England’s first bourbon”, named after the first American horse to win the Epsom Derby, in 1954, and comes in a bottle that features the colours worn by its jockey Lester Piggott. Legend has it that the horse had experienced a traumatic birth only to be revived by a dram of whiskey.

“But an English bourbon – how does that work?” you may rightly ask. Well, it was distilled and matured first in Kentucky, put on a boat and “ocean-aged” for six weeks, and then finished further in oak at the White Peaks Distillery in Derbyshire. Never Say Die Barrel Strength (RRP £79) is distributed by Essex-based N10 Bourbons.

Co-founder Martha Dalton describes it as “lively with spice and citrus that melts into vanilla, leather and caramel”, making it “great served neat or over a single large block of ice, but with enough strength and depth of flavour to hold up to mixing in classic whiskey cocktails”.

Calling the shots with

Nigel Huddleston presents half a dozen brands that could act as a primer for

Storywood

Nestled in a Proof Drinks portfolio that includes on-trade market leader Cazcabel and The Lost Explorer mezcal can be found Storywood, a tequila with a British flavour. It’s aged for between seven and 14 months in ex-Speyside malt whisky barrels with the aim of reaching out to Scotch whisky buffs as well as tequila drinkers. Agave (and related) spirits other than tequila and mezcal, such as

sotol, bacanora and raicilla, are gaining traction in the States, and Proof Drinks also ships Estancia raicilla, distilled from must ground from the Maximiliana agave plant, grown at high altitude for up to 15 years, twice the norm for mainstream tequila. proofdrinks.com

The Butterfly Cannon

Plenty of producers have been bigging up oak-aged reposado as a sipper to distance

with tequila

tequila from historical connotations of slamming or cheap and cheerful cocktails. The Butterfly Cannon, however, is a modern super-premium brand that’s unashamedly pitched as perfect for mixing, either in cocktails or with tonic or soda. It’s from Biggar & Leith, the spirits company formed by Elwyn Gladstone, with UK distribution by Craftwork Spirits. Gladstone’s previous includes Jose Cuero and Proximo tequilas and he later created

indie favourite Malfy gin. The brand is named from the migration of butterflies from the US to Mexico and aims to help fund butterfly habitat conservation in the latter.

craftworkspirits.com

Ilegal

Mezcal’s smoky flavour, derived from cooking agave hearts over open fire pits before distillation, has brought it fanatical followers. The seeds for Ilegal were sown when its American founder John Rexer struggled to find reliable sources of mezcal in Guatemala for a bar he owned there. He began smuggling spirits across the border from Mexico to supply the bar, before going straight with this. In a nod to its origin story, the brand campaigned against Trump’s Mexican wall plans in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election with the slogan “Donald, Eres un Pendejo”, which translates as “Donald, You’re an Asshole”. In the UK it’s imported by Speciality Brands, whose portfolio also includes Tapatio tequila, Derrumbes and Los Siete Misterios mezcals, La Venenosa raicilla and La Higuera sotol. specialitybrands.com

Mijenta

Terroir can play a huge part in defining a tequila’s character, just as it does in wine. Mijenta is a small-batch tequila made from agave grown in the mineral-rich, red alkaline soil of the Jalisco Altos, or highlands, that leads to a fruity and spicy character. In Mijenta’s case a three-way wood-ageing regime – up to six months in a combination of American white oak, French oak and French acacia – brings complexity and a full but silky texture. The brand launched in the UK through Maverick Drinks with a blanco in 2021 before adding a reposado last year. maverickdrinks.com

Próspero

Fuelled by tequila’s popularity in the US there is, unfortunately, no escaping celebrity ownership and endorsement. Justin Timberlake, George Clooney and Charlie Sheen are among those to have thrown their hats in to the ring. Rita Ora is an early-adopting Brit, as both a shareholder and chief creative officer of Próspero. Of particular note is the brand’s move into the RTD cocktail market in partnership with Lockdown Liquor, a company formed to raise money for NHS charities during the pandemic. Cantarita is their take on the Cantaritos mix: tequila, citrus fruit and agave nectar, traditionally served from clay pots in roadside bars in Jalisco. prosperotequila.com

Tiempo

Cristilano is a new(ish) tequila style, taking an aged anejo tequila and filtering it through charcoal. The aim is to remove the colour that comes from the woodageing so that it resembles a blanco, while, in theory, retaining the full floral and fruity flavours that come from the ageing process. It’s a concept that has divided opinion and it’s still relatively niche. Tiempo’s Reposado Cristalino is a welcome addition to the agave spirits canon in the UK, using 100% puro blue weber agave, grown both at high altitude, for sweetness, and on the valley floor for an earthy, vegetal edge. It’s marketed with the cheeky catchline: “No additives, no chemicals, no celebrities”. tiempo-tequila.com

Twenty regions Twenty grape varieties Twenty independent wines

David Williams invites you on a whistlestop tour of the most varied, exciting and sometimes confusing wine-producing countries on the planet, suggesting a star wine from each of Italy’s main regions

No other wine-producing country can match Italy for diversity.

With wine made in all 20 of the country’s regions, each with its own specialities and stylistic stamps, it is an endlessly diverting, sometimes baffling, occasionally infuriating, but never less than stimulating place to source wine. Here we pick out some recent favourites from every region, all of them made from local varieties and offering what we feel is good value (which, as any wine merchant knows, is not the same thing as cheap).

Aosta

Ermes Paves Blanc de Morgex et de la Salle 2019 (Liberty Wines)

The wines of Ermes Pavese and his wife Milena tick off a lot of wine hipster boxes. You want high-altitude vines? Few in Europe are planted higher than the Paveses’ in the commune of Morgex on the Italian side of Mont Blanc. What about old vines? Pre-phylloxera, mate. Obscure grape varieties? There are just 40ha of Val d’Aosta’s indigenous Prié Blanc in the world. The wine Ermes Paves crafts from these ingredients is beautifully judged: soft, gentle, fragrantly blossomy, and with crystal-clear acidity that custom demands we must compare to an Alpine stream.

Piedmont

Azelia Dolcetto d’Alba Bricco dell’Oriolo 2020 (Justerini & Brooks)

At a time when Nebbiolo has never been more in demand in both its collectable (Barolo, Barbaresco) and youthfully accessible (the much-improved Alba and Langhe Nebbiolo) forms, and when Barbera is taken increasingly seriously, too, it’s no wonder Dolcetto, the third of Piedmont’s big red three, sometimes struggles to get a look in. Understandable, but also a shame, when the best Dolcetto from the best sites in Alba, which Azelia’s undoubtedly is, offers something entirely distinctive: a fresh burst of glossy black cherry and floral notes that is perfectly attuned to summer drinking.

Lombardy

Dirupi Olé Rosso di Valtelina DOC 2016 (Passione Vino)

In the mountainous region of Valtelina, just south of the Swiss border in Lombardy, Nebbiolo takes on the local name of Chiavennasca. Interpreted by skilled producers such as Dirupi’s Pierpaolo di Franco and Davide Fasolini, the highaltitude northerly conditions produce Nebbiolo/Chiavennasca that is quite different from further down in the Langhe,

with a beguiling brightness and freshness and a high-definition quality that is all-butirresistible in an unoaked, gently extracted red such as Olé, which is made from 100-year-old vines.

