Did Benjamin Franklin really say, “In all your amours, prefer old women to young ones”? That’s what Stephen Vizinczey suggests in the opening of In Praise of Older Women, where he argues that “modern culture—American culture—glorifies the young; on the lost continent of old Europe it was the affair of the young man and his older mistress that had the glamour of perfection.”

Substitute mistress with white wine, and you’ll have the point of this essay. And, of course, I want to pique everyone’s interest in the merits of older white wines. I suspect, however, that the more experienced among us already know the pleasures they offer, while the younger ones have yet to discover them.

It turns out that white wines would very much like us to believe they can age gracefully. Well, I say white wines, but what I really mean is the Italian wine consortiums and the like. Their job is to convince people like me, who in turn try to convince people like you, that mature white wines can offer the kind of pleasure to the discerning collector that was once thought to be the exclusive preserve of structured reds.

This charm offensive has meant that, over the past three years, I’ve been invited to a number of events designed to showcase the aging potential of Gavi, tocai friulano, sauvignon blanc and, most recently, Lugana. As a result, I’ve tasted some truly fabulous older white wines—sometimes in even more fabulous locations, lucky me!—and had the chance to reflect on why so many white wines capable of aging remain wines we almost always drink young.

The premise of every event has been the same: people usually drink Lugana/Gavi /sauvignon blanc…while they’re young. But here are some older bottles. Aren’t they great?

And the premise holds true not only for wines with a reputation for being easy-drinking whites, such as Lugana, but also for wines with an established reputation for longevity, such as top white Burgundy. Octavian Wine, one of the world’s leading bonded fine wine storage providers, with more than £2 billion worth of wine under management, shared some striking data when I asked: What is the average age of a wine when it leaves your warehouse and is delivered to a customer’s home address (presumably to be drunk)?

Of course, Octavian caters to collectors, and the wines stored there are, by definition, collectible. Yet even in this setting, the contrast between white and red wines is striking. The overwhelming majority (78 percent) of white wines shipped to customers came from the previous six vintages, whereas only 40 percent of red wines fell into the same age bracket, with the remainder distributed much more evenly across older vintages. At the other end of the spectrum, just 2.5 percent of white wines delivered were more than 20 years old, compared with 10 percent of reds. In other words, even among serious collectors, white wines are consumed far earlier than reds.

So, can we say that white wines have a reputation problem? (Isn’t it a bit like the old belief that men get better with age, while women, well… they don’t?) Could part of it still be a legacy of the premature oxidation (“premox”) crisis that emerged in white Burgundy in the early 2000s?

The problem known as “premox”—the imperfectly understood phenomenon of white Burgundies aging far more quickly than they should, with some bottles becoming completely oxidized—began to emerge in wines from the 1995 vintage and affected many wines produced through the mid-2000s. Even great Puligny-Montrachet and Meursault, including bottles from some of Burgundy’s finest producers, were not spared. It spread through the region like the plague. Corks, sulphur dioxide, and a host of other factors were blamed. Yet, despite years of research, there is still no consensus on what caused the problem in the first place—or, perhaps more intriguingly, why it seems to have largely disappeared.

While that may well have scared collectors into favoring younger Burgundies, I’d argue that—particularly in Italy—we’re dealing with something different, something more of a chicken-and-egg problem. Italian producers tend to rush their white wines to market rather than holding back stocks for later release. As a result, consumers rarely encounter mature bottles, very few people are systematically tasting mature vintages, and there is little opportunity to build confidence in how these wines age. When invited on press trips producers pour superb older vintages, and in most cases they come from the family’s personal cellar, giving critics the chance to experience and write about just how well some of these wines can evolve, but only anecdotally rather than in any systematic way. These wines almost never reach the market, they exist as demonstrations rather than products. While critics may leave convinced, consumers remain unconvinced because without those experiences, confidence in the wines’ longevity never becomes firmly established.

This, I think, is the heart of the issue. A wine’s ability to age and its reputation for aging are two different things.

The first is determined by the wine itself—its acidity, concentration and balance. On this front, research is advancing along two complementary lines.

One seeks to establish whether a grape variety possesses intrinsic aging potential by identifying its reservoir of aroma precursors and understanding how these evolve over time—whether they generate new layers of complexity during ageing or simply fade as the wine oxidizes. For example, the team at the University of Verona, led by Professor Maurizio Ugliano, has been mapping the volatile compounds and aroma precursors of dozens of Italian grape varieties (including turbiana, the grape of Lugana) to understand how each develops its own distinctive aromatic signature with age.

The other line of research seeks to answer a more practical question: what do producers need to do in the vineyard and the winery to craft wines that age well? While Chardonnay’s capacity for aging is well established, the Burgundy Wine Board (BIVB), perhaps prompted by the lingering shadow of the premox crisis, sponsored a six-year study (VOLTA) to investigate how vineyard and winemaking practices influence the longevity of white Burgundy. The study concluded that much of a wine’s ageing potential is built during pressing and élevage, rather than being determined by the grape variety alone.

Yet aging potential alone is not enough to create a reputation for longevity. That reputation is built by the market. A region only earns a reputation for longevity when producers keep back stock, critics regularly taste mature vintages (as they do with features such as “Bordeaux 10 Years On”) merchants sell them and consumers learn what those wines become with time. Without that ecosystem, even genuinely age-worthy wines continue to be treated as wines to drink young.

Only two of the Lugana producers I visited in my recent press trip hold back stock. And even then, the quantities they retain don’t seem sufficient to create a meaningful secondary market or establish a culture of drinking mature vintages. There is, of course, an obvious reason for this. Holding back wine requires producers to sacrifice current cash flow while investing in additional storage capacity—whether barrels, tanks or bottle aging—in the hope of selling the wine later at a higher price. I recently tried to estimate what aging actually costs a producer (calculations from Credible Signals):

A good barrique costs around €1,000 and can be used new or seasoned. Assume it’s used once: after losses you get 200 liters of wine, so the barrel cost is €5 per liter. Labour and electricity add €0.40 per liter. Storage costs €6 per month per barrique — about €0.40 per liter per year. Financing adds another €0.30 per liter if you borrow at 5% on €5.80 (barrel + handling + storage). That’s roughly €6 per liter, or €4.50 per bottle. If you use the barrique three times, the additional cost drops below €2 per bottle.

Bottle aging is cheaper but still significant. Storage might cost €6 per month per pallet (600 bottles), or €0.12 per bottle per year. The real cost is the so-called opportunity cost: if a wine could sell now for €10 but doesn’t, the producer must finance that cash flow, adding roughly €0.50 per bottle in interest. The total cost for an extra year in bottle is around €0.62 per bottle.

Depending on the aging method, every extra year can cost a producer anywhere from around $0.77 to $5.14 per bottle before any additional profit is realized. Building a reputation for longevity requires producers to sacrifice that cash flow in exchange for uncertain future returns.

For collectors, however, that scarcity creates an unusual opportunity. Because relatively few mature white wines reach the market, the category remains underdeveloped. Prices often reflect how these wines are consumed rather than how well they actually perform with age.

I realize this may sound a little far-fetched, but indulge me for a moment. Imagine collecting Meursault in the 1970s or 1980s. On a recent trip to Burgundy, the president of the Comité Bourgogne told me that many Meursault producers in those days barely made ends meet because the wines simply weren’t in fashion. (I can’t help wondering whether the dominance of Robert Parker’s Bordeaux-centric era played some part in that...) Those who bought and cellared Meursault back then weren’t following trends but instead investing in something before the rest of the market caught on. Looking back today, it’s hard not to envy them. They were able to buy extraordinary wines at prices that seem unimaginable now.

I’m not predicting that Lugana, Gavi, or Soave will become the next Meursault. That’s beside the point. Every great collecting category was once obscure. The excitement of collecting lies in the possibility of discovering tomorrow’s classics before everyone else does. Mature Italian white wines feel like one of those rare corners of the wine world where there is still genuine room for exploration.

Unlike Bordeaux or Burgundy, where decades of criticism have established fairly clear hierarchies, many Italian white wines remain largely unexplored territory. We don’t yet know which producers will prove the most age-worthy, which vintages will shine brightest or which wines will ultimately define their regions. We simply don’t have enough evidence yet. And perhaps that’s precisely what makes this journey so fun. The reality is that many producers themselves are still discovering the ageing potential of their own wines.

But things are turning. From tasting a number of Lugana, I can say that some are genuinely age-worthy and compelling, while others are less convincing. In some of the less successful examples, the oak dominates, overwhelming rather than complementing the grape’s delicate aromatics. More broadly, I think Lugana—and some other emerging fine wine regions—is still searching for its signature style. By that, I mean that producers are still working out which winemaking techniques best express the region and its native grape. The balance between oak, lees aging, texture, freshness and fruit purity has yet to reach the level of consensus and refinement seen in more established fine wine regions.

That impression was echoed by Davide Slaghenaufi, an oenologist and biotechnologist at the University of Verona, where he is part of the team studying the aging potential of turbiana in Lugana. Having also trained in Bordeaux under Denis Dubourdieu, he believes that Italian producers, particularly when working with the country’s many indigenous grape varieties, still have much to learn about the use of oak from their French counterparts.

