90/100 Superlative A true rock 'n roll wine Drink in your summer, gather your corn, Yes, star crossed in pleasure the stream flows on by, Yes, as we're sated in leisure, we watch it fly ... Time waits for no one – Wine from Jumilla and Rolling Stones lyrics from 1974... Like the Rolling Stones in 1974, this bottle is unfined and unfiltered, but still... *classic*. Head in the clouds Its head is high in the mountains of the Jumilla region in Spain. The climate creates a rich yield that’s powerful yet fresh. Its feet are firmly on the mediterranean beaches where there is a moderate climate, prod ..read more

91/100 Superlative Organic by tradition Once again, we are in the heart of the Cote du Rhone. The colourful, southern part of France where Grenache and Mourvedre grapes are at their best. Process-wise, maceration is the traditional 30 days. They then store the young wine in concrete tanks for eight months. A unique sense of place ,Domaine Saint Damien's vineyards lie at the foot of a limestone rock formation located on the ridge of the eroded Mont Ventoux. Red deep clay combined with iron shaped limestone stones sitting on the surface of the vineyard provide a unique home for the 75 year old v ..read more

Natural wine is a beautiful paradox Its name suggests wine from antiquity. It harks back to a time before unnatural wine. But, like a lot of things it’s a contemporary response to a very modern problem. That problem is the industrial complex that has arisen around the wine industry since the Second World War. The post war era and its commodification of pretty well everything has crept up and been applied to wine. Which would be fine. But getting into it more, wine and wine culture is the antithesis of the post war stack ‘em up, pile ‘em high approach. Wine celebrates variety. It revels in dive ..read more

At Altitude we're about making all wine sustainable. It feels like a mountain to climb, but to us wine will only be sustainable if it’s two things. They’re the two sides of the mountain we need to climb. First wine needs to be beautiful. It needs to be loved like no other, so people can continue to enjoy drinking as we do today. Wine also needs to be net-zero. This means holistically, from vine to glass. Every step of the way needs to be held to a carbon account. The net-zero side of the mountain We need to incorporate the whole journey, from vine to glass, in any attempt to reach net-zero win ..read more

Altitude affects wine by making it richer in taste and lower in alcohol than their lower altitude counterparts. Wine produced high in the hills not only delivers more flavour but also a sense of place. Indeed, growing vines high up, marks wines in their structures because their roots connect them deeply with their land which is reflected back inside the wine. With altitude wine, we can explore nuances, encounter different flavour profiles, discover new real wines made in the most natural way. To dive into this more you need to understand how conditions differ from the standard lower altitudes ..read more

It’s early evening, late August. The sun is shining on the other side of the valley, somewhere in Central Eastern France. Everyone is on holiday except JP. He’s a winegrower and he’s in his vineyard, on the tractor. The air is still and dry. But he’s worried about rain. Storms come quickly this time of year: ideal conditions for pests, fungi and disease. JP is doing what’s called 'preventative spraying'. He’s doing it with phytosanitary plant protection products (PPPs); chemicals to you and me. He does it because the received wisdom is spray sulphate is when the winds are down. His vines, like ..read more

It’s wine that comes from grapes grown at high altitude, that much is obvious. In Europe this tends to mean vines grown above 500m, but in other regions around the world it is much higher. The benefits of high altitude wine for you and me are a more elegant acidity, tannin and sugar structure, which contributes to ripe tannins which give super-silky texture and strength to the wine. Due to their relative inaccessibility high altitude vineyards, by necessity, tend to also adopt more sustainable practices. But beyond this, high altitude wine has always had a somewhat mythical status. Virgiles me ..read more

Cocooning: 90/100 This vineyard should not exist! These steep hilly vineyards should have died over 100 years ago. During the railway revolution in the 1870’s, the vineyard map of France was redrawn. Most difficult to produce wine, due to a harsh climate or extreme topography, all but disappeared. It was replaced by wine from south of France, where it was mass produced. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wine production was so prevalent there that over 200 wine cellars were excavated under the plateau. Some include stone stairways leading up to a hilly road known as ‘Rue des Caves,’ or ..read more

Les Vignerons Parisiens is the first and, we think, still the only urban winery in Paris. Urban wineries have become a bit of a thing recently, with the trend emerging, as you can imagine, in San Francisco. They’re not a particularly new idea and hark back to the prohibition in the US. But the timing feels right now for urban wineries. At Altitude wines, we’re all for them, as they help to reduce the carbon cost of getting wine to your door. Urban wineries also make wine more accessible to city folk like us: knowing where it was made creates a simpler connection to the bottle, cutting out the ..read more

What is sagrantino wine? Sagrantino wine comes from the sagrantino grape variety. And it’s an astounding grape variety. It’s also an interesting grape because it has no know close relatives. It has its own utterly unique branch on the wine grape family tree. Some say it was brought back from Asia by followers of St Francis in the 14th Century, although its origins are not 100% clear. It matures late and it has excellent ageing potential due to its high levels of polyphenol. Other grape varieties are high in polyphenol include Cabernet Sauvignon or Nebbiolo. The grapes themselves tend to be sph ..read more