Calvados, cider, Malbec, Blend...

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More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

Even the entry-level white 2020 Candea Blanco, a regional blend of equal parts of Dona Blanca, Verdello and Treixadura fermented and kept with lees in stainless steel for one year, shows character, cleanliness, precision and freshness beyond the price point, and it transcends appellation and vintage and is offered with some time in bottle. It has only 12.5% alcohol and an expressive nose of herbs and flowers, and it is balanced, harmonious and elegant and finishes dry and long with a tasty and salty twist. A bargain. 6,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in August 2022. LUIS GUTIERREZ, Wine Advocate

 

 

A bitter obtained from a skilful work through infusion in a water-alcohol solution with well-balanced roots and herbs, aromatic plants and citrus fruit that give the product a classic taste, round, harmonious with fruity and lightly bitter sensations that make it unique in its kind.
Clear, transparent, classic red color; its perfect mixability makes it an ideal base for the preparation of cocktails of higher quality. TUVE TURIN

A blend of vineyards in Clare Valley blending cabernet sauvignon, malbec, sangiovese and grenache. Clever. Their own ‘classico’. The new label reversed the colours on this one, more black on black with white font, and it looks sexy as.

Gorgeous wine. Supple, succulent, lush with dark fruit character, new leather, tobacco, mint and sage leaf characters with a fine, graphite minerally character through it all. It feels warm-hearted and kind of generous but keeps to the medium weight brief. It rolls with flavour, energy and tension of refined tannins through a long, mouth-watering finish. It feels pedigree from hello and keeps you engaged. Really beautiful. MIKE BENNIE, www.winefront.com

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2023 was a brilliant year for Cabernet Sauvignon and proved perfect ripening for Cabernet Sauvignon and merlot and Cullen vineyard. Made from 100% bio-dynamically certified fruit a blend of 87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 11% Merlot,1% Cabernet Franc, and 1% Malbec has created a wine of great depth supported by delicious fine grained tannins.

The wine was matured in barriques of which 20% were new. CULLEN

The Cave Mont Blanc 2022 Vallée d'Aoste Blanc de Morgex et de La Salle (made with the local Prié Blanc grape) is a steely and tonic white wine with an icy, transparent hue and sharp aromas of star fruit, white pepper, grapefruit and lemon water. The wine is thin and direct in approach, with nice freshness, making this a great easy-drinking proposition. Fruit comes from a vineyard site at a nose-bleed 1,000 to 1,200 meters in elevation. MONICA LARNER, The Wine Advocate

Known more as a cutting-edge cider maker, Eric Bordelet was a top sommelier at Arpege in Paris, before returning home to Normandy in 1992 to take over the family business. He biodynamically grows more than 20 apple varieties and 15 pear varieties. JASON WILSON, Vinous

Eric Bordelet approaches Cider-making with the same intensity as a passionate oenologist brings to winemaking. Bordelet worked as sommelier in the leading 3 star Parisian restaurant, ‘Arpege’ where he became deeply familiar with the top winemakers and wineries of France. In 1992 he took over the tiny patch of family farmed orchards in Charchigné, in the heart of Normandy’s premium Cider producing area. Since then he has set about rescuing the ancient ‘heirloom’ varieties of pears and apples that produce tiny quantities and amazing flavour.

Produced from pear trees estimated to be about 300 years old. Poiré Granit has 25-80 grams of sugar per liter, yet it doesn't taste particularly sweet.  This is due to the tannin and acidity, which Bordelet says is twice as high as the apple! Stunning as aperitif or with cheese or desserts. With just 4% alc/vol this can be enjoyed any time. Cider simply doesn't get better than this !!

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Made with grapes from Luján de Cuyo and the Uco Valley, the 2022 Malbec Mendoza revives the plush Malbec profile that gained popularity in the U.S. market in the 2000s, now with added intensity and concentration from the vintage. It offers a rich fruit blend, from ripe plum to blackberry, with a subtle hint of oak and fine tannins on the finish. This is well crafted and enjoyable. JOAQUIN HIDALGO

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

Really fresh and fruit-expressive with plenty of dark cherries, mulberries and violets. Lots of fruit and fine-grained, yet powerful tannins on the palate. Peppery and tightly wound. Mineral. Malbec from Las Compuertas co-fermented with malbec from Gualtallary. 50% whole bunch in oak butts. ZEKUN SHUAI, James Halliday

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70% Xinomavro and 30% Negoska - Appellation Controlée. Slight vanillan oak, white pepper. A big rich wine. Plum, dark cherry, vanilla, white pepper. Red fruit with good length. Fine tannins.

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

It's like a Bordelaise immigrant in Friuli. I don't mean these varieties (merlot, cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon) are new to the area, in fact the cabernet family have been planted up here for centuries, I mean the style of the wine blends classical cabernet production - modern vinification and small oak elevage - with a local fruit spectrum which offer something different to their spirit home in France. 