Yet the progress already made is remarkable. Some producers have demonstrated just how extraordinary mature Lugana can become. Zenato’s Lugana Riserva ‘Sergio Zenato’ 2005 was one of the finest mature white wines I tasted on these trips, offering a glimpse of what the region is capable of when terroir, viticulture and winemaking come together.

Elsewhere, there are producers trying to build a reputation for age-worthy white wines almost single-handedly. Villa Bogdano, for example, is championing the little-known Lison DOCG, investing in research, innovation and a deeper understanding of tocai friulano, despite the financial incentives that often favour uprooting old vineyards rather than preserving them. Changing perceptions of an obscure appellation is a slow and expensive undertaking.

That may sound like a limitation, but I increasingly see it as an opportunity. Collectors often dream of discovering great wines before everyone else does and that’s why mature Italian white wines are exciting.

They are not a finished story. They are a story still being written.

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Of course, Jason was the jerk as usual, the “wine snob.”

I was at my friend Rachel’s beach house for a happy hour, and I’d been tasked with uncorking the next wine. I opened the fridge to grab the Ampeleia ‘Unlitro Bianco’ I’d brought, and I saw it: the bottle of Chloe chardonnay with the cute bow on the label. Rachel and I have a long-standing joke about her love of buttery Josh chardonnay, and so I shouted to her: “Chloe? Wtf is this? Is this Josh’s age-gap girlfriend?”

But Rachel had not bought the Chloe, some other guest had, and this person heard my dig and immediately got defensive. “You know, Jason, I never know what to bring if you’re at the party,” she said.

I felt bad. In shaming the bringer of the Chloe, I had violated one of the central tenets of contemporary wine culture: the doctrine of “drink what you like,” the idea that any bottle anyone is enjoying is a net positive for Wine. The “drink what you like” ethos, as it’s come to be practiced on social media and in social settings, vilifies any judgement about one wine being higher quality than another, dismissing that judgement as “snobbery.”

Of all the cultural pursuits, wine is the one that most easily gets derailed by accusations of “snobbery.” Wine people are so afraid of being called snobs that they’re always twisting themselves into pretzels. “Drink what you like!” they exclaim, with fake smiles.

In a world of “drink what you like,” one must remain always positive. Even if one wants to advocate for certain wines—made the right way, sustainably, from high-quality artisan producers—one must do so gently. One is discouraged and disincentivized from ever talking bad about the big, ubiquitous brands, regardless of whether or not they are sourced from cheap bulk wine, grown with questionable agricultural practices, or made with manipulation and additives. At least not publicly. To do so is to be seen, at best, a killjoy curmudgeon, and at worst, an enemy of the wine industry.

Yet the fact is, the market is flooded with so many poor-quality, branded wines with little transparency. For the most part, we have no clue what is inside the bottle, how it was grown, if anything was added. They leave us wondering how a wine made in California can cost between $11 and $13—the exact price range which is cratering in sales, and is the locus of the wine crisis. Bottles like these demand some critical thinking and questioning on their role in the demise of wine, not a free pass on the back of “drink what you like.”

A few days after my happy-hour faux pas, I found myself in Florida at a busy, popular beach restaurant—the kind of place that’s in every beach resort and is likely a good customer of Sysco. The wine list had 23 still wines. Those wines were: Seaglass Pinot Grigio, Ferrari Carano Pinot Grigio, Unshackled by The Prisoner Chardonnay, Seaglass Chardonnay, The Calling Chardonnay, Jordan Chardonnay, Far Niente Chardonnay, Seaglass Sauvignon Blanc, Silverado Sauvignon Blanc, Crossings Sauvignon Blanc, Hampton Water rosé, Studio by Miraval rosé, Seaglass Pinot Noir, Meiomi Pinot Noir, Belle Glos Pinot Noir, Four Graces Pinot Noir, Seaglass Cabernet Sauvignon, Joel Gott Cabernet Sauvignon, Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon, Austin Hope Cabernet Sauvignon, The Prisoner Red Blend. Oh, and two offerings from Caymus: a liter bottle of its Cabernet Sauvignon, and The Walking Fool red blend.

That’s a wine list possibly created by a single distributor. It’s the kind of nightmare list that would give a wine lover hives, filled with manipulated, mass-produced wines. Yet this kind of wine list can be found nearly everywhere, all across the U.S., at the sorts of popular middlebrow restaurants that everyday people frequent. In fact, this may be the only kind of wine list that most middle- and upper-middle-class Americans are exposed to. Wine selections like this are so widespread that their ubiquity creates a feedback loop. These wines aren’t popular because people seek them out. They’re popular because, in most cases, it’s the only thing available. To someone who’s only ever been exposed to this kind of wine—at an artificially low price—how can you even suggest a better-made alternative?

This is why the anti-snob “drink what you like” message not only fails, but ends up unequally promoting bad mass-market wines, protecting them from any kind of qualitative comparison with better wines. These mass-market wines are so ever-present and over-available that they’ve superseded even the average consumer’s own personal taste.

But that omnipresence is not by accident. It’s the result of careful business decisions by corporate wineries and their distributors. To explore this further, I’m bringing contributor Caroline Lamb into this piece. Caroline has worked in wine distribution, and her experience includes years selling mass-market wines for a big distributor—before reclaiming her power for good.

Caroline: The View From Inside Distribution

Despite the seemingly endless array of wine choices available in the United States—more than 115,000 new labels are approved by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau every year—it’s all an illusion of choice. What mostly you get are store shelves and wine lists with selections from only a handful of corporate wineries.

This is no different than the chain restaurant with a 15-page food menu offering hundreds of “choices” for dinner. In reality, the majority of American restaurants are reheating factory-made food supplied by Sysco, America’s largest food distributor.

Criticism of Sysco has recently gone mainstream. There are reels on Instagram and threads on Reddit with millions of views and thousand comments chronicling exactly why a corporate monopoly related to our food supply is bad and should concern anyone who eats at restaurants in America. The Sysco discourse online has us thinking it’s time to talk about the similarities in our alcohol distribution system and exactly how that leads to the pervasive mass-market wine lists that Jason mentions earlier.

According to data published by the American Association of Wine Economists in 2024, 71 percent of wine in the United States is controlled by the top 11 wine suppliers. It is safe to assume that the dominance of these top suppliers has grown in the two years since—thanks to the continued and aggressive mergers and acquisitions happening across the industry. And the consolidation doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Mark Chaplin, president of commercial sales at Southern Glazer’s, the largest alcohol distributor in the U.S., recently told The Spirits Business to expect “continued consolidation across all three tiers.”

A single company, Gallo, controlled 33 percent of all wine in the market in 2023. Since then, they have acquired major players like Rombauer (3.8 million+ bottles annually) and Hahn Family Wines (3.6 million+ bottles annually), as well as newer wineries like Massican (120,000+ bottles annually), Whiny Baby (120,000 bottles annually) and Bev canned wine (10,000+ cases annually).

Over the last twenty years, the number of independent wine distributors has fallen dramatically—from roughly 3,000 in the 1990s to just over 1,000 today. According to 2024 numbers from Shanken’s Impact Databank, the three dominant players in distribution—Breakthru, RNDC, and Southern Glazer’s—controlled 53 percent of wine and spirits distribution in America. RNDC, formerly the second-largest distributor with roughly $12.2 billion in yearly sales, is no longer a player. The company has been in a years-long tailspin and now is selling off its remaining business to a handful of distributors nationwide. Which means even greater consolidation.

Following Breakthru’s recent acquisition of RNDC’s joint ventures in Indiana and Kentucky, the company has grown into the second-largest distributor nationally, with projected revenues nearing $8.7 billion. That figure is eclipsed by Southern Glazer’s, which at $26 billion in projected revenue controls roughly a third of all distribution outright.

A whopping 81 percent of wine sold in the United States moves through just the top ten distributors—mirroring the same concentration of power we see at the supplier level. With portfolios at these large distributors comprising upward of 7,000 brands, only wineries with serious marketing budgets and a dedicated sales rep in every market get placements. Smaller wineries get completely lost in the mix.

When honest tactics fail to deliver the growth these suppliers demand, the game gets dirty. I can say that from experience. From within the business, you often hear of shady corporate suppliers offering “programming”—code for free goods—to secure coveted by-the-glass placements on restaurant menus or floor stacks in retail stores. The practice is illegal, but it’s so normalized at the distribution tier that even some small- and mid-sized distributors play along just to compete with the major players in their market.

What happens when free goods start flooding the market? Restaurateurs already running on razor-thin margins see a chance to make extra money in exchange for loyalty to one manipulative distributor. These distributors mostly sell wine manufactured to taste the same year after year, operating largely outside the normal constraints of agricultural scarcity. The public accepts this because companies like Sysco have conditioned us to forget that produce is finite and seasonal. Nothing worth putting in your body should be produced at near-infinite scale, available at any time.

Given that most suppliers mark up their wine 50 to 100 percent from production cost, most suppliers can easily absorb the cost of a free case here or there. But when suppliers give in to the pressure of the free goods game, it plants a seed: Their wine isn’t worth what they're charging for it. That cheapens the value of wine across the board and, more critically, at the ground level where taste actually gets shaped: Among the restaurant and retail buyers deciding what reaches the rest of us.

