Sometimes you want classique. Around the shop lots of us have fun pronouncing words in ways that are probably obnoxious to everyone else, but anyway, sometimes you want classique. But not too classique—that wouldn’t really be our vibe. When you’re feeling that way, sometimes you want to drink wine: enter the subtly classique not so classique wines from Julien Altaber.  Julien started making wine over a decade ago, working in the cellar of the storied Domaine Derain in Saint Aubin in Burgundy’s Côte de Beaune. Derain has been the central figure in the biodynamic movement in Southern Burgu ..read more

Davide Gentile and Marco Guiliani grow up as friends in Abruzzo. After going away to university, they returned home and rekindled their friendship over their shared love of wine. They started by going to wine festivals such as VinItaly, the biggest in Italy, but quickly became bored of the wines, which all tasted the same and failed to provoke any kind of positive emotion. One year they happened upon a natural wine tasting not too far away, and everything changed. Davide and Marco were immediately impressed with the unfamiliar wine because of the vast variety of ..read more

Clos des Vignes du Maynes is located in the southwestern corner of Burgundy, only a few miles from the infamous slopes of the Cote d’Or, but worlds away from the moneyed domaines that populate the monocultural strip of landscape stretching from Chambertin to Montrachet. However, this is not a case of a young upstart natural winemaker disrupting the conventional tradition of the region. Rather, Julien Guillot, the current steward of the Clos, has mapped out an alternative history for his domaine, which carries on the illustrious traditions of ecological farming, ancestral herbal treatments and ..read more

thumbnail photo by Yohanne Lamoulère I’ve always been fascinated by the name, "Clos du Tue-Boeuf," which literally translates to “the enclosure of the cow-killing,” because of the jarring contrast between the violent act described by the domaine’s name and the friendly, at times ethereal, sensibility of the wines. The iconic label—a primitive painting of a flying cow, obscure and hazily totemic—has been for me an imaginary portal to a world where the rites of sacrifice intimately connected the daily work of self-preservation with nascent acts of aesthetic production, when humans began to first ..read more

Whenever the Momento Mori wines come in I’m instantly taken back to my earliest experiences with natural wine. This sort of pure enthusiasm, nothing but newness all around. Not that these wines were necessarily my entry point, but they hold a very particular energy and freshness that feels sort of transporting in a way, so I look forward to them for the little trip they bring. Dane Johns, like many of us here, spent time working in coffee before finding a home in wine and he talks about how that helped him build a palate for balance (which is not exactly identical to the diversey wine-coffee ..read more

Idyllically located in the romantic city of Signangi, perched atop a hill in the heart of the city center, is John Okro's tiny restaurant and winery. This charming spot looks out over the sublime Caucasus Mountains and the rolling Kakhetian farmland below. Since 2004, John has been vinifying natural wines in clay qvevri right in the center of town. In 2009, John opened his restaurant just next door, where he serves classic Kakhetian dishes, such as fresh tomato salads with sunflower oil and pork grilled over grape vines, all of which are paired with his ..read more

Photo from importer ZRS Wines. Come across your passport and need to dust it? Yeah, that is a real feeling. Two Sous La Végétal bottles would be lovely companions to a beachy morning day dream. Laced with white flowers blooming from all around the equator of every shape and size, these 2018 bottlings are relaxed and ready to go. From gloriously ripe grapes growing on the Greek Island of Samos in the Aegean Sea, Jason Ligas and Patrick Bouju compose the Muscat to hum your stress away. While the name Patrick Bouju might not ring any bells, I am sure the wine Festejar! will. With its light heart ..read more

The inspiring projects of Les Lunes and Populis were started in 2014 by four UC Davis grads: Shaunt Oungoulian, Diego Roig, Sam Baron, and Martha Stoumen.  Before long, Sam and Martha split off to start their own projects, but Shaunt and Diego have continued with their venture and continue to make delectable wines under one simple principle – good wine is made in the vineyard.   The dynamic duo spends most of their time in their leased vineyards, employing proper ecological farming techniques to preserve the indigenous microbes on the grapes from their natur ..read more

I know almost nothing about sake. I’ve been to the sake tastings, have listened to the sake importers, have read the sake introductions, and have taken occasional notes on various bottles over the years; but the details about polishing rates, rice varieties, the mineral content of water and the concept of “dryness” never really added up for me. Partially it’s the language, of course. But I also just couldn’t wrap my ahead around a process that seemed to depend so consistently on added yeast: even the most unfiltered and full-bodied sakes were too clean and polished for me to get excited about ..read more

To write about the Mattioli family and Collecapretta is a tricky task for me. These are some of my favorite wines in the world, but whenever I describe them to people there’s always the sense that the details about the project never fully contain their emotionalized history. Even the Mattioli themselves seem to lack the vocabulary for their own life’s work in context. They are nonetheless extremely proud of their craft and produce a range of quietly joyous wines from a noble Umbrian heritage, the culmination of a family vinekeeping legacy that dates back centuries, now being put in the hands ..read more