Calvados, Gin, Grenache, sangi...

Bottled in December, the bright ruby 2022 Rosso Di Montalcino leaps out of the glass with poppy lift in its effusive aromas of red cherries and wild red berries, licorice candies, and pressed flowers. Easygoing and approachable although it still has lovely Sangiovese character, it has a delicately juicy feel, with fine tannins, a fresh, balanced level of acidity, and a clean finish. Drink 2024-2030. AUDREY FRICKE

The juicy and delicious 2022 Rosso di Montalcino from Le Chiuse is a textbook Rosso. It opens with aromas of ripe dark berry, spice and blue flower while the succulent palate delivers ripe Morello cherry, crushed raspberry, star anise and ground clove. Lithe polished tannins and tangy acidity keep it balanced, bright and accessible. Drink through 2027. KERIN O'KEEFE

Wonderfully pure and lifted, the 2022 Rosso di Montalcino opens with a beautiful cascade of rose petals, sage and wild strawberries. It's soft and round with vibrantly ripe wild berry fruits and sweet spices that ride a wave of juicy acidity. This leaves a primary staining of concentration. The mouth waters for more, tapering off crisp with a cherry-berry tinge. ERIC GUIDO

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!

Frank Moorhouse in his book Martini - a memoir states, "Every time it is served, the martini represents a journey towards an unattainably ideal drink". The idea of endlessly pursuing a perfection that does not exist is something well known to passionate winemakers. Having a winemaking background we thought we would delve into the mysteries of gin production. This was largely brought about by our fascination with martinis and all things gin.
The notion of the "unattainable ideal drink" led us into a series of trials and experiments and we have become fully immersed in the alchemy of batch distillation and the extraction of exotic and local botanicals. The MGC doffs its hat to London Dry Gin with the two major components being juniper berries and coriander seed. There are 11 botanicals in total (not including a lot of love) with the grapefruit peel and rosemary coming from the garden at Gembrook Hill Vineyard. The other botanicals are macadamia, sandalwood, honey lemon myrtle and organic navel orange, which are all sourced from Australia. The exotics in the mix are angelica root, orris root and cassia bark.

Each botanical is distilled separately and then blended to our recipe - essentially a winemakers approach. We use a copper pot baine-marie alembic still. A still traditionally used for making perfume. This allows us to preserve the delicate nature of the botanicals we work with. The final component is the water used to break the gin back. We use Gembrook rainwater which is pure and fresh and allows the botanicals to shine through. At only 60kms from Melbourne this local source contributes to the definition of the unique "Melbourne Dry Gin" style.

The MGC is not chill filtered. We didn't want to take out the oils that contribute so much to the aromatics and mouth feel of the gin. So when the gin is very cold the oils become slightly insoluble and form a light haze. The French use the word louche to describe this. In a different context someone who is louche is of a shady character! Each bottle is numbered to reflect the small batches in which it is made. ANDREW MARKS, Distiller & Winemaker

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!

This is ballistically good. I doubt that I’ll taste anything much better from these shores over the next 12 months. The first thing you notice is the plushness, which is always welcome, but it’s the finish that takes things to eleven. Wow, really, this wine has a show-stopping finish on it. It’s blessed with red and blue berry flavours, cedarwood, roasted spice and earth, but itemising the flavours of this wine kind of misses the point. It’s like focussing on the colour of a tidal wave. The complete and utter command of the final flourish of flavour and tannin here feels, as you swallow, like a high water mark. I’m sold, totally sold, on this wine. (97) CAMPBELL MATTINSON, The Wine Front

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!

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 is an impactful grenache made by somebody who prizes Italian wines. The tannins are an immense force field, with kirsch, strawberries and dried Mediterranean herbs, and a note of almond husk that gives noble bitterness. The density, poise and grace are thoroughly impressive. This is a structured grenache built for the cellar. Drinkable now, but best from 2027. (97) NED GOODWIN MW

From the new estate vineyard for Pannell, an old but recently viticulturally retooled site in Blewitt Springs. It will be fascinating to watch this bottling over the subsequent years as Stephen and co get the full benefit of enhanced farming reflected in bottle, but this is a very bright start. There's presently a touch more flex and breadth than the other single site grenache bottlings, but still with the tenson of the year. Wild raspberry, redcurrant jelly, bitter red aperitivo, tamarind and sour cherry. Tannins are fine, insistent and sandy, acidity a driving force. This is a stellar debut. (96) MARCUS ELLIS

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!

Sara’s tribute to “youth, tenacity, love and Grenache”. Who can argue …?
Organically grown on a 10 hectare plot of degraded granite (Montsant’s only gravel patch), Dido has been in production since 2005. The blend is 86% co-fermented Garnatxa-Syrah (1/5 is Syrah, which helps the local Garnatxa ferment better), with 7% each Cabernet and Merlot. It’s picked early, and needs to be largely de-stemmed, so the fermentation takes place in two parts. A 15% portion is used as a starter – whole bunches take wild yeast and are covered with sulphur for 8 days. This is then released into the balance of the fruit, de-stemmed and un-sulphured, and away we go. After fermentation in old hogsheads, the wines are long-aged, more than 18 months – a first year in large raw concrete and then a further 6 months or so in large Foudre of 5000 litres.