The end result is that consumers experience only a fraction of the wine available in the U.S. How could they ever drink what they like if they haven’t experienced enough wine to even know what they like?

Yet the “drink what you like,” all-wine-is-good narrative is strictly followed in the industry. That’s because no one knows who they might one day wind up working for. There is an unwritten rule when you work for a big distributor who reps the corporate suppliers: Never talk badly about another winery—even if you know their wines are shit—because next week’s acquistion by one of your corporate suppliers might leave you selling that same wine next week.

This refusal to call out any wine—or even to engage in honest critical comparison—has normalized wine lists full of questionable quality across the country.

Back to Jason: The Cheesesteak Egg Rolls of Wine

Around the turn of the 21st century, some chef in Philadelphia invented the cheesesteak egg roll—a cheeky take on Philly’s most famous food item. The cheesesteak egg roll was a fun, inventive bar snack, and you quickly started seeing them on menus all around the region. Soon enough, however, big corporate food distributors jumped on the cheesesteak egg roll and started selling pre-made, fully-cooked versions that restaurants could just reheat and serve. By now, the corporate cheesesteak egg roll is a pervasive bar menu item. Its presence signals something about the kitchen to the observant diner. I have friends who’ve become skeptical about eating at a place that has a cheesesteak egg roll on the menu.

I hope wine drinkers become equally observant and skeptical about seeing certain corporate wines on wine lists. The wine world needs to drop the “drink what you like” act and start calling out poor-quality wines that exist simply because of sheer marketing will.

Wine culture and the wine industry are not going to be saved by playing nice nor by being polite and accommodating to the big brands—big brands, to be clear, who would be more than happy if smaller artisan wineries disappeared from the face of the earth. It’s time to break out the pitchforks, folks.

In the comments below—in our Everyday Drinking safe space where “drink what you like” doesn’t apply—tell us which wines are on your personal reject list, the ones that signal to you that a wine list was written by corporate interest.

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A few weeks ago, the WSET unveiled what it’s calling a “brand refresh” and others in the trade are calling a “major rebranding exercise.” Out is the old official name, Wine & Spirit Education Trust, in favor of just the acronym. Also out is the old “wine goddess” logo, a design move that feels oddly similar to Cracker Barrel canceling the old man in its logo last year. Hoping it works out better for WSET than it did for Cracker Barrel.

In an interview with The Buyer, WSET’s chief executive Michelle Brampton said the rebranding was “more than cosmetic.” She explained the “brand evolution” as “making WSET more accessible, recognizable, and relevant to a global audience, regardless of geography, language, or drinks category.” Amid the expected corporate talk of being an “organization that inspires, connects and champions inclusion, sustainability, and innovation,” Brampton said:

“Research told us that the previous brand was trusted, which is important to maintain, but that it felt wine-focused, overly academic and formal. It wasn’t always seen as empowering or inclusive, and that’s important to us too…

Our tone and language are evolving too, we want everyone, whether a trade professional or an enthusiast, to feel they belong.

She also mentioned that the WSET pin badges were “redesigned in sustainable materials.”

What I did not see addressed was the actual education—whether the curriculum, the materials, or the cost had changed. If WSET feels it’s become too “wine-focused,” what does that mean for its wine education? More emphasis on spirits and cocktails? On beer? On sake?

Almost three years ago, I asked the question, “Is It Finally Time for a New Wine Education?” I wasn’t talking about redesigning the logo.

What I don’t understand is why wine media, professional training certifications, and wine education in general still follows the same curriculum. In every other realm of culture, the canon has been questioned and often blown up. Visual art has not been governed by The Academy for more than a century. We don’t read solely the Dead White Males in lit class anymore.

Maybe to put this in more simple pop-culture terms. I’m old enough to remember that, in the 1990s, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and their ilk were considered “alternative” rock. They were the alternative to “classic” rock like Led Zeppelin, The Who, Bad Company, Boston…whatever 1970s bands my generation was force fed on the era’s classic-rock radio. Eventually, the tide turned, and now what was once was alternative has become mainstream and old hat. I think we all understand how this happened. The same thing is happening now in wine.

To meet the current moment, I believe we need to envision what a new wine education looks like. It’s not about throwing away what’s “classic.” But it’s also about accepting that the alternative is becoming the mainstream. Part of the problem is language—what do we call these new categories? And part of the problem is curation—what of the newly popular wines are worth learning about and what’s a fad. These are questions worth trying to answer, rather than ignoring them.

Wine does not have a “knowledge gap” problem. Knowledge abounds. People can access every wine fact known to humankind at their fingertips. If they seek more education, there are more than 100,000 people holding WSET certifications. Almost 15,000 hold the DipWSET. That should be more than enough educators to spread wine knowledge throughout the land.

The answer to wine’s problem is not more knowledge. The answer is in the translation of that knowledge. Wine has a communication problem. WSET is great, knowledge is great. But we need a wine education that veers away from treating wine knowledge like an expensive, wine-themed game of Quizzo. We also need to start teaching wine educators how to actually communicate all that knowledge. I don’t believe that any of the certification organizations are teaching wine communication effectively.

Too often, the solution offered to this communication problem is to “de-mystify’ wine. Caroline Lamb addressed that a few weeks ago in her viral essay, “Gen Z to Wine: Please Stop Condescending To Us.”

I’d argue this idea that wine needs to be dumbed down is more condescending than any of the exclusivity it claims to be fighting. Embedded in the entire demystification agenda is an unspoken assumption: That young people need wine to be easier because they can’t handle complexity, aspiration, or even a simple conversation with a sommelier, that the only way to engage young people is to meet them at the bottom rather than invite them up.

I am not a WSET hater, and I say all this with love. Because here’s a fun fact: based on my surveys, more than a third of Everyday Drinking readers hold some sort of drinks certification. So, dear readers, I would like ask you: what might a new wine education look like? What is currently missing from the curriculum? What was missing from your experience? What could be improved, deleted, evolved? Let’s start this conversation.

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My friends and I let out a collective post-wedding exhale over a handful of half-drank bottles of wine, haphazard snack foods, and mismatched Airbnb glassware. We were all gathered to celebrate the marriage of our close friend Anastasia. After we drained a few liters, I spotted a clear bottle at the back of the fridge. “I know that wine,” I thought, plucking the 2018 Montesecondo ‘Tïn’ from behind the tub of guacamole.

In 2019, Anastasia and I had enjoyed this same vintage of Montesecondo ‘Tïn’ around an enormous farmhouse table, with friends, over a bowl of polenta with Tuscan kale. A skin-contact blend of trebbiano and malvasia from a small village on the northern edge of Chianti Classico, it was now, at eight years old, even better than I remembered.

Trebbiano toscano is possibly the most unremarkable white wine grape in the world, mostly cultivated to criminally high yields and produced into wines without much flavor or character. But this mature bottle of Montesecondo’s trebbiano toscano was incredible, and awakened memories of the season I spent in Tuscany. More broadly, it reminded me of the largely misunderstood and overlooked white wines of the region.

Anastasia and I worked together at Montesecondo during the 2019 harvest. We had both come to Tuscany curious to find what was below the tidal wave of bulk Chianti that we were positive was composed of equal parts cab concentrate, American oak, and Round-Up.

Montesecondo is a pioneering biodynamic winery in the village of San Casciano in Val di Pesa within the Chianti Classico DOCG, founded by Silvio Messana after taking control of his mother’s old vineyard in the 1990s. At the time, being an innovator in Tuscany meant looking back to the traditional way from the early 20th century and earlier. Silvio’s wife Catalina pushed him to find a better, more natural way to farm their land, while most neighboring vignaioli doubled down on industrialized farming and score-chasing wines to compete with the Parkerized reds of the era. Gradually, they were introduced to other contemporary biodynamic pioneers in Italy and France, and by 2003 were a fully integrated biodynamic farm, vinifying their first complete vintage with indigenous yeast in 2004. During our time there, we guided countless indigenous ferments in cement, stainless steel, clay, and wood—each its own special experiment in transparent, terroir-driven winemaking.

Though we produced wines labeled Chianti Classico DOCG, the real focus and excitement of the production lived inside the winery among the twenty-some clay tinaja (what wine lovers more commonly call amphora) crafted by Juan Padilla, Spain’s most internationally renowned artisan. This is where wines like the Tïn were macerated and fermented on their skins and seeds in the so-traditional-it’s-now-experimental way. Due to the fact that Tuscany has a weak system of white wine appellations, most of Tuscany’s cutting-edge white wines are labeled IGT—Indicazione Geografica Tipica—a catch-all geographic designation one step above table wine.

The white wines we made at Montesecondo were produced in much smaller quantities than the reds due to lower demand, which meant the process was more intimate: moving grapes to the winery in handheld bins without the high-low, filling bucket after bucket with fermented grapes and wine to carry to a small antique press that we took turns cranking until the pomace was as dry as it could get.

