Product Line

The 2020 Barbera d'Alba Superiore Gepin is deep, flavorful with tons of character. It emerges from the Cottà cru, where the wines are naturally rich and creamy. Black cherry, plum, chocolate, leather and incense all open nicely. A year of aging in cask adds structure. What I like most about the 2020 is the combination of fruit intensity and depth, but in the restrained, classic style that is the norm here these days. ANTONIO GALLONI, Vinous

The name of this wine is taken from the previous farmer. Gepin tended these old parcels of Barbera in the great crus of Ronchi (Barbaresco) and Cottà (Neive), planted between 1950 and 1974.

This wine has improved out of sight in recent vintages (in part thanks to enhanced barrel integration) and has now become a regular in our portfolio. Where the classic Barbera is raised in tank, the Gepin matures for 12 months in low-impact, large Austrian casks (from you know who) and is bottled unfiltered

Based on the 2019 vintage, Roederer's NV Brut Collection 244 is the finest release of the house's reimagined non-vintage Brut to date. Offering up aromas of pear, peach and nectarine mingled with notions of white flowers, beeswax, freshly baked bread and buttery pastry, it's medium to full-bodied, layered and fleshy, with a pretty pinpoint mousse, racy acids and a long, chalky finish. The quality of the base vintage really shines through. WILLIAM KELLEY

The NV Collection 244 is gorgeous. Bright and focused, with a lovely cut, the 244 is immediately captivating. Dried pear, chamomile, herbs, mint and crushed rocks abound. Based on the 2019 vintage with 36% perpetual reserve wines from vintages 2012-2018, this vibrant, wonderfully crystalline Champagne impresses from beginning to end. Saline notes extend the finish effortlessly. ANTONIO GALLONI

The first impression is as invigorating as a sea breeze. I love the interplay of mirabelle, grapefruit and lychee fruit with minty freshness and waxiness from lees contact. And all this is welded to a beautifully proportioned palate with plenty of structure, the acidity bright and the mousse animating. Very salty finish that pulls you back for more. A cuvee of 41% chardonnay, 33% pinot noir and 26% pinot meunier. Of these, 15% fermented in oak and 85% in stainless steel. The final blend contained 36% reserve perpetual and 10% reserve wines of the 2012 - 2018 vintage from oak. JAMES SUCKLING

A pale silver/straw hue, the NV Champagne Collection 244 has 2019 as its base, with 42% Chardonnay, 26% Meunier, and the rest Pinot Noir. Expressive on opening, it's fresh with a beautiful floral perfume and reveals pure notes of red berries, cherry, fresh peach, and a lovely fresh bit of primary fruit. It has a fine and refined mousse, and the palate is supple and inviting. Medium-bodied and elegant, with a ripe core, it has a delicate salinity to balance its freshness and has an attractive, lightly tannic feel while retaining a refined and precise profile. Approachable and fantastic now, it will be exciting to see how this develops over time. It continues to be an exceptional value. JEB DUNNUCK

The Larmandier family excelled in this cooler vintage, so it's unsurprising that the 2013 Extra-Brut Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Vieille Vigne du Levant has turned out beautifully. Wafting from the glass with notes of crisp yellow orchard fruit, brioche, white flowers, oyster shell and honeycomb, it's medium to full-bodied, deep, layered and incisive, with a tangy spine of acidity, terrific tension and a long, racy finish. WILLIAM KELLEY

The 2013 Extra Brut Vieille Vigne de Levant Grand Cru is a Champagne of real breadth and substance that captures the essence of these 50-70-year-old vines. Apricot, chamomile, dried flowers and a kiss of oak are all amplified. Vinous and creamy, the 2013 builds beautifully with time in the glass, showing tremendous character and pedigree. The 2013 was fermented and aged in a combination of neutral barrique and foudre. It's a super-classic Larmandier-Bernier Champagne. Dosage is 2 grams per liter. ANTONIO GALLONI

