📝TAKING STOCK (LITERALLY)📝

What’s up winos,

How’s things? My things are good, ty for asking. I think it’s time to take stock (literally, since we did stocktake last week). We’ve been buying so much new wine of late that we haven’t been able to fit them into the emails, so I’m gonna do a roundup of all the things you might have missed, assuming you don’t refresh the website every ten seconds (u know who u are). You can’t be out here missing things! Scandal!

Mosel Riesling that doesn’t cost an arm, a leg, and a new mortgage is pretty hard to come by, so I was pretty stoked to discover the wines of Sybille Kuntz. We’ve got two of her cuvees and they’re both absolutely stonking. The Kabinett Trocken has six years’ age on it already (2018 was six years ago??!!) so it’s developed those delicious petrol notes we love from Rizza, alongside a good lick of minerality and juicy stone fruit. The ‘22 Qualitatswein is on the crisper side of things, with lasering acidity and serious concentration. The fruit is all lime and green apple, so it’s got a heck of a bite to it. The perfect accompaniment to a big plate of dim sum. Now you’ve just got to make a big plate of dim sum. Or order one!

Fionn’s quest to keep bringing you the best of English wine means we’ve got the latest offering from Westwell, their still Chardonnay which they only make in the best years. Old oak ageing means this has a lovely mouth-filling texture and some nutty, marzipan-like notes cut up by super sharp citrus fruit. This is bang for your buck if you’re about English wines, and the way things are going, we all need to start being about English wines.

Speaking of bang for your buck, got two new skinsy arrivals that punch well above their price. This bottling from Folias de Baco is made from Rabigato (yet another new grape variety, will it never end?), and they’re one of only four producers who still grow it, so it’s pretty unique. It’s lovely and creamy with a shell-like minerality and a touch of brine too. The Oranzista from Slobodne is a lighter style of skinsy thanks to a quarter of the grapes being thrown in as whole bunches, and it’s a proper orange wine - i.e. the fruit is actually orange. Fionn and the importer had a minor tiff about whether it was tangerines or clementines. I wasn’t getting involved. Go buy one and decide for yourself. 

Still speaking of bang for your buck (are you sensing a theme?), these new arrivals from Les Grangeons de l’Albarine are a freakin’ steal - ‘the poise of Burgundy with the concentration of the Jura’, to quote the product description I wrote last week, but with the price tag of neither. The alpine vibes translate to a beautiful freshness and tension. Perfect apres-ski wine, not that you can ski in this country. Yet. Heh. 

On the slightly more expensive end of the scale, because we cater to all wallet sizes, got two new Champagnes from Chartogne-Taillet, a winery started by prodigy Alexandre at the tender age of 23. Know what I was doing age 23? Learning how to use a photocopier and getting people coffee. Go off, Alexandre. The Sainte-Anne cuvee is super refined, elegant and sophisticated, with lovely bready notes and tense minerality, and the Chemin de Reims is a lovely earthy version of Blanc de Blancs, while still retaining the sharp citrus and flinty notes we love in this style. Go snap them up, no regrets here I promise. Up at the pointy end of things, stocktake was made extremely worthwhile when I found three bottles of this Belargus hiding in the warehouse. How long has that been there? Whoops. Take ‘em off my hands, won’t you?

Finally, if you haven’t tried any of our newly imported wines from Domaine Gross, quit sleeping on them - been pouring them by the glass chez Dan’s and Ken’s and they’re absolutely flying. If you ask me nicely maybe I'll even tell you the story of the Uber driver who helped us transport them to Ken's who was surprised that a woman could lift a box. I mean, that's basically the whole story. Oh well.

Gotta go, more bargains to hunt. A woman’s work is never done.

Love ya!

Megan

xoxo