Middle weight. Dark cherry. dark berry and leafy aromatic with a touch of earl grey tea. Palate is clean and pure, sweetly fruited but also lithe and direct. Dark chocolate and oak splice are woven into the core of the wine. It's a lovely example, the main feature for me being that it holds excellent ripeness but is also mid-weight and cool fruited. Excellent luncheon merlot cab blend that will age and improve for 10-15 years. MICHAEL MCNAMARA 

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Aged in small apple brandy casks for over 12 months, this rich and generous liqueur is a result of blending pressed French and British heirloom apple varieties with our apple spirit.

Complex and well-structured with baked apple and spice, balanced with firm tannins and cask influence.

Our take on the traditional aperitif from North-West France – enjoy as such or serve with blue cheese or dessert. WILLIE SMITH

In the words of Sergio and Lorenzo, their Aromatico Bitter is a "collision… made by mixing cold with heat, bitter with sweet, bright red with the brown tones of the earth". With a partially different mix than for the Chinato, here we have a neutral alcohol, sugar, distilled water and a natural infusion of aromatic herbs, which include gentian, cinchona, liquorice, wild cherry and cardo gobbo. Initially packed with bitter herbs, this cocktail of medicinal goodies moves into a typical bittersweet taste, with marked notes of fresh fruit and spices. 25% alc.

Vintages don't necessarily follow in chronological order here, so from the 2014 I tasted last year (which is just being released now!), we jump to the 2018 Gorvia Blanco. This plot had normal yields in 2018, as the development was quite early and the fruit setting was before the problems showed up. This is the first year that has a little Godello, as Mateo replaced the dead vines and regrafted some rows with Godello, so it has a very small percentage (perhaps 5%). This is sharp, austere, mineral and incredibly young, and it finishes with a clean, sharp and precise salty note. This follows the textural direction of the Fisterra, or the wine he bottled for Matador. This should develop in bottle for a long time. He thinks 2014 is starting to show well now, almost six years after the harvest. I think this wine can be enjoyed young, but it will improve and develop a lot in bottle. LUIS GUITIERREZ, The Wine Advocate

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

This blend of Portuguese varieties has come together seamlessly and offers immediate drinking appeal. Heady with violets and lavender, blackcurrants and Szechuan pepper, blackstrap licorice and Mediterranean herbs, all adding to its youthful beauty. Fine tannins, raspberry-like acidity and complexity raise it way above ordinary. (95) JANE FAULKNER, Halliday Wine Companion

+ Trophy Best Cabernet Blend 2022 Yarra Valley Wine Show +
A blend of 80/20% 1995-planted cabernet and 1990-planted malbec. Matured in 225L barriques (15% new). A brilliant crimson purple. Aromas of cassis, blackberries, violets and a gentle whiff of cedar emanate from this beautifully put-together wine. Elegant, medium bodied and with super-supple tannins, Sarah Crowe has crafted an approachable and seductive cabernet. The well-deserved winner of the Best Cabernet Blend trophy at the 2022 Yarra Valley Wine Show. (96) PHILIP RICH

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More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

Deep bright purple-red colour leading into a stylish bouquet of sweet mulberry and other berry fruits, violets and cassis, succulent and mouth-filling, with masses of fine emery-like tannins that run the length of the palate adding authority, structure, length and refreshment to the aftertaste. Concentrated, superripe blackberry, cassis and mulberry flavours; oak tucked discreetly into the background. (98) HUON HOOKE, The Real Review

Really delivers as you might expect from this excellent concentrated and powerfully frame vintage in Margaret River. It’s dominant cabernet with smaller portions of merlot, cabernet franc and malbec. Typical of this wine since switching to biodynamics, it is bright and brilliant with a nervy tense energy to drive the palate. The succulent fruit is harness by fine chalky tannins and neatly played oak of which 55% was new. A wine of extraordinary elegance and poise with a few of many decades. (98) RAY JORDAN

Needless to say, Margaret River enjoyed another superb vintage with the 2022 season. Slightly cooler, Cullen report that it was a vintage of “immense perfume and texture”. The wine is a wonderfully vibrant purple in colour. The nose gives up plums, cassis, spices including nutmeg, chocolate, mocha, bay leaves, cigar box notes – think a freshly opened box of Cohiba Siglo VI – and near perfect oak integration. This is finely balanced and exhibiting immense length on a palate that sees the emergence of aniseed, mulberries and coffee beans. An alluringly supple texture with the silkiest of tannins, though plenty of them – there really is some grip here. This will easily sail through fifteen to twenty years in a good cellar. (98) KEN GARGETT, Wine Pilot

Diana Madeline. The name evokes a lot of emotions, for what the woman stood for then and what the wine stands for now. The 2021 vintage equals 50 years of cabernet sauvignon plantings at Cullen. When released in early 2023, it was on what would have been her 100th birthday. It’s a wine that can come from nowhere else, so strong is its sense of place. Expect to swoon over aromas of roses, violets and mulberries doused in baking spices, a ferruginous quality as much as detailed if persuasive tannins. It’s complex, complete and structured. Gosh, what a wine. What a woman. The perfect combination. (97) JANE FAULKNER, James Halliday

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!