Many afternoons we would break up the long hot days on the crush pad with a leisurely lunch at Agriosteria del Frontoio in nearby Scandicci. This restaurant serves only hyper-local Tuscan food, most of the produce grown in their own garden, and an all Tuscan wine list spanning from the Apennines to Montalcino to the island of Giglio. Here, I discovered traditional sparkling from the aleatico grape, from the terraced vineyards on the island of Capraia, or lightly-macerated vermentino nero from the northern corner where Tuscany meets Liguria, or many other surprises and delights from the diverse range of Tuscan white wines.

The most widely planted white grape in Tuscany is trebbiano toscano. Once sanctioned for use in Chianti Classico, it was banned by the consortium in 2006. Older vines of trebbiano that have been preserved in the Chianti zone, like the 50-year-olds used in Montesecondo’s Tïn, benefit from the reduced yield and complexity that can only come from old vines. Trebbiano toscano also responds well to fermenting with its skins to produce orange wine, another way winemakers add depth and age-worthiness to the workhorse native white grape.

About 100 kilometers to the west of Chianti on the Tuscan coast, Massa-Carrara and Maremma are home to a growing number of quality white wines made from vermentino, albarola, and ansonica. It is widely accepted that these varieties thrive in proximity to the sea, where they often mirror their surroundings in a distinct salinity. In Colline Metallifere, the mineral-rich hills high above Maremma, Ampeleia is pioneering quality winegrowing in a region not historically known for agriculture. Jason has written about Ampeleia’s bianco before, a blend of trebbiano toscano, malvasia, and ansonica. They just released a bianco version of their hugely popular Unlitro to celebrate 15 years of the rosso, a bottling of vermentino, trebbiano, and malvasia picked early to preserve acidity and keep alcohol low—in line with the global trend toward lighter, lower-alcohol whites.

Malvasia grows widely across Tuscany, and like trebbiano was historically used in the blend of Chianti Classico DOCG wines. Now, it’s mostly used to make Vin Santo. Malvasia thrives at elevation or near the coast, where its tendency for producing high-alcohol wines can be more easily controlled than the valley floors. Down in the Val d’Orcia, home of Brunello di Montalcino, there are a few producers experimenting with Rhône white grapes like marsanne, roussane, and viognier. These heat-tolerant whites are finding success in the mineral rich clay soils of the valley.

Beyond the cloak of bulk Chianti, the innovations occurring at the margins of Tuscan wine are some of the most exciting happening in any legacy region right now. The diverse whites produced here offer a new path into an ancient place. As producers across Europe continue to push back against appellation regulations, often created to protect deep-pocketed players at the expense of small, natural producers, I hope more of them follow Montesecondo’s lead, putting their energy behind the lesser-known wines worth preserving.

8 Untypical Tuscan Whites To Try

These are exciting days for Tuscan whites, with a lot of experimentation going on in the lesser-known parts of Tuscany. Here are eight bottles to look for. As always, recommendations and tasting notes are for paid subscribers only. Upgrade today!

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Back in March, I spent a few wonderful days in Valle de Guadalupe in Baja, Mexico. I adore Valle de Guadalupe. It’s such a unique place and, from a travel perspective, it’s among my favorite regions to visit. A few years ago, I wrote a feature about the challenges of making wine in such a dry place for San Diego Magazine.

On my latest trip, I was on assignment for Wine Enthusiast, in an attempt to unravel the mystery of Mexican nebbiolo. You can read my article here.

One gorgeous spring day in Valle de Guadalupe, as a band played a romantic Mexican folk song, I tasted two Nebbiolos under a 450-year-old oak tree at Casa Magoni winery. Or perhaps I should say I tasted one Nebbiolo and one “Nebbiolo”—in big air quotes.

I was with the 85-year-old winemaker Camillo Magoni, who poured two different bottlings. First, his 2016 Nebbiolo Clone 34, grown from vines native to Valtellina in Italy’s Lombardy region, where Magoni was born. Next came his 2019 Nebbiolo de Baja. The difference was stark: Clone 34 had the light color, finesse, and rose and cherry notes of a young Piemontese Nebbiolo. The Nebbiolo de Baja was darker, more muscular, and more brooding. I enjoyed both, but the question was unavoidable: How were these two wines from the same grape variety?

Other Baja winemakers are more blunt about their skepticism toward the so-called Nebbiolo that grows in Baja. “Some people say that it’s Dolcetto or Lambrusco,” said Lulú Martinez Ojeda, winemaker at Bruma, one of Valle de Guadalupe’s most highly regarded producers. “All I can say is it’s not Nebbiolo. I love it, but it’s not Nebbiolo.” Martinez Ojeda says a Mexican-American sommelier in New York once asked about her wine, “So is this Nebbiolo, or is this Nebbio-cholo?”

So, if the Nebbiolo in Valle de Guadalupe is not really Nebbiolo, then what is it?

You’ll have to go to Wine Enthusiast to get the answer of that question, but suffice to say that Nebbiolo de Baja is quite different from what you’d recognize in Italian wines made from it, like Barolo or Barbaresco.

Like most up-and-coming wine regions, Valle de Guadalupe has struggled to find a signature grape. The region’s drought conditions and heat lead to a lot of experimentation, and many vineyards grow chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. Some grow very good chenin blanc. Some believe Rhône varieties like mourvèdre and grenache do best. Others veer toward Spanish varieties like tempranillo. Others still insist on Italian grapes like sangiovese, montepulciano, and aglianico.

But for now, the signature grape in Valle de Guadalupe is nebbiolo. Or “nebbiolo” as the case may be.

My Travel Recs for Valle de Guadalupe

If you’ve never been, I strongly recommend that you make a wine and food journey to this part of Mexico. Valle de Guadalupe stretches northeast from the Baja coast, near Ensenada, less than two hours’ drive from San Diego. It’s a perfect two-to-three day trip.

Taste: If you have a couple of days, prioritize these wineries: Bruma, Casa Magoni, Lechuza, Solar Fortún, Bodegas Henri Lurton, Madera 5, and Viñas de le Erre. Also, check out Baja Divina (right next to Finca Altozano) a wine shop with a good selection of smaller production wines curated by sommelier Lauren Plascencia.

Drink: Have you ever sipped natural wine in a bar shaped like a head of garlic? Well, you can and you should at a wine bar called Bloodlust.

Eat: Seafood fresh from the nearby coast is generally a can’t-miss in Valle de Guadalupe. Dinner at Fauna (#17 among Latin America’s 50 Best restaurants), overlooking Bruma’s vineyards, is a must-do. Chef David Castro Hussong’s menu is always changing, and this video shows what I ate on my last visit:

At Javier Plascencia’s mainstay Finca Altozano, there was a fabulous lunch of bluefin tosada and lamb birria. Javier Plascencia’s flagship restaurant, the Michelin-starred Animalón, is a more modern take on Mexican wine country cooking, with more international fare of foie gras, sea urchin, lobster ravioli, or perhaps beer-braised barbacoa, wrapped in a banana leaf, steamed and smoked in a pig's bladder, and served tableside—dramatically, under a 200-year-old oak tree.

Wineries such as Casa Magoni and Solar Fortún are nice spots for casual al fresco lunches. In my Wine Enthusiast piece, I already talked about Casa Magoni’s lovely courtyard, tasting and eating under a 450-year-old oak tree. I’ve also really enjoyed the marlin tacos and salpicón de pulpo while tasting wines at Solar Fortún.

Stay: If you can afford it, stay at Bruma winery’s exclusive and beautiful resort. Even more exclusive is the six-room Hotel Partana. For a more budget option, I’ve also enjoyed Casa Entrevez at a fraction of the price.

Related Nebbiolo Content on Everyday Drinking

When you first hear about the scandal, it’s like something out of a Wes Anderson movie: the Lutzmannsburg Alte Reben—a blaufränkisch from century-old vines, hailed by critics as a masterpiece, the greatest Burgenland wine of all time, awarded 100 points—has been rejected by the official Austrian wine tasting panel as faulty, and must now be relabelled and sold as mere table wine. At a press conference during Austria’s premier wine salon in Vienna, two grown men engage in a shouting match. Insiders question the motives behind the tasting panel and call the Austrian wine law “bankrupt.” A shadowy article appears in a trade magazine accusing the winemaker and critic of conspiring to orchestrate a PR stunt. Both the winemaker and the critic make Instagram videos threatening legal action.

My colleague Simon Woolf has posted an excellent account of the kerfluffle over the Lutzmannsburg Alte Reben at The Morning Claret.

The Morning Claret

Austria's Wine Law is Bankrupt

Visitors to VieVinum - Austria’s most prestigious wine fair, held last weekend in Vienna - were expecting three days of deliciousness and conviviality. The sight of two grown men shouting at each other during a press conference was not supposed to be on the agenda…

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2 months ago · 32 likes · 16 comments · Simon J Woolf

The wine in question, the 2023 vintage of Lutzmannsburg Alte Reben, was made by Roland Velich of Moric, perhaps Burgenland’s most famed winemaker. It is, without doubt, among Austria’s greatest red wines, from 80- to 100-year-old vines, a wine that can stand next to top reds all over the world. I profiled Velich and his wines in my book Godforsaken Grapes, as well as here at Everyday Drinking.

