Calvados, Rhone Blend, tempran...

The red 2019 La Calleja comes from a vineyard that could only be bottled in 2010, 2016 and 2018, as it has suffered everything—hail, frost or whatever. It's from a north-facing plot that was planted in 1992 in Fonzaleche on shallow sandstone soils on white limestone that is harvested late but keeps a moderate degree (14.2%). This 2019 feels darker than usual, with black rather than red fruit, but it is still vibrant on the palate with freshness and fine tannins. The vineyard is farmed organically (but not certified), and they started with regenerative agriculture in 2019. It had a long élevage of 23 months in foudres and 500-liter barrels. 5,200 bottles were filled in September 2021. LUIS GUTIERREZ, The Wine Advocate

La Calleja is a single hectare planted in 1992 by Eva with her father, when she was a little girl. 100% Tempranillo and typically yields 4500 litres (although the first vintage, 2010 produced just 3000 bottles). Its name means 'little street'. Mountainous, with lots of stone in the soil, Fonzaleche village produces light and fluid wines with excellent acid structure. Typical handling regime: lightly crushed (yielding only a half-litre per kilo of fruit), open fermentation in medium-sized old wood for 6 days without additions (total sulphur, 40mg/l).

Fruity-floral with violets, a fresh, mineral acidity and lovely texture, La Calleja is a genuine 'voice' distinct from the me-too choir of industrial-process Rioja.

A voluptuous, well-balanced and charming Lirac red with aromas of dark cherries, plums, warm spices and wet stones on the nose. It’s medium- to full-bodied with fine tannins. Juicy center palate with pulpy dark cherries and a refreshing core of purple berries. Well-driven and focused with a flavorful finish. From biodynamically grown grapes with Demeter certification. JAMES SUCKLING

48 % Grenache, 35 % Mourvèdre and 17 % Syrah from very low yields of 15 hl/ha, at Domaine du Joncier on the pebble terroir of the Vallongues plateau. Certified Biodynamic, Joncier was acquired by Mont-Redon in 2022 and the wine remains Joncier-labelled. 100 % destemmed with gentle extraction via pumpover. Matured for 15 months in 228 litre Burgundy barrels (Syrah) and stainless steel (Grenache, Mourvèdre). Unfined, unfiltered.

This wine is incredibly impressive with great energy and intensity while remaining very supple, elegant and fresh. A remarkable success and a great addition to the already outstanding Château Mont-Redon Lirac (one-third of which is from these vineyards at Joncier).

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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!

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!

STAFF PICKS 2024 - ROSCOE HALLIGAN-ROSE

Too long a story to tell here, but the brief version is, I spent a good bit of time before our recent trip to the Rhone trying to find a producer that fit our wants and needs perfectly, we found three in the end. The Rhone is so exciting at the moment with so many great wines coming out, and many remain at reasonable prices. Still, in the face of this wave of excellent wine it is still rare to find someone crafting wines that are this extraordinary. Paul Formosa is one of the most talented and focused young winemakers I have come across in a long while. His wines are nothing short of spectacular.
Wonderful purity of expression, vivid, bright and clearly defined. Lighter in colour than you may expect, but that belies the deep wells of character that lurk amongst those soaring aromatics, dramatic fruit and the flashes of minerality that add to the overall feel of crispness that accompanies the luxurious and beautifully cushioned fruit. The wine goes on and on and with each moment another nuance or detail escapes from the depths and flicks or flutters along your mouth, tantalising you with the feeling of things to come.
Composed and self-assured, this is not a Gigondas that seeks to stun you with bold and forward fruit, rather it lures you in with its seductive flavours, its shapely profile and its enticing array of perfume. Sneaky structure pays second fiddle here, but it is all perfectly measured and ensures a very long and expressive life ahead. This was an easy choice for my wine of the year. ROSCOE



The promising 2022 Gigondas Cuvée Tradition 1871 mixes 80% Grenache with the remainder equally split between Syrah and Mourvèdre. Glossy red fruits mingle with dashes of dried herbs and a splash of rosewater. Refreshing acidity neatly balances the moderate fruit concentration, persisting all the way through to the sapid finish. This is a lovely Gigondas. NICHOLAS GREINACHER, Vinous

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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!

This village wine is from a collection of vineyards in the highlands around San Vicente, at altitudes of 500m and above, from different sites and soils. Of San Vicente’s six valleys, all but la Rad figure. The composition is Tempranillo with 20% Garnacha and a little Viura. Manual harvest; destemmed; all the plots are made separately, then blended. 

After fermentation in the concrete cubes in Briones, 40% of the village blend lingers in concrete, while the balance has ten months of gentle ageing is in old 500L barrels in the medieval cellar of San Vicente’s Castle Davalillo.