The 2018 Brut Vintage is absolutely delicious, just as it was last year. Floral and citrus notes give the 2018 lovely aromatic lift to play off its mid-weight personality. This is a classy, polished Vintage Champagne marked by notable brightness. Airy, elegant and silky in feel, the 2018 is an absolute delight. ANTONIO GALLONI

Pol Roger's 2018 vintage is showing many of the fine facets of the year upon release already, open and giving in style with roasted pear, ripe apricot and grapefruit skin, lightly creamy and developing richness in pecan and brown pastry. The Pinot Noir leads, relatively structured for the year while showing hints of the smoke and spice to come with further age. A wine that flows with some of the ease and charm of 2018, but that promises a fairly early – if rewarding – unfolding in bottle. DECANTER 

Made from 60% Pinot Noir and the rest Chardonnay and pouring a vibrant silver/yellow color, the 2018 Champagne Brut Vintage (like all these wines) was aged in stainless steel without any oak. In the glass, it opens to springy and dewy floral aromas of honeydew melon, fresh flowers, citrus blossoms, and pastry dough. Medium-bodied and inviting, it’s approachable now and takes on a more mineral character on the palate without ever feeling austere. All its components move seamlessly through the palate, with a refined mousse and a kiss of sunny feel on the finish, but it’s clean and refined all the way through. This is going to improve with age, but it’s quite enjoyable now. Drink over the coming 15 or so years. It was made exclusively from Premier Cru and Grand Cru villages, was aged for 6 years on the lees JEB DUNNUCK

The 2018 Brut Vintage, with a dosage of seven grams per liter, exhibits a delicate bouquet of ripe orchard fruits, pineapple, peach, sweet spices and pastry, followed by a full-bodied, rich and elegantly creamy mid-palate that segues into a fleshy core of fruit with a penetrating, long and saline finish. Admirers of Pol Roger’s style will love it. WINE ADVOCATE 

Pale lemon with a lively and persistent mousse and an attractive nose of Spring flowers, hawthorn and apple turnover, a hint of iodine too. Subtle, the wine is composed yet incisive, fresh and yet profound, with orchard fruit and a citric cut shaping the palate, and notes of verbena and sourdough in support. Expertly crafted and forthright, without indulging to excess, the 2018 is poised and confident but far from brash and with a clear potential to evolve gracefully. The wine broadens beautifully with a little time in the glass, with hints of honey and biscuit evidenced, and will do so equally impressively in bottle over the next five years and beyond. SIMON FIELD MW

Focused on red grapes (pinots noir and meunier, 40 percent each), this gives an impression sweet, blue-black grape skins in its soft red fruit, while golden, oxidative tones bring scents of butterscotch and white tea to the finish. For rich shellflish, like oysters Rockefeller. WINE & SPIRITS 

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!

PLATINUM - DECANTER WORLD WINE AWARDS
Outstanding elegance and finesse pervade this exceptional wine with its well-honed toasty sourdough, gunflint and grilled citrus notes, razor sharp acidity and mouth-filling mousse. Brilliantly poised and brimming with potential, the long and zesty finish runs and runs. (97) DECANTER

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!

80% Chardonnay and 20% Pinot Noir from 40-year-old vines. Mainly fermented in in tank with a quarter going into old barrel. Dosage 0 g/l. This vintage, aged for three years in their cellars and stands out with its finely floral character and its tangy notes borrowed from citrus fruits. 

Meunier 60%, Pinot Noir 30%, Chardonnay 10%. A blend of 50% 2020 & 50% 2021 vintages. Assembled with 80% from a single vintage and 20% of the previous vintage. majority fermented in steel, a quarter in 228L barrels. Dosage (4.5g/l). Disgorge 07/2023 Like all their non-vintage white Champagnes, this cuvée is produced with approximately 1/6th of wines vinified in oak barrels.