In that article, I reviewed the 2021 Moric Alte Reben Lutzmannsburg, calling it:

“Fragrant, perfumed nose of wild herb, cherry, wet stone, a hint of smoke. On the palate, it’s bright and crunchy, but refined, elegant, and complex, with lots of fresh red fruit, hints of licorice and tobacco, profound at the midpalate and a long, long finish. Deep and earthy, it’s like picking berries in beautiful, ancient forest after a heavy rain. An incredible wine.” (Yes, like all wine writers, I can be over-the-top sometimes.)

In any case, the idea that this wine could be “faulty” or “flawed” is ludicrous. According to Woolf, Roland Velich had good reason to be angry at the official tasting panel ruling, and suggested a wider conspiracy:

In particular, [Velich] outlined how growers who work with minimal intervention—spontaneous fermentation, no additives or corrections, no filtering or clarification—are regularly penalized for making wines that are supposedly “not typical.”

Anyone who covers Austrian wine knows that the official tasting panel regularly penalizes natural winemakers like Christian Tschida, Claus Preisinger, Franz Weninger, and others. Woolf says:

As I wrote in 2024, countless low-intervention winemakers have abandoned the quality wine system, instead declassifying their entire output to table wine, and accepting that they cannot mention geographic terms on the label. Growers usually make this choice after their wines are repeatedly refused the prüfnummer [the official certification to be labelled a quality wine]. The usual reasons given by tasting panels are that the wines are cloudy or hazy, they are not typical of the stated variety or region, or that they display a fault such as volatile acidity.

In response to the scandal, Rudolf Schmid, head of wine at the Austrian Ministry of Agriculture, poured gasoline on the fire, accusing Velich of gaming the critic’s 100-point score purely for marketing purposes. This, according to Woolf, made no sense:

Lutzmannsburg Alte Reben 2023 first made the headlines in late September 2025, shortly after wine critic Stuart Pigott—at that time employed by JamesSuckling.com - tasted and rated the wine with a perfect 100 points. Others also praised the wine. Falstaff’s Peter Moser scored it 99 points in November 2025…Velich bottled the wine on 4th September 2025, and made it available for critics to taste shortly after. He had every expectation that it would receive its prüfnummer—its passport to be labelled a quality wine from Mittelburgenland—as it had for the previous two decades. He submitted the wine to the tasting panel twice, first on 26th November 2025 and then again at the end of January 2026. It was rejected both times.

For me, the strangest part of the controversy is the two video statements posted on Instagram by Pigott, the critic who scored the wine 100 points—the second reel to vehemently deny that he is part of a “conspiracy.”

Woolf’s blunt assessment of the Lutzmannsburg Alte Reben fiasco: “There is little doubt that the system is broken.”

While I agree with Woolf, I believe the issue is even bigger and wider than that. Because this Austrian wine controversy is really about two broken, bankrupt systems colliding at the same moment: One the one hand, a quasi-fascist, judge-jury-and-executioner, self-important tasting panel; on the other hand, the gatekeeping, bullshitting, self-important business of scoring wines on a 100-point scale.

I mean, let’s be super honest here. In this controversy, we’re basically asked to take sides about who’s right: an imperious tasting panel’s ruling of “faulty wine” or a gatekeeping wine critic’s rating of 100 points. That’s a pretty cringe choice, if you ask me. After all, a $150 wine rated 100 points by JamesSuckling.com is a wine that’s going to be so heavily allocated that you will likely never taste it. If you’re taking the side of the wine critic, please take a moment to watch a video of that critic’s employer explaining how he rates on a 100-point scale:

As we all know, we are living in a nightmare era of conspiracy. Whether it’s the social media algorithms manipulating our consumer decisions, technofascists forcing AI down our throats, the Epstein files, the purging of January 6th by the Department of Justice, or PACs with questionable intent spending millions in our local elections, people are finally starting to question the broader, darker forces at play in their everyday lives. Most of us come to wine and spirits to escape all this.

But alas, as we’ve talked about many times here in this newsletter, the forces that influence what we drink are just as pervasive as in the rest of our lives. The only solution, as always, is to distrust the institutions—all of them, both “official” and self appointed—hell-bent on defining taste and quality for you. The first step in rejecting established hierarchy, arbitrary ratings and rankings, and received knowledge is independent tasting and thinking. Since you’ve read all the way to the end of this post, I believe you know where to find that.

Related Conspiracy Content on Everyday Drinking

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There’s a well-known anecdote in France about how Henri IV, the first Bourbon king, was baptized in 1554 in the city of Pau with a clove of garlic and a few drops of the local sweet Jurançon wine rubbed on his lips.

I read this story en route to Southwest France this winter, and as I walked past the castle in Pau where the future king was christened, I found myself wondering what that baptismal wine must have tasted like, and what 16th-century drinkers would think of the region’s wines today. That’s because Jurançon is swiftly moving past its traditional reputation for sweet wines.

A growing number of independent winemakers—many farming organically or biodynamically and working with minimal intervention in the cellar—have turned their focus to dry wines. At their best, these wines can rival Loire chenin or white wines from the Jura for their tension, texture, sapidity, aging potential, and ability to express terroir. Jurançon is still an important sweet wine region, of course, but it’s also the source of some of France’s most compelling dry white wines.

The success of Jurançon wines, both dry and sweet, is thanks to the dynamic between its two most-planted grape varieties, petit manseng and gros manseng. These native grapes are well-adapted to the climate: Jurançon is one of the wettest wine regions in France, warm and humid, with up to 1200 millimeters of rainfall every year, but these grapes have thick skins resistant to botrytis and fungal disease.

Petit manseng, the offspring of savagnin and a sibling of chenin blanc, tends to dominate blends for sweet wines, as it can accumulate high sugar (and thus alcohol), but retains searing acidity. Gros manseng, meanwhile, is typically the majority in blends for dry wines. It’s less aromatic and intense, but it keeps the alcohol content of the dry wines in check. The two varieties complement and balance each other in this way between the two styles. (Despite the name, there’s some doubt as to whether petit manseng is closely related, if at all, to gros manseng.)

Petit manseng and gros manseng are grown mostly on Jurançon’s poudingues soil, or puddingstone, a fast-draining conglomerate that defines the majority of the region. “Petit manseng matures on the poudingues at 15 and a half percent alcohol,” explained winemaker Jean-Marc Grussaute of Camin Larredya. “And it can go up to 16, 17, 18, very easily, very quickly.”

Grussaute is among the earliest independent winemakers in Jurançon and has raised the profile of its dry wines. A former professional rugby player, Grussaute took over his family’s domaine in 1988 and converted the vines to organics and then biodynamics. He now farms a little more than 12 hectares across three different terroirs: poudingues, limestone, and alluvial gravel.

About 75 percent of his production is dry wine, labeled Jurançon Sec. It’s one of three different designations that can appear on the label of an appellation wine in Jurançon: the other two are Jurançon (sweet) or Jurançon Vendanges Tardives (late-harvest).

“In the past, you put the bad grapes into dry wine, and you saved the good grapes for sweet wine,” Grussaute told me, explaining that the creation of the Jurançon Sec designation in 1975 was intended to improve the quality of sweet wines, by setting a minimum amount of residual sugar for grapes to be included and thus diverting poor quality grapes to dry wines.

But Grussaute is one of the Jurançon producers who set out to craft exceptional dry wines with a capacity for aging. He poured some older vintages for me to taste, from as far back as 2004. They showed beautiful notes of dried mango, truffles, and hay. There was still plenty of fruit on the palate, and the phenolic pithiness that these wines can have in youth had resolved into a vibrancy on the palate.

The pivot to dry wines in Jurançon began with the rise of independent vignerons like Grussaute in the region. For almost 50 years after the appellation was established, there was only a cooperative in Jurançon; the first independent vine growers weren’t established until the 1970s and 1980s.

Among them were Grussaute and Jean-Bernard Larrieu of Clos Lapeyre. Larrieu is a third-generation farmer who took over his family’s domaine in 1985. The domaine’s vineyards are near the top of steep hillsides, at altitudes of up to 400 meters, facing south and southwest with a stunning view of the Pyrenees, just 25 kilometers away. Among his 18 hectares, Larrieu works one very unique parcel in fermage (a farming tenancy). It’s a vineyard with the oldest vines in the region, some more than 100 years old, a traditional co-plantation of petit manseng, gros manseng, and a bit of camaralet and courbu (or petit courbu, as it’s sometimes called).

On the day of my visit, everything was bright green and lush under clear skies after weeks of rain. Dusk fell as we tasted wines on the patio of the domaine, and in the distance fires dotted the slopes of the mountains, set by French Basque shepherds to open up pasture for their sheep to graze. Larrieu, ever the farmer, hopped on his tractor as dark fell to do some final work for the day, and I got the sense that he could have made the sharp turns down the steep rows wearing a blindfold, steering from memory after 40 years of working in these vines.

There’s a generation of younger producers who are continuing what Larrieu, Grussaute, and others began with Jurançon Sec. Franck Lihour of Domaine Castéra noted that there is a great opportunity for making dry wines in Jurançon because it’s a blank slate: there is no standard profile for the style yet. But he also emphasized that it will take a lot of work to learn more and continue to improve the wines.

