It's probably safe to say that we're all puling a few more corks than usual at the moment and so we thought it an opportune time to introduce our What We're Drinking series. Here, our esteemed Buyers will list the personal picks from our bountiful portfolio that are currently bringing them the most pleasure during these uncertain and somewhat challenging times and give an up-to-the-minute snapshot assessment of how these wines are showing, right now.
Read MoreGiles Burke-Gaffney - Chianti Classico, Monteraponi 2016
"It is such a shame Chianti’s reputation has fallen over the years. Sangiovese is one of the world’s great red grape varieties and some of its best expressions can be found in Chianti’s Classico hills, particularly in the high Radda zone. The plus side of this fall from grace is that there are some great wines being made at very reasonable prices. Our favourite producer here is Monteraponi, a 9ha organic artisan estate that comprises some of Chianti Classico’s highest vineyards. The 2016 is tremendously lively, characterful and with a bit of substance to it. Gripping, crisp flavours of bright red cherry, black cherry, strawberry and damson infused with notes of fresh herbs and pine. This displays an energy that makes it imminently drinkable, completed but a satisfying depth of flavour. Captivating and harmonious Chianti Classico. A blend of 95% Sangiovese and 5% Canaiolo. Aged for 16 months in large used French and Slavonian oak casks."
Tom Jenkins - Château Lalande Borie, 2015
"To quote the great, late Bill Baker, Lalande Borie 2015 is a “tart’s wine”. I don’t think he ever meant that in the literal sense, it was just his way of describing a claret that is rather easy and delicious… Bruno Borie certainly has a reputation for producing flamboyant St Julien from his headquarters at Ducru Beaucaillou. His other estate, Lalande Borie, which has just been rebranded as Le Petit Ducru du Ducru Beaucaillou is located in the west of the commune, mainly on vineyards bought from Chateau Lagrange. The 2015 is in my opinion, the best wine ever made under this label. It’s a real joy, a wine bristling with verve and copious amounts of seductive, sweet fruit. Its velvety texture and ravishing, almost imperceptible tannins make this glide down the palate with extraordinary ease. This is one of the best value examples of heady 2015 extravagance – a thoroughly luxuriant and decadent drop at a little over £22 on the table."
Julian Campbell - Cain Concept, 2010
"Last week I opened a bottle of Cain Concept 2010. I’m a huge fan of the wines Chris Howell produces on Spring Mountain, high up in the clouds above Napa’s St Helena, but they’re not your everyday Californian reds. Chris trained under legendary oenologist Emile Peynaud in Bordeaux and has maintained a strikingly European mentality to fine wine in over three decades at Cain. Many in the valley would concur that he’s one of the great winemaker thinkers of his generation; an iconoclast who believes we have more to learn from the distant past than from recent innovations. As such, fads and fashions, polish and gloss are not his thing. His thing is the place, and the place in any given vintage. If both are respected, if a vineyard is farmed with intelligence and thoughtfulness, great, thought provoking wines should follow. Cain Five, from an amphitheatre high up the mountain is one of Napa’s most complex wines – a wine that will occasionally appear reductive when young yet ages with grace, will often offer up a little bretty complexity, while tasting like a wine grown amongst wild-flowers at over 1500ft, where the clouds roll in above the Mayacamas range.
At half the price, Chris produces Cain Concept, a wine from the benchlands of the valley. This is a wine that offers stunning Napa value and is often released with a good number of years of bottle age (and seldom shows any Brettanomyces character at all). The 2010 was a cool Napa vintage that is gaining plaudits all the time and appears to be right in a window of wonder at present, the vintage’s wines “overdelivering on their early promise” writes Steve Tanzer on Vinous.com. Indeed, the Vinous vintage chart rates it the top vintage between 1991 and 2013 – who knew? Well, proof is often found in the pudding, and this is a 2010 that is a treat to drink today. Here you have a wine that offers stereotypical Cain levels of complexity and texture (something I always love about Chris wines – and it’s not always that it’s the silkiest, most polished texture, moreover it’s as if texture and flavour are fused together creating something more multi-dimensional than either), alongside sheer mature drinkability. Concept 2010 is Napa for Right Bank Bordeaux drinkers. A wine of chocolate and wildflowers, sweet plums, pipe tobacco and graphite. It’s currently sitting comfortably in a very relaxed window of drinking, a wine that is so much more sensual than almost all European 2010 Cabernet blends are at present, a lovely inviting combination of Napa charm and European complexity. I found much to enjoy in my recent bottle, I think you will too…"
Mark Dearing - David & Nadia Aristargos 2018
"I love the modern Cape White Blends because they are produced in a style that is totally unique to South Africa. Generally based around old vine Chenin Blanc, which provides a core of freshness and vitality, producers then have the freedom to experiment with all sorts of different varieties to layer it up and produce something completely individual. David and Nadia Sadie work only with Swartland fruit and produce their wines in a really gentle, hands off way, from old dry-farmed vineyards. Aristargos is an Afrikaans word that means “the best way to lead is to serve others” and it’s a wine that represents the best of the region. This is a warm climate white with no trace of heaviness, just supremely elegant, lifted clear-cut fruit and zippy acidity – it’s a wine that I drink regularly and it never fails to impress. In fact, I’ve tasted every vintage produced by this young couple and while older bottles are gorgeously sumptuous and open, the young wines are tighter and more refined than ever. It’s not hard to see why Aristargos is now regarded as one the very top white blends in the country. In the Sadies’ words, “six varieties, fourteen vineyards, twenty pickings, a variety of soils, one appellation, one vision, one wine.”