Trentino-Alto Adige

I Mastri Vernacoli Trentino Pinot Grigio 2022 (Boutinot)

Hardwired into millions of wine consumers after years of sub-par supermarket bottlings, Pinot Grigio is still saddled with a reputation as the go-to glass for anyone who prefers not to think at all when they’re drinking. In Trentino, however, Cavit – the high-performing co-operative representing more than 5,000 growers led by the muchadmired winemaker Anselmo Martini – has managed the tricky balancing act of producing wines of character and verve at high volume with aplomb, in wines such as the graceful I Mastri Vernacoli bottling.

Veneto

Ca’la Bionda Valpolicella Classico 2019 (Lea & Sandeman)

Valpolicella is another style and region that has had to deal with a lingering reputation for mass-market dilution, which is why so many producers in the region delegate quality red wine duties,

From page 54

and the best grapes, to Amarone. Others, especially those of a more terroir-oriented disposition such as Ca’la Bionda, have been inspired to use Corvina (plus Corvinone, Molinara and Rondinella) to make wines of ethereal, transparent, fine-tannined, redcherried beauty in the Valpolicella hills.

Friuli-Venezia Giulia

I Clivi Verduzzo 2017 (Astrum)

The striking white wines of Friuli-VeneziaGiulia carry the stamp of the region’s cosmopolitan history. Located in the far north eastern corner of Italy, bordering Austria and Slovenia, it’s a cross-current of cultural influences. The Zanusso family captures the personality beautifully in wines sourced from their old-vine vineyards in the Colli Orientali and Collio zones, with the former the home for the local variety Verduzzo used for this wine, which combines coursing mineral freshness and leafy herbs with luminous tropical fruit.

Emilia-Romagna

Vittorio Graziano

Fontana dei Boschi

Lambrusco Emilia IGT (Winetraders)

There is something of a chicken-and-egg style puzzle to be solved when trying to understand the recent history of Lambrusco. Has this traditional, unpretentious, sparkling red found its feet (and a new market) because of the rise of pét nat styles from elsewhere? Or did topquality Lambrusco provide the inspiration for the modern pét nat scene? The answer is probably somewhere in between, but either way producers such as Vittorio Graziano deserve enormous respect for raising expectations of this classic, intensely drinkable and refreshing style.

Liguria

Bruna Le Russeghine Pigato, Riviera

Ligure di Ponente DOC 2021 (Graft) Liguria is perhaps the least wellrepresented Italian wine region in the UK;

indeed, it’s rare to find much beyond the region’s own spectacular coastline. That’s less a matter of quality or style than it is size of production – this is one of those situations where local demand genuinely does outstrip demand, with Pigato, the local variant of Vermentino, responsible, in the hands of stylish producers such as Bruna, for wines of salty sea-breezy freshness and flavours of lime, fennel and dill.

Tuscany

Montenidoli Vernaccia di San

Gimignano 20 (Les Caves de Pyrene)

OK, so it’s a little perverse to pick a white grape to represent a region that is dominated by often-superb Sangiovese. But Tuscany’s whites deserve a little wider renown, especially when they’re as good as Montenidoli’s. Sourced from a 24ha vineyard surrounded by 200ha of forest in San Gimignano, it’s a riposte to the notion that Vernaccia is a necessarily dull, mediocre white grape; given a little time on skins, in traditional fashion, it has bags of nutty-herbal, stone-fruited appeal.

The spectacular Liguria coastline

Umani Ronchi

Marche and Abruzzo

This pioneering family-owned producer has long been focused on elegant, premium wines made in a sustainable way

Imported by Berkmann Wine Cellars

Umani Ronchi got its start in the late 1950s, when Gino Umani Ronchi brought to life a small farm in Cupramontana; Verdicchio Classico wine country.

A few years later the producer was taken over by the Bianchi-Bernetti family, who acquired the brand and estate, bringing new entrepreneurial life to the venture. The property was reconstituted as a winegrowing estate in 1968.

Massimo Bernetti oversaw the winery, focusing on expanding exports (in Germany and the UK in particular) and increasing production. The area under vine would gradually extend to over 200 hectares between Le Marche and Abruzzo.

In the early 1990s, Bernetti was joined by his son Michele, who’d recently graduated in economics and business. Umani Ronchi began to invest in new techniques in the winery and the vineyard, incuding collaborations with major universities.

The company’s approach to winemaking has evolved in the pursuit of higher quality wines. The emphasis is now on lowintervention winemaking and maximum elegance. It’s summed up in the company motto: “Great wines but not big wines”

For example, the frequency of pumping over during maceration of red wines has been greatly reduced. In white wines, alcohol levels have been reduced to enhance freshness and finesse.

Verdicchio is recognised worldwide as one of the most important indigenous Italian grapes; press, opinion leaders and traders consider it the iconic white

wine from Italy because of its complexity, richness, elegance and ability to be vinified in different styles.

This white wine is characterised by aromas of broom, citrus fruits and aromatic herbs. Sapid and fresh, it reveals a trademark hint of almond on the finish.

The indigenous grape grows in Le Marche, where it manages to develop its distinctive features thanks to a unique climate and environment. Verdicchio is known for its ability to age particularly well over time, often for more than 10 years, acquiring considerable complexity.

Montepulciano can be found across the east of Italy. Umani Ronchi cultivates this unique grape in Marche and Abruzzo. The wine offers up hints of spices, small berries and balsamic nuances. In the mouth it stands out for its persistent tannins and excellent length.

Umani Ronchi prides itself on its strong ethical approach, and deep respect for the environment and its biodiversity. Precision viticulture and the use of organic fertilisers are the norm. Organic agricultural practices have been applied since 2000 in Abruzzo, since 2013 in the Verdicchio hills and since 2016 in Conero.

It also takes a sustainable approach to its choice of materials: low-impact packaging and light glass bottles reduce CO2 emissions, while synthetic corks (produced from sugar cane) are 100% recyclable.

Photovoltaic energy covers about half of the winery’s annual needs, and cellar water is recycled for irrigation. All these commitments have been recognised with Equalitas Corporate Certification.

Casal di Serra Verdicchio

Castelli di Jesi Classico

Superiore 2021 RRP £19.99

Made with the best grapes of the Montecarotto vineyard, and enriched with fruit from three other plots. Contact with yeasts during fermentation and in the ageing process gives richness and personality, without altering its fine balance and special elegance.

Montipagano Montepulciano

2022 RRP £14.99

The vines are planted on stony soil with a perfect balance between sand and clay, with a south west exposure about 200 metres above sea level. The wine has an intense aroma of fresh red fruit and strawberries. On the palate, a medium bodied wine, with an intensely fruity, lingering finish.

Pecorino Vellodoro 2022

RRP £17.99

From the Degli Abruzzi estate that overlooks the Grand Sasso mountain. The wine spends four months in stainless steel on its lees. Intense aromas of fruit and flowers with intense mineral notes. On the palate, there is good structure and a pleasant freshness, with ripe fruit and sapid hints.

THE WINEMAKER FILES // Giovanni Battista d’Orsi

Fattoria Casaloste, Chianti

My wife Emilia and I are both from Naples. With a degree in agriculture and oenology, I’d always wanted to set up my own business. We fell in love with Tuscany during a holiday in the summer of 1992 and I immediately knew this was the place to start Casaloste, as well as raise my family. We signed the contract in December, starting the renovation of the house as well as the cellars at the beginning of 1993, managing our first harvest that September.

Our motto is “essere piccoli per fare grandi vini” – be small to make great wines. When we started, we had just seven hectares. Today we have 10. We have consciously decided not to become bigger than that; it allows us to control, manage and check every process and make sure each bottle is a full and true expression of our style and philosophy.