Lihour practices plot-by-plot winemaking for all his wines, dry and sweet. The minimalist vinification process is the same for all of the wines. “We have so much difference between grapes, terroir, and so much to learn about it. For me, I don’t want to bring something new in the cellar,” he explained. To that end, his barrel room feels a bit like a viticultural research library, where you can taste the impact of different soil types, vine age, massale selection, and exposition on four different varieties aging in large format oak.

His friend and peer in Jurançon, Maxime Salharang of Clos Larrouyat, farms three hectares of vines on a thin band of Triassic limestone that runs through the appellation. It gives typicity to his wines, with beautiful key lime and lemon verbena notes and powerful, linear acidity. The wines are fermented and aged in used barriques for six months; they also see a bit of bâtonnage depending on the vintage. Different winemakers on different terroirs, with different approaches in the cellar—there’s no uniform approach in the region right now, and the different results are incredibly exciting.

The dry wines of Jurançon have thrilling potential, but its sweet wines are still a revered and essential part of production for independent producers, too. Even Salharang, who focuses on Jurançon Sec, makes tiny quantities of sweet wine from a segment of his vineyard where the vines produce smaller yields and higher sugar concentration. It’s a testament to his time working at Domaine de Souch, an iconic producer of sweet Jurançon wines and one of the very first independent domaines in the region.

Domaine de Souch was originally the project of Yvonne Hégoburu, who renovated the abandoned property and ran the winery with her son, Jean-René Hégoburu, after her husband’s death in 1987. Along with Larrieu and Grussaute, she was one of the first organic and biodynamic producers in the region, inspired by seeing these practices in Pomerol. (She passed away in 2023, but you can see her at the very beginning of the 2004 documentary Mondovino.) Today her son runs the estate, and I met with winemaker Emmanuel Jecker, who has worked at Domaine de Souch for 18 years.

“Fifteen years ago, as with many sweet wine appellations, demand fell,” Jecker said. “We had the luck that dry wines were increasing and an opportunity to develop their quality. So we had less damage than other big sweet wine appellations, and now the sweet wines are developing again.”

Not that that ever affected the domaine’s focus. The winery’s dry wines are outstanding, but Domaine de Souch is renowned for, and focuses on, its sweet wines, including Jurançon, exceptional Vendanges Tardives, and a wholly unique cuvée made with passerillage (dried grapes) called Marie Kattalin. There is an exceptional freshness and power in these wines that has to be tasted to be believed.

“We are making great dry wines in Jurançon, no doubt, but our very specific wine is sweet wine, because you cannot achieve balance like this everywhere,” Lihour of Domaine Castéra affirmed.

It would be easy to see Jurançon’s evolution as a pursuit of fashion—whether riding the tide of increasing dry white wine consumption, or counting on a resurgence in sweet wines. But the winemakers I met aren’t chasing trends. They are making the wines they’ve always wanted to make, shaped as much by curiosity and conviction as by vintage and place.

Jurançon may never be an “it” region. That might be exactly why it’s worth watching.

20 Jurançon Jams, Both Dry and Sweet

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So I’m writing for Wine Enthusiast once again, and I have a number of pieces coming out that I’ll be linking to over the next few months. My first is a feature in their May “Bubbles” issues on—what else?—the ongoing drama in Catalonia’s sparkling wine scene, and the rise of Corpinnat.

Readers of Everyday Drinking know this isn’t the first time I’ve written about Corpinnat, which in the past I’ve cited as a “wine of resistance.”

Over the past decade and a half, few corners of the wine world have experienced as much upheaval as Catalonia’s sparkling wine sector. Less than 20 years ago, almost all the bubbly made in Penedès was simply called Cava, Spain’s most famous sparkling wine. At the top end, Cava is considered Spain’s version of Champagne. Unfortunately, many people know Cava for the bottom end. While there are 300 wineries in Cava, more than 80% of the production comes from three houses— Freixenet, Codorníu, García Carrión—who influence the Denominación de Origen (D.O.). In Spain, 90% of Cava retails for under 10 euros. “Most Cava is basic-level sparkling wine. I have friends in the States who tell me, ‘Oh, I use Cava in my mimosa,’” said Roc Gramona [the sixth-generation winemaker of the venerable Gramona estate and the current vice president of Corpinnat].

For producers of higher-quality, higher-priced sparkling wine, being associated with an ocean of inexpensive Cava became unsustainable. “The situation was so bad that we realized we all had to get together to survive,” said Ton Mata, CEO of Recaredo and the first president of Corpinnat.

One of the major issues for Catalonia’s disgruntled sparkling winemakers is that the Cava D.O. lacks a clear geographic identity. Cava can be produced in over 20 different regions across Spain, as long as it’s made in the méthode traditionnelle. In Cava’s spiritual home of Catalonia, this lack of terroir has always rubbed producers the wrong way.

Please click here to read the whole feature, which I promise is worth your while.

Every time I write about Corpinnat, it keeps growing: At the time of my reporting there were 21 members. Among the big news I reported is that legendary winery Juvé & Camps, which makes more than 2 million bottles of long-aged sparkling wines each year, recently announced they will leave Cava to join Corpinnat. Meanwhile Cava’s sales continue to decline, dropping more than 13 percent, and by more than 18 percent in international export markets, from 2023.

“The ongoing effervescence in the world of Catalan bubbles might not mean much to entry-level and price-sensitive consumers, but the fact that some of our benchmark, flagship sparklers are not DO Cava anymore is likely to play out differently in premium segments of the trade,” says my colleague, Barcelona-based consultant and educator Nika Shevela, DipWSET and founder of Wine Alphabet.

As Corpinnat grows, I hope the confusion of naming Catalonia’s best sparkling wines will eventually become clearer. For those keeping count, if you buy a sparkling wine made in Penedès right now, it could be called by one of five different names: Cava, Corpinnat, Clàssic Penedès, Conca del Riu Anoia (used by Raventós i Blanc), or Vino de Mesa, a.k.a. table wine (used by wineries such as Mas Gomà and Terra de Marca).

Because Corpinnat is registered as a trade organization rather than an appellation, it moves differently than the typical European AOCs, DOCs, or DOs. As Ton Mata of Recaredo told me, “we can put more strict rules into place than an appellation can.”

This is an aspect of the story that was too broad in scope for my Wine Enthusiast feature. I believe the rise of organizations like Corpinnat, or the VDP in Germany (a trade group of around 200 top wineries that promotes strict quality standards) raises a bigger question: Do appellations matter as much as they once did? “There is certainly an ongoing debate over the relevance of appellations globally,” Shevela said.

The pushback against traditional appellations is happening in two ways. First, there is a long European tradition of maverick winemakers leaving the strict rules and confines of appellations, particularly in France. Sarah Parker Jang explored this phenomenon in her recent piece about Provence for Everyday Drinking.

Vin de France has become shorthand to consumers (especially young ones) for experimental winemaking, often minimal or low intervention. This serves a purpose for marketing—Vin de France is now a brand of its own, in a way. But will there come a day when the INAO has a mess of Corpinnats and Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüters (VDPs)—private organizations that broke away from the appellation systems—to contend with? How many Château Lafleurs will it take before things change?

Maybe this battle will simply devolve further along the lines it’s already taken, where the consumer has to simply know producer names—both the AOCs/Château Pradeauxs and the Vins de France/Le Temps des Rêveurs of the French wine world—and the story behind them to know who is making the styles of wines they want to drink in the way that consumer prefers that they be made: traditionally, transparently, organically, regeneratively, low-intervention, etc. For so many wine consumers who think in this dimension, appellation labels are already just that—simply a label.

But in numerous legacy regions, there is a pushback from winemakers who want stricter rules, who believe that the traditional appellations have become too mired in the past, too lax on quality standards, and lacked a commitment to terroir—often due to influence from big companies and cooperatives who sell cheap wine. This is what’s happening in Corpinnat. “We never made Cava because it wasn’t interesting,” said Jordi Annan of Celler Pardas. “It was only when Corpinnat started that we decided to make sparkling wine.”

In Rioja, as another example, a new-wave of smaller wineries has pushed for radical change, and to the Consejo’s credit, they are listening and (slowly) shifting. For years, Rioja classifications were based on oak aging (crianza, reserva, gran reserva). The focus is now much more on conveying a sense of place.

In Germany, the VDP’s focus on single vineyards and its classifying of “Erstes Gewächs” and “Großes Gewächs” (essentially Premier and Grand Crus) has led to the German Winegrowers’ Association adopting that classification for all of Germany. Changes to the German wine laws will be based on the VDP’s well-established classification pyramid vineyard sites. The VDP’s focus on special vineyards and terroir has superseded German wine’s old, dated classification of sweetness levels.

I wrote about those changes in Germany. It’s a bold move in this current era of wine, when so much so-called consumer “education” is about “demystifying” wine and avoiding so-called “confusing” talk of about the value of place in an age of terroir denial.

I’ve observed that a certain type of wine influencer/educator has begun to steer completely clear of talk about terroir. At the low end, the focus is on a certain populism…But much of the higher-end natural wine chatter also avoids a deep discussion of place. While the best natural-wine producers are committed terroirists, a lot of the derivative, middling natty wine talk is way more about winemaking technique and philosophy—which are similar whether we’re talking about Sicily, Loire, Oregon, or elsewhere. After all, you can make “zero/zero” wine anywhere.