Poli are best known for there fine range of premium Grappa, liquers and distillates from North east Italy. Established in 1898 this quality producer has over a 100 years' experience with distilling. Recently they have produced a unique Gin - MARCONI 46. Artisanaly distilled and obtained from a unique infusion of juniper berries, muscat grape, mountain pine, cembra pine, mint, cardamom and coriander reminding of the Asiago plateau in the north of the Veneto region, where the Poli family comes from. This is a heady and perfumed gin that is at once powerful and refined. A truly unique product that speaks of its home in the hills and of the philosophy of this family run operation.

In addition to this month's Italian Mixed dozen we thought we would like to offer a Negroni pack featuring this incredible product. We have matched it with our very own Vermouths and Bitters from its western counterpart Turin Vermouth. Their philosophy is to maintain tradition through the production while sourcing aromats and herbs from all over the world and based on the local wines of the Piemonte's hills. Together this forms once of the world great classic cocktail- the Negroni.

This classic was first created for Count Camillo Negroni in 1919 at Florence's Café Casoni.  A century later and millions of Negroinis, and this has sealed itself as one of the world's greatest classics. Below is the deceptively simple and delicious cocktail. We have included 2 bottles each of the Turin Bitters and the Drapo Rosso Vermouth so once you have gone through your first bottle of Marconi 46 all you have to do is grab another bottle or choose any one of your favourite local or international gins.

Ingredients

1 oz. Italian Bitters
1 oz. Gin
1 oz. Sweet vermouth

Instructions

Stir Tuve Bitters, gin, and vermouth in an ice-filled tumbler; garnish with orange slice.

We've come across a swathe of Argentinian wines that both excite and delight. There's a certain wild beauty to Argentine wine, and altitude plays a huge role. Many of Argentina's best vineyards sit far above sea level, where sun-drenched days meet cool crisp nights. This diurnal shift preserves acidity while ripening the fruit to vivid intensity, marrying freshness to flesh.

This 6 pack includes five malbecs and one torrontes blend:
1 x Bodega Colome Estate Malbec 2022
1 x Ernesto Catena Padrillos Malbec 2024
1 x Laura Catena La Posta Paulucci Malbec 2023
1 x Mattias Ricatelli Hey Malbec 2023
1 x Achaval Ferrer Mendoza Malbec 2022
1 x Amalaya Vino Blanco Torrontes 2024

There are only a select few, perfect locations, to grow great wine on this big blue orb of ours and those are between 30 and 50 degrees north and south latitudes. Those regions need to provide just the right temperature, humidity, heat and climate to grow high quality grapes. We are absolutely spoilt for choice when it comes to the northern reaches with the whole of Europe at our disposal, but travel further south and things are a little different.

While New Zealand and Tasmania provide us with plenty of choices (and we would be remiss not to include them) the southern reaches sitting on and just below the 40 degrees latitude offer a up a wholy unique drinking experience.

While grapes like riesling, cabernet and pinot noir are familiar to us, a number of the wines in this months pack aren't seen so regularly on your local wines list or on the shelves of your corner wine store. From Malbec's in Argentina to the infamous Pinotage and the more classic varietals like Chenin in South Africa this is an exploration of all that is good in these great southern lands of ours.

Where do we start with such an awesome selection of interesting wine? It's hard to decide we might just do a quick run down by country.

South America is relatively new to the wine scene but has come along in leap and bounds. WE start with a couple of classics with the Finca Los Moras Malbec and the Santa Ana Cabernet. These are text book varietal wines with plenty to love in their up-front fruit and modern styling. For something a little different we through in the Bouchon pais. For those who do not know, Pais is an old variety that is Chile's answer to pinot noir. With a little more bite and a wild flourish this a great introduction to this fascinating wine.

Closer to home in New Zealand we have few classic drops with the Palliser Estate Pencarrow pinot. A wine you would be hard pressed to find with the structure, concentration and complexity at the same price. Off to Hawkes Bay for some stonking Chardonnay from Bilancia fame and some of the world most underrated syrah from stars Te Mata. What a treat!

Just in our backyard, Tassie continues to pump out some of the best wine in the country and while we would never miss out on showcasing another great pinot there is some real winners with pinot gris and riesling on the rise. The Moores Hill gris is a freat example of textural and vibrant gris from the Apple Isle with the Riversdale riesling hot on its tale.

And for something a little different we have got the latest release Willie Smiths Cider. This is an absolute belter, and we couldn't help but included it once we were told it had been released. Perfect timing! We will take that one!

Last, and something we don't see much in Aus is a cracking selection of wines from South Africa. Long-term customers may recognise some of these wines and as far as we are concerned, they are some of the best modern day Cape wines to make it over. The Bare Bones cinsault is a zippy red full of energy while the Winery of Good Hope pinotage is a juicy and fun take on this classic red variety,

And what would a selection of wine from South Africa be without a chenin blanc. The Secateurs is clean and crunchy with a plush fruit profile that is cleaned up by chenin's zippy acidity.
All in al a pretty awesome and exciting collection of stellar wines from the great south!

More product information will be added here soon! In the meantime, if you do have any questions at all about this product or others in our store, you can contact us by phone or email. Our friendly and experienced team are always happy to assist - we love drinking, selling, talking about and being in and around wine!