Being so close to the production process enables us to decide vintage by vintage what is the best approach This sometimes means skipping vintages, harvesting later or giving the wines longer in bottle prior to release. It also means having an interesting space for creativity.

Being organic was a must from day one.

Following my studies, I knew the long-term impact of pesticides and chemicals not only on the vine but on the soil, plus I believed there was a chance to obtain high-quality

Casaloste Inversus

RRP £60

IGT Toscana. A Super Tuscan, made with 90% Merlot. Deep purple coloured, the nose shows hints of raisins, with blackberry, liquorice and just a hint of tar. The palate is fairly full bodied, full of rich fruit and hints of Christmas spices and laden with rich, velvety tannins.

wines from a fully organic method –something unthinkable in the early 90s.

For all our wines, including all the three different tiers of Chianti Classico, the ageing time is longer than usual. Our Chianti Classico is usually released to the market up to two-and-a-half years after the harvest, compared to the one year required, the Riserva up to three-and-a-half years and the Grand Selezione up to fourand-a-half years. This applies also to the IGTs, Don Vincenzo and Inversus, aged for a minimum of five or six years. We believe our wines need extra time to express all their potential and to keep evolving.

2023 is an important year for Casaloste, not only because we are celebrating the 30th harvest but also because our daughter Maria-Giovanna has decided to come back from London and officially join the business. So a second generation will be able to continue the work done so far, working closely to the same principles, but bringing a new perspective.

For our 25th harvest, we organised a vertical tasting of Chianti Classico

Casaloste Don Vincenzo

RRP £60

IGT Toscana. A single-vineyard Sangiovese, only made in the best years. The rich nose shows notes of deep berries, plum, balsamic and spicy notes, along with sweet tobacco, cocoa and toasted coffee. The palate is powerful and elegant with a dense tannic structure and fine acidity balance the sweet fruit.

Casaloste is based in Panzano in the heart of Chianti Classico. It’s a family business celebrating its 30th anniversary, which embraced organic principles and sustainable practices from the very start.

Trade

Annata from 1993 to 2015 at Jeroboams’ Walton Street Shop. While I was tasting, I could recall the key characteristic of every single vintage: the choices I made, and what I was thinking. It was incredible to see how the wines, even the 1993, still had so much to offer. I could see the evolution I always aim for when I make my wines; everything on one table.

Potentially my perfect wine will be always the one of next year. I will always keep looking for new experimentation, facing and finding new angles of all the different variables and dynamics and changes of every vintage, looking to raise the bar every year.

Casaloste Chianti Classico

RRP £22.95

Rich ruby colour with a nose of black cherry and spice. Fermented on 10% Merlot skins, giving an intense, medium bodied palate, with ripe red and black fruits balanced by fine acidity and full, ripe tannins. Very long and elegant.

Imported by Jeroboams

Umbria

Lungarotti Rubesco Riserva Vigna Monticchio 2018 (Eurowines)

Overshadowed as both tourist draw and wine region by neighbouring Tuscany, Umbria has an off-the-beaten-track quality that makes it rather a good candidate for the hand-selling environment of the independent wine merchant. Certainly, Lungarotti’s suave, deep, savoury expression of Sangiovese, with its classic sour cherry, oregano and balsamic character, is more than capable of going head to head with wines from the starrier appellations to the east.

Marche

Umani Ronchi Casal di Serra Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi (Berkmann)

Is there a more consistently good value dry white than Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi?

For anyone combing the supermarkets looking for something acceptable and characterful at under £10 (even under £8) the wines of this undervalued Marche DO are often a godsend. In independents, too, they provide abundant character and foodfriendliness at very fair prices. One of the region’s larger producers, Umani Ronchi, is typically reliable, its Casal di Serra a softly

rendered combination of fresh peach, subtle honey and almond, and graceful acidity.

Lazio

Castel de Paolis, Frascati Superiore

2019 (Hallgarten & Novum Wines)

Another Italian classic that is sadly familiar to most wine drinkers as an anaemic fixture on the faded type-written wine lists of down-at-heel trattoria, Frascati is in the midst of a modern reinvention that aims to restore its reputation as a fine-wine region. The conditions are certainly ripe: Frascati’s volcanic soils and mix of local varieties (Malvasia del Lazio, Trebbiano Giallo, Bellone and Bombino Bianco in this case) are capable of combining for wines of real energy and mineral drive, especially when harnessed by quality producers such as the Santerelli family of Castel de Paolis.

Myself, my sister Luisa and my two cousins Gianni and Paolo are the third generation of the family running this business. My father Domenico still works here every day. Gianni is our winemaker.

The heel of the Italian boot is Salento. It is a small peninsula between the Adriatic and the Ionian seas. Our daily winds are very important: they give us cool summer nights, which is crucial to the freshness of the grapes. The soil is mostly calcareous and this helps to retain water which is becoming extremely important due to climate change and the high temperatures we have in summer. These factors have a very recognisable effect on the wines.

I think that Negroamaro and Verdeca are the most interesting varieties in my region. Negroamaro is very versatile, mainly because of its acidity and high tannins. It has a natural aptitude to produce excellent rosé wines, elegant and clean red wines and it is also very interesting for the production of spumante. Although Negroamaro is already established in many markets, I think there is still a lot to do to show consumers the real potential of this marvellous grape. Verdeca is a white grape that brings freshness and crispness, combining a nice mouthwatering acidity with citrus and stone fruit flavours. I notice a growing interest in this grape.

In 1993 my uncle Augusto launched a barrique-fermented and aged Chardonnay, which was a new departure for our family. He was a pioneer in the region and we achieved incredible results, even abroad, by winning White Wine of the Year at the International Wine Challenge in 1996 and 2000. In recent times the launch of a late-harvest barrique-fermented Chardonnay under the brand Teresa Manara (our grandmother’s name) has

strengthened our image as a white wine producer.

Chardonnay, as you can see, plays a very important role in our production. We of course invest in native white grapes like Verdeca and Malvasia Bianca – but Chardonnay, frankly speaking, has a bigger role. The main reason is the great ability of this grape to adapt to any type of land and climate, always managing to show something unique and different in the wines. At our latitude we get a very ripe, tropical fruit taste, supported by a very good acidity. Chardonnay is still a comfortzone wine but it also has the ability to amaze with its different nuances according to the production area.

We have a solar panel system on the roof of the winery and we are now investing to make it bigger so we can produce the majority of the energy we need. We carefully select the raw materials that we use (light bottles, eco-sustainable and fully recyclable synthetic corks) in order to reduce their impact on the environment. We embrace “integrated farming,” a method that employs organic techniques to combat pests and vine disease. Only in cases of absolute need is any other approach taken. Approximately 90% of our production is organic. We all know this is very important and we will keep investing in this direction.

Expanding our vineyards is a target, for sure, and we are investing in this project. We are also focused on our markets; this will eventually lead to changes and to new wines in the assortment. Every choice we make will aim to protect our 40-year history and to grow our business.

Italian winemaking is finally being recognised as some of the most dynamic

// Cantele Puglia

Verdeca 2022 RRP £13.75

This refreshing, elegant white represents superb value. Yellowstraw in colour with hints of green, it is fresh and bright with mouthwatering acidity and plenty of citrus and stone fruit flavours. A wonderful note of minerality is the perfect counterpoint to the wine’s vibrant fruit, making it all the more versatile and compelling at the table.