With Corpinnat, the organization was built on very strict rules. Grapes must be 100 percent organic and harvested by hand, and all wine must be made at the winery, with no juice bought from outside. If Corpinnat wineries buy grapes, they are obligated to pay growers a premium under long-term contracts. Aging rules are also strict: All Corpinnat wines must spend at least 18 months on the lees (meaning all wines qualify as reserva), and wineries must make at least one wine that ages 60 months or more on the lees.

And those rules will soon get even stricter. From my Wine Enthusiast article:

Perhaps the biggest rule that Corpinnat has instituted, the one that will most profoundly alter winemaking in Penedès, is its plan to ban international grapes like chardonnay and pinot noir. Starting in 2035, Corpinnat producers will only be allowed to use xarel-lo, macabeo, parellada, and malvasia de Sitges for whites, and garnacha, monastrell, xarello vermell, and sumoll for reds. “My father was very against outlawing chardonnay,” Gramona said. “But we can only be an alternative to Champagne if we use our own grapes.”

Ton Mata of Recaredo took me to a vineyard that had originally been planted in 1996 with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, which they ripped out. 2014 was the last vintage they had both. “What was working in 1996 isn’t working today,” he said. “I’m glad the young people today already know this.”

12 Spanish Sparklers You Should Not Call Cava (Because They’re Corpinnat)

These Corpinnat tasting notes and bottle recommendations are for paid subscribers only. I am offering a deep discount today.

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This is a rare Saturday morning post from me, but I want to update readers. I’ve been traveling in Spain over the past couple of weeks, filling up the ol’ content tank with fresh reporting and tasting. Last week, I was inside the chaotic bubble of Barcelona Wine Week, and this past week I’ve been visiting winemakers in Catalonia. Look for several upcoming posts on my latest Spanish wine adventures and discoveries. Also, paid subscribers, look for the next (slightly delayed) installment of Thinking & Drinking on Wednesday, which will be Spanish themed.

Last Sunday, a sunny Barcelona afternoon, I attended a lovely, surprising tasting at a feminist bookstore hosted by Sarah Sioli, who writes the newsletter Next Tasting and is one of my favorite Barcelona wine people. The cheeky theme: Verdejo Haters.

There is an ocean of cheap verdejo in Spain, undoubtedly the country’s most popular white wine. Most of it comes from Rueda, the appellation in Castilla y León that is synonymous with the grape. This ocean of verdejo is mostly middling, inoffensive, and uninspiring. Too often, it can be worse. I wouldn’t say I am a “verdejo hater.” Hate would imply having strong feelings about verdejo. I mostly just shrug and ignore it.

My first inkling that verdejo could be something more happened at last year’s Barcelona Wine Week, when I tasted the wines of Barco del Corneta, which releases its wines as Tierra de Castilla y León, outside the Rueda appellation. “We must remember that verdejo is a local grape,” said Barco del Corneta’s winemaker Félix Crespo Álvarez. “People think of it like sauvignon blanc—but it’s not. It’s local. Verdejo has great potential and is a great grape, but it’s been in bad hands.”

The bottles Sarah poured for ‘Verdejo Haters,’ more natural-leaning examples from Esmeralda García and Microbio (as well as a wild-card bottling made in Sicily by Badalucco de la Iglesia Garcia) showed that the grape has even another level.

The thing with verdejo (similar to other high-yield grapes like carignan) is that it demands old vines. Like, very old vines, 80 to 100 years or more. One bottle we tasted, from Esmeralda García, came from 200-year-old vines.

I came away thinking differently about verdejo. But it was just one of many surprises from my travels. More to come!

Verdejo For People Who Hate Verdejo

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A couple of years ago, I ran this story about my friends, Pierre and David Avedissian, and the generous tasting of 1980’s Bordeaux they shared with me. During the recent holiday season, Pierre sadly passed away. In his memory, I wanted to repost this essay, which I hope gets at the heart of why people collect and age wine.

Not too long ago, I attended a tasting of Bordeaux wines from the 1980s. This wasn’t in a fancy tasting room or a Michelin-starred restaurant, hosted by a master sommelier. No. It happened at a table in my cramped office, in a small town in South Jersey, where my friend David Avedissian and his 86-year-old father, Pierre, generously shared a few bottles from their cellar.

The Avedissians are not billionaire collectors. David is a local attorney, and Pierre, for many years, ran a hair salon in our town. At some point in the early 1980s, Pierre decided to start buying Bordeaux—perhaps as a remembrance of growing up in France, from where he emigrated at age 17. “Actually, I don’t know that much about wine,” he admitted, with a laugh. In fact, during the early 2000s, before David had any interest in wine, Pierre nearly sold his entire collection. “I was ready to sell it all to a guy,” he said. “But the guy never came to get it. I waited. After about four years, I decided to keep it and give it all to David”—who has since extended and deepened the collection.

After tasting through their amazing bottles, I gotta say: I am deeply grateful that guy, whoever he was, never showed up.

Which makes me sort of a hypocrite. In my book, Godforsaken Grapes, which advocates for obscure wines from lesser-known places, high-end Bordeaux is one of the main villains—along with critics like Robert Parker and other gatekeepers of a status-quo wine hierarchy. In a chapter called “Château du Blah Blah Blah,” I tell how I was once humiliated during a tasting with Prince Robert de Luxembourg, managing director of Château Haut-Brion, whose attitude seemed to be: “How the hell did you get an appointment with me?” Of my tasting with the prince, I wrote, “I haven’t felt so foolish since middle school when I forgot to wear shorts to a basketball game, and pulled down my sweatpants to reveal my tighty-whities to the crowd.”

Contemporary high-end Bordeaux can so easily represent everything wrong with wine—its pretension, its bloated prices, its power over critics and discourse, its showy, high-alcohol wines, its focus on a handful of estates coasting on prestige bestowed during the Second French Empire in the mid-19th century, its inaccessibility to younger wine enthusiasts.

But here’s the thing: It wasn’t always like this. Not so long ago, many people could afford to buy and cellar good Bordeaux wines. The 1980s, when Americans first got excited about wine, coincided with several excellent Bordeaux vintages, including 1982, 1985, 1986, and 1988. Much of which you could purchase at your local wine shop: no futures, no allocations, no auctions, no nonsense.

Pierre acquired much of his collection at one liquor store in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, one that also sold cigarettes and lottery tickets. “I got lucky,” Pierre said. “When I first built my wine cellar, that’s when the 1982s were just coming out. At the time, they were saying ’82 was a good vintage. But it ended up being one of the best.”

That was, of course, long before the advent of niche wine stores staffed by people studying for advanced WSET certifications. But you could still occasionally find a knowledgeable, passionate wine person in a standard-issue liquor store. “I was lucky that I had a guy,” Pierre said. “I used to subscribe to the Wine Spectator, and I had a wine encyclopedia. But the guy at my local store knew what was good.”

Our group at the tasting spanned several generations. David and I are Gen Xers. Our friends Mike and Alexa, a Millennial couple just starting to collect wine, came over, as did our friend John, a young boomer who also has a solid collection of Bordeaux. John brought a selection of cheeses worthy of these wines—Pierre insisted that there be brie, “the very best pairing with Bordeaux”—and we sipped a pleasant pre-game 2015 Bordeaux Supérieur from Château Labatut ($15) while we waited for Pierre and David to fiddle with the corks. I put on a playlist that was heavy on ‘80s synths.

We began with a 1982 Château Bahans Haut-Brion (known today as Le Clarence), the second label of First Growth Château Haut-Brion. This was a dive into the deep end of well-aged Bordeaux: at first earthy and musky, then opening up with aromas of cedar and leather, and deep flavors of olive and pepper, mellowed, silky tannins, and a pretty good finish. It elicited nods of approval throughout the room. “I always want a little bit of earthiness with old Bordeaux,” David said. “I want the olive. I want the cedar.”

“My tasting note is ‘tapenade,’” said John.

For Mike and Alexa, this was the first time they’d tasted such an old wine, and they grew quiet as they wrapped their heads around these flavors and aromas. Alexa noted that its vintage was only a year younger than her. Meanwhile, Pierre sounded a little unimpressed. “I think I like the 2015 better,” he said, chuckling, as he cut another hunk of brie.

A couple of things about the Bahans Haut-Brion impressed me. It was incredible how much freshness this four-decade-old wine still displayed. Also, at a mere 11.5 percent abv, it’s noteworthy how completely different the drinking experience was compared to the 14.5 percent hammers now routinely found throughout Bordeaux. It still had great energy, even if it might be slightly in decline and walked with a slight limp, or a cane. Also noteworthy: the price. In the mid 1980s, Pierre bought this Bahans Haut-Brion for around $20, which would be about $63 today. Compare that to the 2022 Le Clarence, which runs around $180.

1982 famously established Robert Parker’s reputation. Almost all other critics declared 1982 in Bordeaux to be a poor year, too ripe and too low in acidity. But Parker effusively praised the vintage—and especially bottles from Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Growth producers that, in those years, were still very gently priced. Whatever people think of critics like Parker now, his predictions on the 1982 vintage were totally correct, and it became wildly sought-after.