Bright and fresh red cherry fruit marked by mint and other local herbs, the wine shows the clear crunch of granite soil. Juicy and direct with macerated herbs, licorice and briar in lovely pastille fruit. Good concentration, rich-but-not-sweet country wine, it's all briar-herb-cane-brambly, with a nice little nudge of spice, allspice husk and leather in the soft savoury juice and a touch of chocolate in the soft leathery tannin. Clear and direct, with absolutely no wine-making clutter, it is delicately structured and savoury. A smasher!

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!

We were first introduced to the distillery by Melbourne (and San Sebastian) bar owner, Gerald Diffey. He was fairly passionate about this range of gins he'd seen on a trip back to the UK and urged us to import some. We knew Gerald knew his stuff so we were interested but wary given the number of Gins in the market, but once we delved deeper into the operation and then tasted the range we were sold.

The distillery is a relatively new operation headed by Bob Russell and sons, Matthew and Stephen. It is unique in several senses but first off it is housed in a Victorian-era pumphouse in the now derelict Chatham Dockyard south of London. The dockyard was at one time of huge importance to the Empire building ships for the Royal Navy from Napoleonic times through to the Falklands. The pumphouse # 5 was used to pump out water for the dry docks. Russell saw an opportunity to revitalise a magnificent piece of English architecture, give some locals a job and indulge his passion for making bespoke spirits. To do this he decided to take the road less travelled in distilling and instead of buying in bulk spirit to make his Gin

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!

Distilled using locally grown barley and Kentish water, this is as fresh and bright as a sunny spring day in the countryside. Elegant and refined gin, with a lovely, half floral, half herbal lift. I tasted it before learning what botanicals had been used in its production, and suspect its fragrant quality comes from the local elderflowers. MAX ALLEN

Ingredients: Italian Juniper berries, locally sourced elderflower, Bulgarian Coriander seeds, Spanish orange peel, Italian lemon peel, Guatemala green cardamom, grains of paradise from Africa, European Angelica root and Orris root, our own neutral grain spirit and Kentish chalk filtered water.
 

The 2017 Turpino is quite reticent, which is surprising given the style and personality of the year. Black cherry, pine, menthol, licorice and chocolate develop nicely over time. Readers should give the 2017 at least a few years in bottle, as it is not at all ready to drink now. The 2017 embodies the house style at Querciabella these days nicely. The wine is rich and deep, but not at all overdone. (95) ANTONIO GALLONI

40% Cabernet Franc, 40% Syrah, 20% Merlot grown in a north-facing vineyard in Grossetto in the Maremma. Biodynamically certified. Aged for 16 months in fine- and extra-fine-grained French oak barriques, of which up to 20% were new.
Lustrous deep crimson. Deep red- and dark-fruit nose with hints of dark spice. Savoury rather than sweet or ripe on the nose... Hint of earth and dried moss. Lush red and dark fruit with a muscular structure that is completely integrated with the fruit. Hedonistic, long, and with loads of appeal. Great fun to drink. (17+) WALTER SPELLER MW

Domaine Font de Courtedune – for now, at least – is something of an insider’s secret. With vineyards right next door to Château Rayas, and sharing the same sandy soils, this tiny Châteauneuf-du-Pape estate produces outstanding wines that are a fraction of the price of those of its famous neighbour. The vineyards have long been owned by the Charrier family, but the fruit was sold to the local co-operative until 1997, when René Charrier established the domaine. Today his children Caroline and Frédéric are in charge.

Everything here is joyously traditional. The old vines (some of which are over 100 years old) are all farmed sustainably, with as little intervention as possible; a philosophy that follows through into the winery. Everything is whole-bunch, fermented and aged in concrete vats, with no oak to be found in the winery at all. They work almost exclusively with Grenache, with just a splash of Mourvèdre, Counoise, Cinsault, and Terret Noir to add extra spice and body to the wines.

An outstanding 2021 Chateauneuf ethereal and fresh, super sleek and wonderfully pretty. It's all about the pure fruit, lilting, sweet cherries, crushed raspberry and a touch of white pepper spice sprinkled in all the right spots. Lovely wine.

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

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!

We wanted to taste the Juniper. We wanted it to taste different to our Melbourne Dry Gin. We wanted it to taste amazing.

The Single Shot is a gin made in a single distillation, unlike the MGC’s original Melbourne Dry Gin, in which botanicals are individually distilled then blended together. The result is a full flavoured gin, so much so it may louche (form a fine glazy mist) in a G&T or Martini, which MGC celebrates as a mark of distinction.

Even before its release, Melbourne Gin Company has received major international accolades for Single Shot becoming the most awarded gin that no one has yet tasted.

Double Gold at the 2018 San Francisco World Spirits Awards;
Gin Master at the 2018 Gin Masters Awards London,
Gold Medal at the 2018 World Gin Masters – Asia (Hong Kong)
Since 2013 when MGC launched their first pioneering product, Melbourne Dry Gin, their fascination with the alchemy of gin has kept them busy conducting trials, perfecting their techniques and playing with different botanicals to create Single Shot.

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!