Chardonnay named after the family matriarch, sourced from a 10ha vineyard in Guagnano. Two thirds of the wine is fermented in stainless steel, and a third in 25% new oak. It's then matured on lees in French barriques. A polished, taut wine reminiscent of great Pouilly-Fuissé with its tropical and stone-fruit character and layered texture.

Giovanni Battista Cantele and his wife Teresa Manara arrived in Salento from Imola in the 1950s. They were following their dream to build a future for their family in Italy’s south, and today their grandchildren are living up to their legacy, as export director Umberto Castele explains.

Imported by Armit Wines armitwines.co.uk

and varied to be found anywhere. We need to keep investing in this Italian diversity in order to strengthen our role in the wine world.

Salice Salentino 2019 RRP £14.60

This barrique-aged Negroamaro is widely considered a benchmark for the category, made using a selection of top fruit, with the 2019 vintage winning Tre Bicchieri from the Gambero Rosso. A complex wine with crunchy blackcurrant and black plum, alongside earthy notes, tobacco and cedar. Its refreshing acidity creates beautiful balance.

Teresa Manara 2021 RRP £19.00

Padua’s Vinicola Tombacco has been awarded Equalitas certification, a globally recognised sustainability standard for the wine sector which guarantees the winery’s commitment to sustainability.

Tombacco, whose various brands are available in the UK through Lanchester Wines, has announced the achievement following a series of both ongoing and new projects to address key sustainability issues.

The third-generation family business, which recently celebrated its centenary year, has implemented various practices across its wineries to minimise its impact on the environment.

Solar panels are installed on Tombacco’s buildings, which optimises the cost of electricity and supplies a growing proportion of the company’s energy needs. This is the first step towards complete energy autonomy.

An innovative Israeli-type drip irrigation system has been installed, delivering just enough water and nutrients to the vines while minimising wastage. And Valoritalia, the Italian certification body, has rewarded Treviso winery 47 Anno Domini's efforts with organic certification which in itself is a guarantee of attention and care to the highest standards.

On top of this, Tombacco has introduced an employee welfare programme which,

Tombacco's sustainability IS recognised by equalitas

in the long term, will incentivise staff with annual awards for their good work and team-building activities.

Brothers Cristian and Andrea Tombacco are joint owners of Vinicola Tombacco. Cristian says: “Improvement is a path taken one step at a time, and each step must follow a precise direction made up of short-term objectives that lead to more ambitious and prestigious long-term successes.

“Every year we’ll prepare a Sustainability

Report setting out the improvement policies that we intend to put into practice, measuring the overall situation. An independent body performs an audit to certify progress: this guarantees greater transparency, but also encourages businesses to show constant commitment and efficiency.”

Tombacco is already looking to the future. Not only has it committed to continuously analysing its data to identify further room for improvement, it has embarked on an ambitious programme to identify how it can reduce the CO2 of its packaging.

“We know the path we have decided to take is a difficult one, but we do it with the awareness that this is the right one in order to stay faithful to our principles and guarantee future generations a thriving business like the one we are experiencing today,” says Cristian.

Sponsored Feature

For more information, visit lanchesterwines.co.uk or www.rinomatatombacco.it

THE padua-based family wine business is committed to ambitious social, environmental and economic programmes

Cristian and Andrea Tombacco

From page 60

Abruzzo

Caparrone Abruzzo Passerina 2021

Well-made, well-priced, well-packaged, fruit-driven varietal wine is not necessarily what first comes to mind when we think of Italian wine: it sounds like a classic New World recipe. But that description certainly fits Rocco Pasetti’s 50ha estate in Collecorvino in Abruzzo, which does a neat line in brightly fruited expressions of such typical Abruzzo varieties as Montepulciano, Pecorino, and, in this case, zippy, breezy, citrussy, seafood-partnering Passerina.

Molise

Palladino Biferno Rosso DOC 2018 (Enotria&Coe)

It took a while for the mountainous south central Italian region of Molise to make a name for its wines. But for many of us who were regulars at Pizza Express in its 1990s and 2000s heyday, a wine from Camillo de Lellis in the region’s Biferno Rosso DOC earned cult status as a bargain mellow red to have with a Pepperoni or Margherita. Palladino Biferno Rosso achieves much the same thing, the blend of Montepulciano, Aglianico and Trebbiano, which retails at around a tenner, hitting several sweet midweek spots.

Campania

Terredora di Paola Falanghina Irpina 2021 (Winetraders)

The story behind Terredora Falanghina is part soap opera, part ancient history. The soap opera is all about the break-up of the Mastroberadino family’s wine assets in the early 1990s: one brother, Antonio, kept the family name and business; the other, Walter, got the old vines that would go on to form the basis of Terredora di Paolo. Falanghina was thought to be behind the esteemed ancient Roman wine, Felsina. All unimportant background if the wine, with its stone fruit, orange citrus and almonds, wasn’t so lipsmackingly enjoyable.

Puglia

San Marzano Talò, Primitivo di Manduria 2020 (Hallgarten & Novum Wines)

Puglian Primitivo is seen by many retailers as the perfect red entry point to Italy for wine buyers raised on the lush, sweet fruit of classic New World brands, an idea that no doubt owes a little of its purchase from the connection with Zinfandel. But it would be a great disservice to Puglia in general, and San Marzano in particular, to see its red wines solely through that narrow commercial lens. There’s too much going on in Talò – fresh and dried cherries and plums, dark chocolate and baking spice, a ripple of sour-cherry acidity – to say it was anything other than its own, regionally hyper-specific thing.

Basilicata

Vigneti del Vulture, Pipoli Aglianico del Vulture 2020 (Liberty Wines)

A regular winner at The Wine Merchant Top 100, Vigneti del Vulture is the work of Valentino Sciotti (of Vesevo and Gran Sasso among others) who took over a cooperative in Acerenza in 2008, and called on the talents of consultant winemaker Alberto Antonini to work with Danilo Gizzi to make a modern interpretation of local grape varieties. The Mezzogiorno’s answer to Nebbiolo, Aglianico, was first among equals, and here yields a powerful, crowdpleasing combination of ripe red and black fruit, floral notes and spicy mocha oak.

Calabria

Tenuta del Conte, Cirò Rosso Classico Superiore 2018 (Astrum)

In Calabria, a loose association of growers dedicated to making authentically local, low-intervention wines and restoring the reputation of the Cirò DOC used to be known as the Cirò Boys. According

to importer Astrum, when talented winemaker Mariangela Parrilla took up the winemaking reins at Tenuta del Conte in 2011, the organisation changed its name to The Cirò Revolution. A wise move, since the group would most certainly not be the same without Parrilla’s input – or wines such as The Cirò Rosso, which shows off all the warm earth, garrigue herbs and black berries of the local Gaglioppo variety.

Sicily

From FOCUS ON ITALY THE WINE MERCHANT JUNE 2023 64

Cantine Nicosia Nerello Mascalese, Etna 2021 (Boutinot)

Such has been France’s historic grip on the notion of fine wine, the temptation to find French equivalents to help understand Italian grape varieties is hard even for Italian winemakers to resist. When it comes to Nerello Mascalese, Pinot Noir is the grape that is most frequently invoked – and, when you think of the combination of silk texture, perfume and terroir reflectiveness of Etna’s finest reds, it makes a lot of sense. Whether Pinot Noir

Palermo, Sicily

grown anywhere has the versatility to produce the kind of affordable, juicy, racy, red-fruited easy-drinker that Nicosia does here is another matter altogether. But, either way, importer Boutinot’s suggestion that “this is to Etna what Langhe Nebbiolo is to Barolo” seems like the best way of summing things up.