The whole orchard on display here, wood, flowers and fruits of cherries and apples, boysenberry, plum and blackberry. All is cut to shape by hyssop, juniper, dry brown spices and orchard bark. Savoury-but-juicy, it’s open, perfumed and round. Gravel and iron in the soil nuance the satin fruit-tannin sumptuousness. It’s a wine of great harmony and balance, and as it lingers, fruitfulness is beautifully trimmed by tannin to the finish where spice, bitters and easy nutty acid join in the violets-in-earth gorgeousness. SCOTT WASLEY

A river of black fruit, subtle florals and brown spices. Beautiful purity in the fruit, such detail and intensity and while there's a dusting of oak spice, the power and deeply pitched and mineral flecked fruit is very special. Bristling with energy. As I said above, long and aristocratic. Utterly convincing and delicious wine. MICHAEL MCNAMARA

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Such a bright, fresh Rioja that shows vibrant fruit. Modern, glossy and structured, but the tannins are focused and polished. Long and concentrated. Drink or hold. ZEKUN SHUAI, JamesSuckling.com

The 2022 Sela comes from an early harvest after a very warm and dry summer, and the grapes had a shorter maturation cycle. It's 89% Tempranillo, 7% Garnacha and 4% Graciano from younger vines. The aim was to produce a more approachable red. This year, it has a deeper color, moderate 13.5% alcohol, a pH of 3.61 and 5.9 grams of acidity, possibly because of the blocking of some vines. It fermented with indigenous yeasts in oak vats and matured in used French barriques for 12 months. It has a creamy and spicy nose with notes of red and black fruit and a medium-bodied palate with good structure and abundant tannins, with grip and balance. It's very good for food. 98,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in March 2024. LUIS GUTIERREZ, The Wine Advocate

Sela is Roda’s younger plantings, established in the late 80s at the inception of the Roda project. These three vineyards are north of Haro towards Villalba. Until now, this great young material was simply sold off on the bulk fruit market. Now, these vineyards are nicely mature and deserving release in their own right, but not yet qualifying as Roda or Roda 1 fruit, thanks to Roda’s insistence that these are only to be old vine (35 years or more) wines. ‘Sela’ maintains Roda’s hallmark of elegance and tannin fineness.

89% Tempranillo, 11% Graciano from sustainable vineyards, crianza of 12 months in used oak. The vines were ‘tutored’ on poles for their first 12 years, then released to be true bush-vines trained ‘en vaso’. The name is not a Rioja reference: Sela is named for the Scandinavian village where owner Mario Rottlant goes for ski holidays.

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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

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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.
 

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

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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!

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.

Described as a "cask-finished English grain spirit" because it hasn't spent enough time in barrel to be designated as whisky (there is a whisky in the works, due for release this year), this has just the faintest hint of pale golden colour and is bursting with ethereal aromas of sweet, freshly milled malted barley, a touch of honey, some lightly toasted linseed and sesame. It's sweet and fine on the tongue, with a deliciously seductive, gently oily texture. An intriguing and unique spirit. MAX ALLEN

Ingredients: With a specially selected blend of our holy trinity of grains mixed with our Kentish water before being distilled carefully through our traditional pot still.
 

Four Pillars Rare Dry Gin is crafted to deliver the best of all worlds: a perfect, classic gin and also something that would fascinate and delight even the most hardened gin fanatic. It’s spicy but with great citrus, a truly modern Australian gin.

Four Pillars Rare Dry Gin captures the essence of contemporary Australia’s heritage in Europe and Asia. We’re using whole oranges which is unusual but Australian citrus is highly aromatic and supports the spicier botanicals like cardamom.

The cinnamon and star anise add rich fruitcake tones, the Tasmanian pepperberry leaf provides warmth rather than heat, and the lemon myrtle is a beautiful alternative to lemon peel.

Our Rare Dry Gin has been awarded medals at a number of prestigious international competitions: Double Gold in the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2014 and 2016, Silver in the London International Wine & Spirits Competition 2014, and Gold at the Hong Kong International Wine & Spirits Competition 2014.  fourpillarsgin.com.au

Distilled in Battersea, south London, this is named after Ralph Dodd, an early nineteenth-century entrepreneur whose many schemes included the creation of the London Distillery Company. The venture failed - indeed Dodd was taken to court for his innovative notion to issue transferable shares - but his sprit lingered on. So when the brand new London Distillery Company started producing gin in 2013, it was called Dodd's. The bulk of the botanicals, including the honey, are distilled in a copper pot still, while the more delicate ones are cold distilled in a vacuum still. The two streams are then blended and married before bottling.

The nose is creamy, then a leafy shiso-like aroma emerges with fat fruits behind. In time there is subtle juniper, a menthol hit, some celery, and sweetness. The mouth feel is very silky, which distracts you initially from the high, fresh and brightly warm perfume. You're inside the pine forest eating ras el hanout baklava. DAVID BROOM, Gin: The Manual

The 2022 Châteauneuf Du Pape Blanc is Grenache Blanc, Clairette, and smaller amounts of Roussanne, Picpoul, and Bourboulenc. Ripe citrus, crushed stone, white flowers, and even a kiss of brioche all emerge on the nose, and it's medium-bodied, with a pure, elegant mouthfeel, good acidity, and a great finish. It's going to evolve for 10-12 years, if not longer, if well stored. JEB DUNNUCK

Incredibly mineral and saline with astonishing focus and precision for this very warm location. Great lemon aromas ranging from blossoms to the peel. Great concentration, but no less vitality. Amazingly long finish that reminds me of great Alsace dry rieslings, like Clos St. Hune! Drink or hold. ( 96) STUART PIGOTT Pigott, James Suckling

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Robust and wonderful, Claude Navy Strength is our full flavoured, full bodied gin with a hint of Australia, carrying a delicate touch of Southern Sassafras foraged from the Victorian mountains. Despite its humble beginnings, Claude has won the hearts and tastebuds of gin lovers and critics around the world, winning double gold at the World Spirit Awards. It continues to be one of our most popular gins and a staple for any drinks cabinet.

Beautiful on ice or as a Gibson Martini. We also love it as a G&T using a good quality tonic. BIG TREE

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