Staff PIcks 2024

STAFF PICKS 2024 - GAB POY

This is the perfect wine to pair with cheese after lunch. In fact this year I'm keeping the menu so simple that I've replaced a meat course for a spread of cheese and this beauty. It's a sweet wine but not unctuously so.

A heady mix of honeysuckle, quince blossom and sweetly spiced oranges leads into a sweet and vibrant core tinged with saffron and minerally tones. It bursts onto the palate with great vibrancy and signs off with some please bitter marmalade-like phenolics. With seven years under its belt, its honeyed texture glides across the palate; the perfect wine to serve with cheese. GAB

Ronchi di Cialla is a small family led winery in the pristine valley of Ciall in Friuli. Prized for its biodiversity and unique insects, it's a paradise for life and living.

Wonderfully exotic yet incredibly fresh, the 2017 Verduzzo lifts from the glass with a bouquet of exotic florals, young peach and green melon. This opens with a balanced inner sweetness complicated by salty minerals giving way to tropical citrus and ripe orchard fruits, as confectionary spices cascade throughout. The 2017 finishes vibrant and clean, leaving the palate perfectly reset for another indulgent sip. I would never guess that this finishes at 30 grams of residual sugar per liter. The harmony within is something to behold. Eric Guido, Vinous

STAFF PICKS 2024 - MICHAEL MCNAMARA

This is Yeringberg at its best - medium weighted but with fruit and touches of oak seasoning persistent and pulsing through the body of the wine. Nothing is overstated but you never feel like anything is missing either, such wonderful balance. An Aussie icon that shows where less intervention and artiface delivers so much more. MICHAEL MCNAMARA

A blend of 58/14/14/9/5% cabernet sauvignon/cabernet franc/merlot/petit verdot/malbec. Matured 20 months in French barriques (35% new). Bright crimson purple. From a great year, this is a beautifully fragrant and seductive Yeringberg with its aromas of blackcurrants, blueberries, cherry blossom, violets and just the right amount of oak-derived cedar and pencil-shaving scents. The epitome of medium bodied, it's elegant, discreet and persistent on the palate, even at this early juncture. Equally important, the fruit is perfectly framed by the wine's fine-grained and silky tannins and, as has been demonstrated on many occasions, this will mature slowly and gracefully. 98 PHILIP RICH, wine companion

STAFF PICKS 2024 - SARA TORRES

When you open a bottle of Domaine du Tunnel you know that you are opening the door of the purity and terroir. Cornas 2022 is delicate, with lighter body than other producers from the area but with all the intensity and complexity. On the palate is delicate, full of blueberries, graphite, raw meet and spices. If you close your eyes, you can see a purple and velvet cake in a glass of wine. Simply delicious. SARA TORRES

The 2022 Cornas brings another level of density and depth, and while tasting it, you feel like you're eating a raw piece of meat given its bloody, meaty, profile. Dense purple-hued, with notes of blueberries, roasted herbs, iron, and ground pepper, this beauty is full-bodied, has a silky, layered mouthfeel, fine tannins, and a great finish. It's a big, powerful Cornas, yet it still shows the focused style of the vintage beautifully. (96) JEB DUNNUCK

A well-balanced, velvety and well-rounded Cornas with aromas of wild berries, wild herbs and baking spices. It's medium-bodied with fine tannins. Balanced with a seductive core of succulent berries and a well-integrated structure of tannins on the palate. Focused and vivid, with some more peppercorns toward the finish. Try after 2026. JAMES SUCKLING

STAFF PICKS 2024 - RICH

Gewurtztraminer can be often misunderstood with low quality examples from the and 80's and 90's still in the minds and on the palates. This is a great wine to help change that mindset. Floral notes with honeysuckle leap from the glass with a hint of white pepper and the traditional spiciness. Due to an drier than normal vintage the alcohol is lower than usual and coming in at less than 1g residual sugar, there is a mineral freshness not often seen from this varietal. The palate follows the nose but brings in elements of stone fruit and sweet spice. If you haven't had a Gewurtztraminer in a hot minute, this is perfect. RICH

Hard as it may be to believe, this gewurz has stacks of yellow rose and star fruit aromas, but is only medium-bodied and tastes so bright. The interplay of the acidity and the exciting touches of tannin and bitterness drive the long, bone-dry finish. Just 12.6% alcohol. From biodynamically grown grapes. Drink now. STUART PIGOTT, jamessuckling.com

Name a better sound than that of a champagne cork popping from a bottle in a bustling wine bar or merry restaurant! That's why at Bellota,  the Lilbert-Fils NV Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Extra Brut was a natural choice for us to pour by the glass. Bursting with aromas of crunchy green apple, fresh citrus and white flowers matched with a lovely zippy tension on the palate and a crisp clean finish this is the go to champagne for this Holiday Season. Perfectly suited to long sunny afternoons on Bank Street paired with Moonlight Flat Oysters and a delicious morsel or two prepared by Chef Nicky. See you soon for a glass or three...or even a bottle! TIFF & ALASTAIR

Lilbert-Fils is a small, slightly under-the-radar grower in Cramant with a loyal following, and it's easy to see why. With 50% of the blend for the first wine of the house coming from a perpetual reserve of Cramant Chardonnay started in the 1990s by Bertrand Lilbert's father, this is an entry level that is anything but simple and youthful. The style is rather floral, with apricot and jasmine notes floating over a real hit of savour from the reserve and a bone dry, mineral presence. It's singular, yet harmonious; a blanc de blancs that takes care of the simple pleasures, yet hides rather a lot under the bonnet. TOM HEWSON, decanter.com

The wine delivers a refined, youthful aromatic constellation of pear, apple, limestone minerality, bread dough, white flowers and incipient smokiness in the upper register. On the palate the wine is bright, full-bodied and still quite youthful, with a fine core of fruit, very good soil signature, brisk acids, frothy mousse and a long, nascently complex and very nicely balanced finish. This is a lovely bottle of Blanc de Blancs, which could do with a year or two of cellaring to let it emerge more fully from behind its lovely girdle of acidity. Good juice. JOHN GILMAN

Hailing from the villages of Cramant (60%), Chouilly (30%) and Oiry, and based on the incisive 2021 vintage, complemented by 50% of a perpetual blend initiated in the 1980s, Lilbert's latest NV Extra Brut Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs was disgorged in May 2024 with a dosage of three grams per liter. Unfurling from the glass with aromas of crisp green apple, fresh citrus fruit and white flowers, it is medium-bodied and has a tensile personality, laden with bright acids and concluding with sapid finish. It will be even better in about three years and will offer a broad drinking window. As with all the wines in Lilbert's cellar, it is vinified in tank. KRISTAPS KARKLINS

STAFF PICKS 2024 - MYLES THOMSON

Dry or Trocken style Rieslings from the Mosel don't get as much attention as the sweeter versions do and that is a shame. If this wine is anything to go by, I hope they are making bucket-loads more because this really floats my boat. It's all about fresh diced pear, green apple, a touch of peach and ripe citrus throughout. The palate sings with pure fruits, lemon drop and crushed white rock. Its finely shaped, zipping along buoyed by crystalline acidity that pierces the gently sweet fruits. It feels so full of life, bouncy and fresh. Love the purity of it all finishing emphatically dry but with plenty to keep you going back for more. I love the sweet stuff too, don't get me wrong, but this I could drink all day long. MYLES