Sardinia

Antonella Corda Cannonau di Sardegna 2020 (Liberty Wines)

You can see why people in Langhe, southern Piedmont, still revere the name Arnaldo Rivera, 40 years after his death. A schoolteacher and longstanding mayor of Castiglione Falletto, he was a charismatic and principled man with a passion for social justice.

In the decades leading up to the 1950s, Barolo producers faced real hardship. Grapes were sold for a pittance in the marketplace of Alba to ruthless brokers working on behalf of large industrial interests. Rivera was appalled by the undignified way the region’s farmers were forced to exist and imagined a fairer system in which energies, and profits, were pooled. So the Terre del Barolo co-operative came about, and from the beginning it had far grander ambitions than the co-ops of old. Though initially hesitant, vignerons across the region bought into the project and before long its membership had ballooned from 22 to 500 families. The wines it produced helped to reposition and redefine Barolo.

Today, some of those families have taken different paths but are still regarded as sons and daughters of Terre del Barolo, not rivals. For the 300 that remain enthusiastic stakeholders, there’s shared pride in the co-operative’s premium winemaking project that bears the name of their visionary founder.

The first Barolo wines under the ArnaldoRivera name launched in 2017, from the 2013 vintage. Made with fruit grown by just 30 families based in the best sites, spread across all 11 Barolo communes, the wines represent the highest echelons of the co-operative’s output and show how versatile Nebbiolo can be in its homeland.

The flagship wine, Undicicommuni [“Eleven Communes”], showcases the art of the blender, but there are single-vineyard wines too, expressing the terroir of plots that can be as small as half a hectare.

“Undicicommuni represents a little revolution in Barolo,” says the company’s Gabriele Oderda.

“The idea of Arnaldo Rivera from the beginning was to unify all Barolo villages, every grower, and to represent the story of each family through the generations. We are all of them together. So this is a mega blend. It’s our grande cuvée.”

ArnaldoRivera’s range encompasses nine Barolo crus, and the 2019s are now in trade. Representing Castello, Monvigliero, Ravera, Rocche dell’Annunziata, Vignarionda, Villero and Rocche di Castiglione, each is testament to the huge stylistic range that Nebbiolo can achieve in such varied terroir.

“These are all historic crus – even my grandfather would know the name of these vineyards,” says Oderda. “The wines are so different. Nebbiolo is very sensitive. We used to talk about Barolo as the grand wine of Italy. But now we can say there is a Barolo for every day of the week.”

Nebbiolo is not the only star of the show, however. Rare native grapes, such as Verduno Pelaverga and Nascetta del Comune di Novello, add an extra layer of interest to the range.

Oderda describes these varieties as “the B-side of Barolo”. Both probably owe their survival to their local popularity as table grapes, but today they are producing scintillating and authentic wines under the ArnaldoRivera banner.

Great wines that honour a great man

The Terre del Barolo co-operative was established by a community-minded visionary. The wines that bear Arnaldo Rivera’s name are a fitting tribute

“Nascetta is the only real native white grape of Barolo,” he says. “If you master it in the vineyard, this grape is amazing. It’s grown at high altitude, 400 metres above sea level, and needs an extended growing cycle to let it ripen and develop its aromas. It’s a terpenic, semi-aromatic grape with great complexity and the wine improves with a few years of bottle ageing.

“It’s quite interesting and unusual because we bottle the wine after eight months on the lees: no malo, no oak, just a very pure, simple and respectful vinification. It’s extremely savoury, and not too acidic, so it’s a good alternative to Pinot Blanc, Riesling or Sauvignon.”

Verduno Pelaverga is a wine that Oderda describes as “the rosé for Piedmontese people”. It’s released in June after a few months of bottle ageing, and traditionally enjoyed slightly chilled. “It’s not like any other red grape in Barolo,” Oderda says. “It’s lighter in colour and the closest comparison I can make is with Schiava in Alto Adige. Again, it’s extremely savoury, with clear notes of white pepper on the nose. There are so many gastronomic possibilities and it can be amazing with seafood.”

Arnaldo Rivera (left) pictured in the year of Terre del Barolo’s launch

The wonder of Wessman

The Icelandic couple who found their dream wine estate in Bergerac two decades ago now produce acclaimed wine in Limoux, Champagne. Maison Wessman is currently looking for distribution into the indie trade throughout the UK and the wines are

Imbued with a deep love of wine, Robert Wessman had his heart set on finding an outstanding French wine estate that he and his wife, Ksenia, could call their own.

The hunt took more than a decade, but in 2000 the Icelandic couple purchased the 12th century Château Saint-Cernin, acquiring the vineyard parcels in Bergerac and Limoux in 2015, followed by Vignoble des Verdots in 2021.

There is a third, Champagne-flavoured chapter to the Wessman wine story, but let’s start in the south.

With the purchase of Saint-Cernin came vineyards in the south west region of Limoux, in two distinct terroirs. Vines in La Haute Vallée are planted at 400 to 450 metres above sea level, while those in the so-called oceanic sites are found between 200 and 300 metres. Altitude and cooler temperatures make for slower ripening in the Haute Vallée: the Chardonnay wines that come from here are renowned for their freshness and complexity.

The oceanic terroir is cool, humid, and temperate; the wines markedly plumper, though still with lovely vibrancy. There are

two Limoux whites in the portfolio. PetitCernin, which offers immediately joyful drinking; and No 1 Saint-Cernin Blanc, the more complex and age-worthy of the duo.

In Perigord, Bergerac, the Saint-Cernin vineyard plots are found in Issigeac. Vines have been grown here for many centuries on the well-drained limestone soils, and their position on the plateau means they can bask all day in the summer sun. The area fell off the radar for some time, but in recent decades greater attention has been paid to the vineyards, with careful uprooting and minimal replanting. The result is that yields are small, setting this landscape apart from the more bountiful vineyards of neighbouring appellations.

The Bergerac Saint-Cernin range is a threesome of reds. Petit Cernin Rouge is packaged in the Green Gen Bottle, made

TRY A SELECTION OF MAISON WESSMAN WINES FOR YOURSELF

Bottle samples are available from UK stock. Please contact sue.harris@ westburycom.co.uk

from flax fibres, developed by French startup Green Gen Technologies. Empty, the bottle weighs just 85g and is made from a food-grade PET liner, a flax fibre composite and a natural and bio-sourced resin.

The Héritage de Saint-Cernin range includes a white, a red, a rosé and a sweet wine. The grapes come from vineyards in Bergerac and Côtes de Bergerac.

Vignoble de Verdots is a modern 19-hectare estate with plantings of both red and white grape varieties, on clay, limestone and flint soils. The most recent purchase, the estate is modern and home to the Wessmans’ winemaking facilities. In the 1990s an underground barrel cellar was built at the property, to create an optimal ageing environment. The estate aims to have zero carbon footprint by 2030.

There are two ranges from Vignoble des Verdots. Source des Verdots is the signature collection, each wine made from a selection of the best terroirs in AOP Bergerac. The Château Les Tours des Verdots line-up includes a white, a red and Wessman’s only Monbazillac. The Tours des Verdots label includes a red and a

white Grand Vin.

Lise Sadirac has been Maison Wessman’s winemaker since 2021. She comes with exemplary credentials, with extensive experience in organics and minimalintervention winemaking.

