PRE PAY DAY VALUE 🛍️

Source note: This post is adapted from Parched's July 23, 2026 newsletter

Hey,

We all good? Well, I'm about to make it even better.

As we enter full-on summer my drinking habits go up exponentially, whilst my wallet's funds do the opposite. Summer holidays, wedding season, expensive BBQ meat, etc. Not complaining, but know is a time I lean into bottles that hit hard for their respective price points.

Thankfully, payday is a week away. Thankfully, we import wine. Thankfully, we price things super nice so you and I can get bottles that are well made (important), tasty (more important), and good value (very important).

We've recently taken a new shipment from Sassara. These guys make stellar wine at truly stellar prices over in Veneto, focused on quality over quantity. I randomly tasted these in a wine fair in the Loire just after we got our first shipment and they were looking very good. I'm particularly pleased to welcome quite simply the best orange wine at this price point: a Trebbiano that's peachy and herbal, not super grippy but full of colour and fragrance. Just beautiful drinking. If you like it more serious in the glass but not in $$$, see here. Full skinsy treatment with long ageing in amphora, yet still easily under a score.

There's also a trad fizz, a Bianco Litre, a not-quite-pink, not-quite-orange blend. Oh, and this tastes like lemons and biscotti, seriously.

Feeling extra generous, so I've put them into a six pack for you. 10% off. Save a tenner. Free shipping. That is on top of our already stupidly generous mark-up. Thank me later.

Also priced to pour: this collab from London Cheese & Wine's Champion’s, Provisions. Biodynamically farmed, all in stainless, nice labels from a local designer, priced very kindly. What more could you want?

The white surprised me with its acidity, peachy but surprisingly fresh for current-climate Spain. The red again with nice fruit and not-too-aggressive tannin, midweight and wonderful. Selling fast.

All our sub-£20 bottles are here. Not sure what to pick? Let me do the hard work. Want recommendations? Flick me an email and let's chat wine.

I couldn't resist including some more hard-hitting gear too, sorry.

With so much wine coming and going, it's easy for things to get missed off the mailer, even allocations. I've long admired Danjou-Banessy. The family has farmed and made wine since the 50s, though production originally focused on Rancio. Brothers Benoit and Sébastien, now at the helm, have bolstered output with high-grade, lo-fi dry, still wines: white, red, and macerated. Everything single vineyard.

What characterises these wines is how drinkable they are. They're in the arid Roussillon, yet still produce wines of freshness and poise. How? I don't know, but I reckon the farming helps, they go beyond biodynamics. In the cellar, fining and filtration are surplus to requirement, sulphur use is sparing if used at all. Élevage is long, usually 20 months. Everything bottled by gravity, in accordance with the moon. A must-taste producer getting love from the OG natural wine crowd and traditionalists alike. When wine is this good, who cares.

Macabeu doesn't get better. Smoked pineapple and summery fennel. Only 800 bottles of this macerated Muscat exist, all bergamot and boiled sweets, restrained, does well with air, better with food.

Roboul is 60% Mourvèdre, 40% Grenache. Rich and concentrated, but revitalising. A fruit bomb, still dark and garrigue-y but with actual life. Crazy how they've channelled so much "Pinosity" into something this fine-boned and elegant.

Truffière was the wine that got me hooked. Carignan and Grenache from a lovely vineyard on schist over limestone. Effortless but not lacking backbone. It’s savoury and serious but also so easy to knock back. Everything I like.

Radikon have also released a new set of wines, from land recently acquired just over the border in Slovenia. Just as Saša added to father Stanko's work with the 'S' line (shorter macerations, bottled in 750s), his younger sister Ivana has now released her first two wines under the POP label.

The aim is something more approachable and immediate. She dials back maceration for something more delicate but just as satisfying, still with the estate's signature energy, just minus the crazy top notes of VA and acetone. No shade, I like those things in my Radikons. But this won't scare off a first date or your mum. It's like a sunny walk through a bountiful orchard. A really, really good bottle of wine.

The Rosso is my go-to lighter red of summer, the best BBQ wine on planet earth right now. Grape varieties mean nothing here, trust me. Wonderfully crunchy and red-fruited, one of the best-smelling wines I've come across in ages. Inviting, juicy, soft. Another sure-fire winner.

If you want to get acquainted with Radikon and haven't pulled the trigger yet, there's no time like the present. Radikon's bigger guns are, as ever, also worth a look, at different stages of maturity.

Bisou
xoxo