The 2018 Extra Brut Inattendue is a pure Chardonnay picked in Ludes and Rilly La Montagne. Slight creaminess and fresh, ripe yellow apple flesh appears on the nose. The palate is clearly very youthful with its foamy, exuberant mousse taking center stage and primary fruit still holding sway, deliciously so. This is bright, fresh and vivid, but there is dimension beyond fruit and freshness that shows pure and concentrated fruit . Dosage 3gr/ L Disgorged 2023. ANNE KREBIEHL MW, vinous

This is a bit of a banger. Raspberry, almond paste, dried roses, a fair bit of white pepper and spice, aniseed too. It’s medium-bodied, frisky and fresh, plenty of red fruits, dried herb, a ‘mineral’ feel to it, not least with regards to acidity, peppery tannin, lots of energy, also kind of earthy and gravelly too, with a brisk finish of excellent length. GARY WALSH, The Wine Front

The 2020 Freisa Bonina is another fabulous wine in the entry-level portion of the range. Bright and translucent, the 2020 delivers striking complexity and nuance. Rose petal, lavender, spice, mint and dried herbs all open in the glass. The 2020 is translucent, bright and wonderfully expressive. For readers who want to explore Freisa, this is certainly a great start. ANOTONIO GALLONI,Vinous

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!

Cavallotto’s Vigna del Cuculo is a major-league Barbera from a parcel of 50-plus-year-old vines on the western side of Bricco Boschis. This parcel is named after the cuckoo bird (cuculo)—we’re not sure why, and neither is Alfio Cavallotto! This wine's unique power and ridiculous quality can be attributed to the mature vines, low yields and powerful terroir of the Bricco Boschis. The western aspect and the preponderance of limestone temper Barbera’s natural acidity, and Alfio Cavallotto explains that this ‘Barolo’ terroir contributes to an aromatic range in Barbera that is closer to Nebbiolo.

The winemaking is also distinctive, with up to 18 days on skins (a long time for Barbera) and then aging for 20 months in the same mature Slavonian casks as the Nebbiolo wines. 2021 is a wonderfully fleshy and perfumed year for this benchmark wine. It’s got that core of pure, sweet, plummy fruit so particular to this Barbera, here infused with nuances of anise, dried flower and earthy minerals. The tannins are supple and elegant, the acidity ripe yet racy, and the wine finishes with unusual depth, finesse and complexity for the variety. Equally deep, complex and textural—not all Barbera is created equal.

Organic. Lalù’s Barbera just gets better. The new release is the first to include fruit from the new estate vineyard of Bricco Giubellini in Monforte. The vines here lie on Diano sandstone at a lofty 530 metres, an altitude that brings welcome freshness to warmer Piemonte vintages such as 2022 and 2023. The balance of the Barbera is drawn from fruit purchased from Monforte’s San Sebastiano—another site Lara Rocchetti and Luisa Sala believe exceptional for this variety.

Made with a mix of whole berries and bunches, the wine fermented and matured for eight months entirely in concrete. It’s a more powerful, sensual release than last year, still perfumed and vibrant yet more textural. The wine slinks out of the glass with pure red berries, violets and brown spices before turning towards more earthy shades of liquorice and woody herbs. The palate has joyous purity as well as a lovely mouthwatering quality from both the powdery tannins and the variety’s bright acidity while also hinting at Lalù’s light touch in the cellar. A first-class artisanal Barbera here.

The domaine crafts two Barbara wines, both sitting at what we could call ‘the serious end’ of the Barbera spectrum. In a Bibendum setting, this means closer in style to the structured, ageworthy style of Cavallotto, rather than, say, the approachable and seductive character of Sandrone or Massolino. This wine is the more fruit-forward of the two and is drawn from the Majano vineyard in Neive, sitting at 190 metres on sandy clay. The oldest vines here have reached 50 years of age, bringing uncommon depth and vinosity. The wine was matured in stainless steel for 12 months before bottling.

This is superb; bloody and ferrous yet with lovely florals and a pure, dark cherry core. It immediately speaks as to why we love this producer. There’s depth yet great finesse and it’s loaded with character.