Sadirac believes passionately in vineyard biodiversity to support vine balance and to optimise quality of the fruit. Equal attention is paid to vinification – which is gravity-driven – manual punch-downs and the choice of barrel. It is the detail required for Maison Wessman’s premium wines.

Feeling the need to add top-notch Champagnes to the Wessman portfolio, the company has partnered with a leading Champagne house to create its own cuvées.

Champagne Wessman One sources all its fruit from Cru villages. Pinot Noir is harvested in Aÿ, while Chardonnay is sourced from the Côtes des Blancs. Both areas are characterised by a deep, chalky subsoil. Currently there are two Champagnes: Premier Cru Brut Rosé and Premier Cru Brut.

Robert and Ksenia set out to make world-class wines. They are succeeding.

Jamie Goode's verdict on the Wessman wines

LES VERDOTS

Château Les Tours des Verdots Blanc 2021 Bergerac Sec

50% Sauvignon Blanc, 35% Semillon, 10% Sauvignon Gris, 5% Muscadelle. Lovely vivid aromatics here: fine spices, grapefruit, a twist of lime and some sweet pear. The palate shows concentration of fruit, with well-integrated oak notes providing a supporting role, and a combination of rich exotic melon, grapefruit and mandarin fruit together with some lively citrus. There’s good supporting acidity, and the overall feel is one of depth, harmony and sophistication. 94/100

Château Les Tours des Verdots Grand Vin Blanc 2020 Bergerac Sec

75% Sauvignon Blanc, 17% Sauvignon Gris, 5% Muscadelle, 3% Semillon. From the oldest vines on the limestone plateau, fermented and aged in new French oak. Powerful pear, melon and spice with some peachy notes, and citrus freshness. There’s a grainy acid line that offsets the bold rich fruit, and the oak is well integrated. Sophisticated and quite powerful, this is a rich dry white showing off the more exotic side of Sauvignon. 93/100

Château Les Tours des Verdots Rouge

2020 Côtes de Bergerac

90% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Cabernet Franc. Concentrated with a core of sweet blackberry and blackcurrant, and some fine spiciness. Fresh, despite the ripeness, with a lovely juicy quality and some grainy structure, along with bold, sweet fruit. Such precision winemaking, with everything in its place. 94/100

Château Les Tours des Verdots

Grand Vin Rouge 2020 Côtes de Bergerac

50% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Franc, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon. Rich, seductive but also in balance, with concentrated, sweet blackcurrant fruit, as well as notes of sweet plum and cherry. Powerful with some oak in the mix, adding a spicy veneer to the lush fruit. This has a taste of luxury to it, and it’s drinking really well now. 94/100

Nice fresh, concentrated fruit here: some pear and a lively citrus brightness, with a touch of spiciness in the background. Good concentration and refinement – everything in its place with a slight tingle on the finish, giving it vitality. The limestone influence makes itself felt in the keen acid line, and this is a lovely, expressive wine. 91/100

Petit Cernin Blanc 2019 Limoux

Chardonnay vinified in French oak. Ripe and aromatic with a nose of peach, melon and some nutty savouriness. In the mouth, this has concentration, depth and rich nut, honey, peach and pineapple notes, as well as a citrus core that keeps it all fresh. The oak is present but well integrated, and the wine shows brightness as well as a touch of honeycomb development. Stylish stuff. 92/100

Saint-Cernin No 1 2018 Limoux

Chardonnay vinified in French oak. Concentrated and refined, with a lovely citrus core supported by some richer peach and pear notes, as well as fine spicy notes. Oak is perfectly integrated, and there’s a lovely crystalline, mineral edge. It has a lot of freshness for a four-year-old wine, and lovely harmony. Very serious. 94/100

Saint-Cernin Héritage Merlot

Cabernet Sauvignon Malbec 2019 Bergerac

Highly aromatic with red cherry and strawberry, as well as subtle green hints and some spice. In the mouth there’s some freshness with sweet berry fruits, some nice rich texture, and then a bit of spicy structure. Friendly and approachable, but also with some seriousness and a nice savoury twist, this is very stylish. 90/100

Petit Cernin Rouge 2019 Bergerac

60% Merlot and 40% Cabernet Sauvignon from limestone soils. So refined and aromatic with a chalky, gravelly edge to the blackcurrant and cherry fruit. In the mouth this is fresh and layered, with good texture and notes of gravel, spice and sweet berry fruits. There’s freshness and polish here, but there’s also a nice stony, savoury twist adding interest. 93/100

Saint-Cernin No 1 Rouge 2019 Bergerac

SAINT-CERNIN

Saint-Cernin Héritage Sauvignon Blanc

Sémillon 2021 Bergerac Sec 50% Sauvignon Blanc, 45% Semillon and 5% Muscadelle from limestone soils.

60% Merlot and 40% Cabernet Sauvignon. There’s a real concentration to this wine which has ripe, sleek blackcurrant fruit with some cherry notes, as well as nice green hints and some chalk and gravel savouriness. Polished and refined with a hint of liquorice and salinity under the lush fruit. Lovely purity. 94/100

Tasting notes reproduced with permission from Jamie Goode

Limoux, Bergerac and even are available to sample on request

gin hass

Where is the world’s biggest gin festival? No, not Henley. In fact, it’s Copenhagen. The Danes have gone bananas about gin and a new way of drinking it that blows away G&T conventions, though it’s mangos that feature heavily in it, not bananas. The Gin Hass was created in Odense by the freelance bartender Kim Hass, who was so overawed by its popularity that he made Gin his middle name and registered his cocktail as a brand name. He’s also created his own brand of mango syrup as a result, though wide availability makes Monin the brand to head for in the UK.

Theatre of Wine NFFW Tasting

The event will showcase 40 wines from the independent London merchant’s portfolio including many from estates new to its range.

The tasting will be looking beyond the familiar (hence the title No F**king French Wines) to include wines from Greece, Austria, Australia, Slovenia, Spain and Portugal.

Pouring their wines on the day will be Uroš Vacl of the Marof Estate in Slovenia, Adrià and Marc Perez of Cims de Porrera in Priorat and Joaquim Almeida of Vale de Pios in Douro Superior.

For more information and to register contact sales@theatreofwine.com.

Monday, June 26

Rogues

460 Hackney Road

London E2 9EG

Museum Wines South Africa Tasting

4cl gin

4cl mango syrup

Lemon soda (Sprite I guess)

Fresh lime

Encounter South Africa UK Trade Tasting

Wines of South Africa hosts its first major trade tasting in the UK since 2017.

Meet over 70 South African producers at this London event focusing on sustainability.

The Tread Lightly Tasting Space includes the themes Organic & Biodynamic, Upliftment & Social Development, WWF Conservation Champions, Water Preservation, Drought Tolerant Grape Varieties and Fairtrade.

The Old Vine Project seminar explores “the role that old vines have played in shaping the image of premium South African wine, the desire to plant for the future of the industry and the impact on climate change in the short and long term”.

For more information and to register, visit encountersouthafrica.com or email info@winesofsa.com.

Tuesday, July 4

Between the Bridges

The Queen’s Walk London SE1 8XX

Fill a tumbler-style glass with ice. Add gin and lemon soda, leaving enough room to pour the mango syrup on top. Garnish with the lime.

A benchmark tasting of 50 South African wines presided over by Greg Sherwood MW and renowned viticulturist Rosa Kruger, founder of the Old Vine Project.

Key South African winemakers will be attending including Ian Naudé of Naudé Wines, Sakkie Mouton of Mouton Family Wines, Christiaan Coetzee of Uva Mira Mountain Vineyards in Helderberg, and Kiara Scott of Brookdale Estate in Paarl.

To register and for more details about the event, contact célia@museumwines. co.uk.

Friday, June 30

South Africa High Commission

South Africa House, Trafalgar Square

London WC2N 5DP

Masters of Riesling Tasting

A first chance for the trade to taste the newly released 2022 vintage Rieslings and 2021 Pinot Noirs from the ABS portfolio.

Growers presenting their wines include Dr Loosen, Villa Wolf, Gunderloch, Louis Guntrum, Karl H Johner, Dönnhoff, Schnaitmann, Jean Stodden, Fürst, Allram and Julien Schaal.

For more information and to register, email lesley@abs.wine.

Wednesday, July 5

67 Pall Mall

London SW1Y 5ES

Ihave written much Amazing Lunch this month.

The best starting line was God I Hate Teenagers, but then I remembered saying pretty much the same thing on Twitter eight years ago and consequently being cancelled. God I Hate Twitter. There is so much to hate right now and no I don’t really hate it, hate is such a strong word etc, but I was cycling into work and I stopped to let these Teenagers cross the road, said, are you crossing? And was greeted with the response, fuck up, which I foolishly questioned, did you just say fuck up? eliciting the terrifyingly lyrical, Aye fuck up you stupid cow, cycle on. I assented and did, indeed, cycle on.

I couldn’t, in all honesty, find the tenuous connection to lunch with this one, but it keeps coming back to me, like the mackerel salad I had for lunch.

The best Lunchy stuff was, again, about wraps.

“Scottish people love wraps,” Jordan says, showing me the perfect navel of her Sunday Lunchwrap all tinfoil bound. “It’s all in the preheating of the tortilla and confidence that the bread isn’t going to give way.” Tony says Scottish People Love

30. JUNG PEOPLE TODAY

Phoebe Weller of Valhalla’s Goat in Glasgow is needlessly and lyrically abused while cycling. But frankly there’s just too much going on to get upset by it

Wraps because of their health benefits: “You can put beans and salad and chicken in them. They’re healthy. They can also be deep-fried.”

In 1995, Glasgow had more Chimichanga outlets per head than anywhere else in the world. In 2015, Glasgow resectioned more colon than anywhere else in the world. Coincidence?

Last year during the Festival (which makes me sound actually like I went to see anything in the Festival, which I didn’t) in

a particularly engaged mood fuelled by an ill-advised warm bottle of Prosecco in a courtyard which was essentially a Radio 4 panel show, I happily watched a burrito being filled surely to the point of bursting. Contents were piled into the centre which could no way be contained by the tortilla, and yet with some astonishing jostlery and gluten wrangling there it was, a perfect contained thing.

This descended into a bit about Miles Jupp and Susan Calman which felt a bit Try Hard so I deleted it.

I liked the Amazing Lunch that featured “New Guys” Tapsafff Tinyguitar and William, who treated me to a spectacular word performance which I wanted to join in with but there was no space. There was a good bit about a Big Kestrel and a Crow sitting on a wall, but I might make that into a children’s story. There was one which banged on about Jung for a bit. God I Love Jung. There was a bit about words being great but also our heads being full of them, them not being our words but other people’s and that being a/the problem. The flatbreads of the world list deserves some air: “Podpłomyk, Slavic flatbread, Sabaayad of Somalia, Chikkolee, Shelpek, Malooga, Lefse or Bammy.”

I’ve started a lot of lunches this month because everything’s in that terrifying skittery (both Scottish and English meanings) expansion phase: there’s a lot going on. Everything’s going on. Every time I look outside the nettles and dandelions have creeped a little closer to the house, like a big cruel game of What’s the Time Mr Wolf with me against the Green Things. And so finally I relent: there’s so much going on that I am not even going to try to pretend that I have even a modicum of control over anything. Except trying not to hate Teenagers so much. Fuck up you stupid cow – done.

Mackerel salad keeps repeating. Mackerel salad keeps repeating.

LOUIS LATOUR AGENCIES

12-14 Denman Street

London W1D 7HJ

0207 409 7276

enquiries@louislatour.co.uk

www.louislatour.co.uk

Domaine Louis Latour Spring Update

Louis Latour’s vineyards are alive with activity, from tractors and horses tilling the soil, to people preparing the palissage and birds amongst the flowering trees. When you walk through the vineyards you can already feel an air of anticipation for the coming season.

It is probably one of the liveliest times in the vineyard other than harvest.

The 2023 season started slowly, with a relatively late budburst, but this was fortunate because it helped the vines avoid the worst affects frosts and cold snaps in early April. The vineyard team were on standby with candles in some of the prestigious Côte de Beaune plots but fortunately, the week passed without problems and the vines were untouched.

Fast forward to May and the vines were in good health. There was a risk of mildew and fungus because of the mix of warm sunny and rainy days but the vineyard team worked hard to mitigate it. They spent several weeks debudding to remove the excess buds from the vines, a step that creates more space on the plant to let the air flow around it and concentrate nutrients to the branches where the grapes will grow. It is also the time that the soils are worked by Alouette, Latour’s four-legged friend who can be seen pictured.

In 2020 we achieved Carbon Neutral status as accredited by Carbon Footprint

Since 2012 we have offset over 7,000 tonnes of CO2 through gold standard Carbon Footprint projects

Neutral transportation for every bottle of wine that we distribute

gonzalez byass uk

The Dutch Barn

Woodcock Hill

Coopers Green Lane

St Albans AL4 9HJ

01707 274790

info@gonzalezbyassuk.com www.gonzalezbyassuk.com

@gonzalezbyassuk

orders@walkerwodehousewines.com

www.walkerwodehousewines.com

@WalkerWodehouse

High scoring new releases from El Enemigo now available

The Cabernet Franc-dominated premium wines from El Enemigo in Argentina continue to go from strength to strength.

This joint venture between Adrianna Catena and Alejandro Vigil (Catena Zapata’s head winemaker and one of the Drinks Business Top 100 Master Winemakers) has now released its 2019 single vineyard wines which we are offering on a pre-shipment basis, along with the Red (Bordeaux) Blend 2019 (96pts); the second vintage of Torrontes 2020 (93+pts), Chardonnay 2021 (97pts) and Barranco Bonarda 2020 (91+pts).

The star of the show is undoubtedly the Gran Enemigo Gualtallary, awarded 100 points by Wine Advocate and James Suckling. But don’t overlook the other single-vineyard wines: Agrelo (97pts), El Cepillo (98pts) and Chacayes (97pts).

There is good availability of all wines in the offer, including the larger formats (magnums and double magnums) of the Gran Enemigo wines. If you would like to place an order or request an allocation to work with, please contact pmallinson@walkerwodehousewines.com or your account manager.

Offer closes on June 30 when wines ordered will be shipped for delivery in November/ December.

vindependents

jessica@vindependents.co.uk www.vindependents.co.uk

hallgarten wines

Mulberry

sales@hnwines.co.uk

www.hnwines.co.uk

jeroboams trade

7-9 Elliott's Place London N1 8HX

020 7288 8888

sales@jeroboamstrade.co.uk

www.jeroboamstrade.co.uk

@jeroboamstrade

vintner systems

The computer system for drinks trade wholesalers and importers

16 Station Road Chesham HP5 1DH

sales@vintner.co.uk www.vintner.co.uk

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

From the Côtes Du Rhône, artisan wine makers, Rhon é a, presents a range of eclectic wines that truly bring the region to life. As one of the largest producers in the Southern Rhône, Rhon é a gives traditional wines a unique and modern twist from exceptional terroirs that have been nurtured by the family since 1925. With Les Artistes (Côtes Du Rhône), Le Pont (Côtes Du Rhône Villages) and Les Terroirs Bio (Vacqueras), these wines demonstrate their unique approach to winemaking makes for dynamic and full-bodied, sustainable wines.

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

Panikos and his son Simon run 25 hectares of vineyards which are situated around the mountainous valley of Skoteini in altitude between 500 and 650 metres above sea level. This family business was started in 1993 by Panikos Landidis, who had previously studied oenology in Montpellier and Bordeaux. Today this knowledge is used to make quality wines using local varieties that are native to Greece.

• Little Ark White Malagousia & Assyrtiko 2022

• Abyss White Assyrtiko 2020

• Little Ark Moschofilero Rose 2022

• Nomea Red Agiorgitiko 2019

New Greek wines have arrived …

The Lantides Estate is situated in the ancient site of Nemea, in the heart of the Peloponnese, north of Argos and just west of Corinth on the coast of the Aegean.

mentzendorff

The Woolyard

52 Bermondsey Street

London SE1 3UD

020 7840 3600

info@mentzendorff.co.uk

www.mentzendorff.co.uk

Celebrate English Wine Week with Hambledon’s NEW Première Cuvée Rosé!

This month marks the release of Hambledon’s new Première Cuvée Rosé, an intense and complex rosé sparkling wine crafted by hand in the traditional saignée method. The wine is produced exclusively produced exclusively from their own estate on the Southeast facing chalk slopes of Windmill Down.

Perfect for all Spring and Summer occasions, the wine pairs beautifully with barbecues, shrimps, crab, or red fruit-based desserts- an English Wine Week essential!

AWIN BARRATT SIEGEL WINE AGENCIES

28 Recreation Ground Road Stamford

Lincolnshire PE9 1EW 01780 755810

orders@abs.wine

www.abs.wine

@ABSWines

For more information, please contact your Mentzendorff Account Manager

OF RIESLING MASTERS TASTING

St. James Room, 67 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5ES 5th July 10:30am - 4pm

A first chance for the trade to taste the newly released 2022 vintage Rieslings & 2021 Pinot Noirs from our top growers including: Dr Loosen - Villa Wolf -

Gunderloch - Louis Guntrum - Karl H

Johner - Dönnhoff - Schnaitmann - Jean Stodden - Fürst - Allram - Julien Schaal

For more information or to RSVP call 01306 631155 or email lesley@abs.wine

liberty wines

020 7720 5350

order@libertywines.co.uk www.libertywines.co.uk

@liberty_wines

Just Landed: Barolo 2019 and Barbaresco 2020

Our Piemonte producers were out in force recently to showcase their latest releases – headlined by the Barolo 2019s and Barbaresco 2020s –at our dedicated London tasting.

2019 in Barolo was a long growing season. The winter was dry though some early snowfall helped to restore depleted water reserves. While budbreak timing varied for Nebbiolo (the first variety to bud), flowering was generally late – after a dry start to spring, a little rain fell before flowering. High temperatures in June and July were moderated by occasional rain showers. A hailstorm in early September threatened to be damaging, but thankfully the impact was limited. Ripening was slow – sufficient water reserves plus warm days and cool nights in September and October ensured ideal phenolic ripeness. Harvest was later than in recent vintages, with Massolino, for example, starting the Nebbiolo harvest on 10th October and finishing on the 20th. The resulting wines are already displaying great elegance and complexity with the hallmarks of a classic vintage. They have lovely aromatics, medium weight and a vibrant acidity. The 2019s are the first of what promises to be a rare series of four very fine vintages in the Langhe.

Barolo 2019s are available now from Corino, GD Vajra, Luigi Baudana, Massolino and Domenico Clerico, as well as Barbaresco 2020s from Bruno Rocca and Massolino

Please speak with your Liberty Wines sales representative for more details.

top selection

23 Cellini Street London SW8 2LF

www.topselection.co.uk info@topselection.co.uk

Contact: Alastair Moss

Telephone: 020 3958 0744

@topselectionwines

@tswine

The Mount eld Estate near Robertsbridge in East Sussex is owned by Simon and Lucinda Fraser, and has been in Lucinda’s family since 1850. The 3.5 hectare vineyard, with on-site winery and cellar door, is a rare example of a boutique fully integrated wine making operation in England. The focus of the estate is quality over quantity and to produce beautifully balanced, elegant English sparkling wines.

Top Selection are delighted to supply Mount eld’s full range of wines to independent retailers, including the award-winning Classic Cuvée - a blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and 5% of reserve wine, aged on lees for over 4 years.

Q&A

Give us a Netflix recommendation. I’m really enjoying Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon, and Happy Valley on the Beeb.

Do you have any sporting loyalties? Bristol Rugby. I have travelled to Béziers and Genoa to see them play.

Who’s your favourite music artist?

I love Mika – he was a bit of a blip in 2007, and I managed to catch him at Glastonbury at the height of his short burst. But I still listen to the album, along with any classic 80s music.

Any superstitions?

I try not to walk under ladders – more as an engineer than superstition – and I touch wood regularly.

Who’s your favourite wine critic?

Anne Krehbiel. She has a lovely way with words; gentle and classic. A breath of fresh air.

What’s your most treasured possession? It was my dad [John Avery]’s last voicemail but in changing phones it got lost. My two child necklaces that my grandfather gave me; and my mum’s teddy, Sweep, that she got when she was five that I gave to my nephew a couple of years ago.

What’s your proudest moment?

Lecturing at the Christchurch Capital of Wine Symposium in New Zealand in 2010.

Mimi Avery represents the fifth generation of her family to be associated with Averys Wine Cellars, the famous Bristol business which is now part of Laithwaites. Her career started with Winesource in Holt, followed by five years at the International Wine & Food Society in London. At Avery’s she has worked in the shop and as a member of the buying team. She is now brand ambassador.

What’s the first wine you remember drinking?

I remember the smell of sherry and Madeira from very early on. I suspect that my dummy was dipped in it. I don’t remember the little finger dipped in Champagne and put in my mouth the day I was born … but it has happened to all of us. Probably the first real wine I remember tasting was a Bordeaux in my grandfather [Ronald Avery]’s house when I was around six. I often smell polished old wooden

cupboards in mature Bordeaux, and think of this style of wine and the house.

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

I have a degree in civil engineering and tried out for the Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers while in the Territorial Army. But my daydream was always to be a ski instructor in winter and a dive instructor in the summer.

How do you relax?

I love reading, walking and spending time with my extende d family. Once I am fully moved back into my house I will also love entertaining and sewing.

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

We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins – an eye opener – and A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles for fiction.

What’s your biggest regret?

Not going whale watching in Kaikoura on my round-the-world trip after poly, but I rectified that on my trip in 2016. And not asking my grandfather and father more questions – or writing biographies of them.

Who’s your hero? My dad.

Any hidden talents?

I am a very good chocolate brownie maker, and seamstress – making bodiced dresses etc.

What’s your favourite place in the UK? Little Arthur beach, on a sunny day, in the Isles of Scilly.

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

Ensure that humans don’t destroy the natural world.

“I remember the smell of sherry and Madeira from very early on” Mimi Avery Averys Wine Cellars

Mimi, left, with mum Sarah