So, in a way, the omnipresence of the 100-point scale—the legacy of which, many argue, burdens the wine world today—stems from the ageworthiness of Bordeaux’s 1982 vintage. We may be in the waning days of both the 1982 vintage and scores. This may be a generalization, but I’ve tasted a number of 1982s over the past few years, and while there’s still freshness and drinkability, many bottles at this stage have slipped past their prime. Some of this may be how the wines I’ve tasted have been cellared. But I also wonder whether that rich, ripe vintage (which predated many modern growing and winemaking techniques) is finally entering its decline. If you have 1982s, I’d open them now.

The wines at this tasting had been cellared well. Pierre does not have a fancy, custom-made wine cellar. “It’s all natural, three sides dirt and one stone wall. When I built the house, it was going to be a crawl space, but I said, ‘No, no, let’s make it a wine cellar.’” He added: “I’ve never had a bad bottle that’s been stored there.”

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As good as the Bahans Haut-Brion had been, the next bottle—1985 Château Lynch-Bages—was the wine of the night. It’s drawn raves pretty much since it was released. (Wine Spectator named it their No. 1 wine of the year in 1988.) Given that, it’s somewhat surprising that Lynch-Bages, from Pauillac, is a Fifth Growth, not a Premier Cru. In the 1980s, critics used this bottle as an example for Americans, many of whom were new to wine collecting, to look for value outside of Bordeaux’s traditional hierarchy. In that era, Pierre bought his for under $40, or around $100 in today’s dollars. Today you’ll find the 1985 Lynch-Bages selling for around $400. The 2022 vintage’s release price, by contrast, is $140.

It’s the second time I’ve had this wine—the first was maybe five or six years ago—and it still sings beautifully. It starts with deep, dark forest floor notes, then moves to cedar, smoke, leather, and mint. An amazing, youthful core of fresh black and red fruit persists, with a hint of elegant tannins and a long savory finish. It’s seamless, and it’s everything that people who love old Bordeaux desire.

Critics at Decanter, Vinous, and Wine Advocate all revisited this wine in 2023 and all raved about its staying power. Decanter perhaps said it best: “It is tough to put into words how much I love this wine…In the two dozen or so times that I have drunk this wine it has never been anything short of spectacular.” The writer added: “There is no benefit from waiting, but there is also no rush.”

At my office table, our tasting discussion was light on tasting notes, and high on superlatives. “Normally, I prefer Bordeaux at around 10 years,” said David, “But this is amazing.”

Even Pierre was impressed by this one. “I thought I was losing my sense of taste,” he said. “But tasting this, wow. Clearly, I am not.”

“I’ve never tasted anything like this,” said Mike. As a new collector, he wanted to know: How would he even begin to start building a cellar with bottles like this? Hundreds of dollars for already-aged bottles would be out of the question. Our advice was both simple and complicated: Find the wines from regions and grapes that will last, and may someday increase in value. Which led Mike to ask: How do I know what wines those will be? We all shrugged. More than anything else, we said, buy wines that bring you joy—so much joy that you’re willing to save some of that joy for later.

Aging, after all, is what separates wine from almost all other consumable goods. Since Roman times, aging has defined wine’s elevated place in the culture. But it’s complicated. A dark art. It takes time and patience. 

It also takes luck. Sometimes, you have to know a guy. Other times, you have to hope the other guy never shows up.

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This first appeared in The New Wine Review (now owned by Unicorn Auctions).

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If someone mentions “Provence” and “wine” in the same breath, chances are they’re referring to rosé. Specifically, they probably mean the grenache-dominated, high-volume rosé that’s rapidly pressed and fermented with cultured yeast, before spending minimal time in tanks—the goal being to get it in the bottle and onto the shelf as quickly and cheaply as possible.

In 2024, rosé accounted for a whopping 91 percent of all AOC wine produced in the region, a pink ocean filling more than 130 million bottles. And the vast majority of that, regrettably, is pale wine that tastes like…not much of anything. Or any place. (I’m sorry, but “garrigue”—the overused word for the fragrant scrubland in the region that pops up as a descriptor in endless tasting notes—does not terroir make.) To get away from high-volume, generic Provençal wine with no real sense of place, you either have to look for a handful of very small, delimited areas, or simply don’t worry about appellations.

Why should a consumer expect to know the differences between a wine from Côtes de Provence and Côtes d’Aix-en-Provence? There are four subzones in Côtes de Provence: Sainte-Victoire, Fréjus, La Londe, and Pierrefeu. I’ve never seen a producer use any of those, so who really cares?

To find wines of place in Provence, I headed west from Nice this September into Bandol, an appellation famed for its dark, tannic, ageworthy red wines made principally from mourvèdre. It’s the only appellation in France that requires a focus on this late-ripening variety, which must be 50 to 95 percent of the blend for reds; the rest is grenache, cinsault, and sometimes syrah or carignan. It’s a small appellation of about 1,600 hectares, with less than 70 producers. As I drove along the Côte d’Azur, a pattern of condos-pizza restaurant-ice cream shop passed by the car window like a repeat pan in an old Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

I reached Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer in the west of the appellation, a small coastal town with scrub-covered rocky hillsides looking out onto the International Klein Blue of the sea. On the outskirts of town, I pulled into the long drive of Château Pradeaux, a benchmark traditionalist producer for both Bandol and Provence. The domaine’s peachy-pink house with turquoise shutters dates to the 17th century, and the property is dotted with ancient olive trees, some as old as 1000 years. Étienne Portalis met me at the cellar door and we walked through the vines radiating out in rows from the house. The estate has been owned by the Portalis family since 1752, when Jean-Étienne-Marie Portalis—an author of the Napoleonic Code—inherited it. Étienne’s grandmother, Arlette Portalis, and her mother Suzanne fled to the estate in World War II to live in the unoccupied zone libre (the free zone) and revive the property. Arlette was a key figure in the creation of the Bandol appellation, which was approved in 1941. Now, her grandsons Étienne and his brother Edouard share management of the domaine.

As we walked past the vines, farmed organically with some biodynamic practices on limestone and clay soils, his hound dog started eating some of the grapes hanging heavy from the vine, and Portalis called him away. “Once they begin to eat the grapes, you know it’s time for harvest,” he said. His team would begin picking grapes for the domaine’s rosés in just a few days. The best Bandol rosés, with a high percentage of mourvèdre, are often deep in color, complex, structured, and ageworthy—a far cry from the pale, dull examples found throughout much of the region. But rosé is not what defines Bandol.

Portalis’ grandmother rehabilitated the domaine’s vineyards after the Germans and Italians occupied the property in 1942 and destroyed the vines, replanting mostly with mourvèdre. That variety is the star of the show here, making up 90 to 95 percent of Château Pradeaux’s Bandol red—“the soul of the estate”—rounded out by varieties like cinsault or carignan to bring freshness and lower alcohol.

Portalis said it would be a struggle to find a grape that fits as well to the terroir. “It’s really the place for mourvèdre,” he said. “Pradeaux” gets its name from the fact that it is near the water (près de l’eau), about a half a mile away from the sea. Bandol is in an amphitheater formed by the surrounding hills, and the winds circulate throughout the appellation from off the Mediterranean. “It creates a microclimate that allows the mourvèdre to grow slowly,” Portalis said, “so we have a good balance between alcohol and structure.”

We stepped into the winery, where the handpicked grapes for the reds would be sorted and put into tanks to begin fermentation, without destemming. They’re then put in large oak foudres for aging. Bandol’s appellation rules stipulate a minimum of 18 months in barrel for Bandol reds; Château Pradeaux ages theirs for four years.

“That’s not a fashionable wine,” Portalis admitted. “But the best way to not be old-fashioned is to not be a fashionable wine.”

The regulations will likely be changing though: the majority of the growers in the Bandol producers’ association want to lower the requirement to age the reds to only 12 months, in the face of more and more hot vintages producing wines that don’t need to age for the full 18.

Portalis believes this is a poor idea. It seems like a simple tradition versus a the-times-they-are-a-changin’ argument. But some of this is future-proofing, to his mind. “The Provence rosé sales will decrease,” he predicted. “So in Bandol, it’s important to keep the identity here.” Even if the aging requirement is lowered, it won’t change the way anything is done at Château Pradeaux.

Daniel Ravier, winemaker at the storied Bandol producer Domaine Tempier, expressed similar thoughts when I met with him later that week. Domaine Tempier’s Bandol rosé has become a benchmark and highly sought after by collectors. (When the recent vintage landed at my local wine shop in Manhattan, it was sold out within an hour.)

Yet as popular as his rosé has become, Ravier is adamant that Bandol’s identity is its reds, not its pink wines.

Lucie (“Lulu”) and Lucien Peyraud of Domaine Tempier (along with Arlette Portalis) were among those who helped to establish the Bandol appellation. Ravier took over the role of winemaker from the Peyraud family in 2000 and has overseen converting the domaine to biodynamics. We walked through the cellar, full of barrels for aging the reds ranging in age, size, and cooperage—from Stockinger to Valery Desfrieches Cognac barrels. Ravier calls it “a museum of foudre.”

Bandol reds are wines of incredible longevity; they can take 10 to 15 years to just begin to reach their potential, as demonstrated by a tasting of 2011 and 1981 Tempier bottlings in the winery. They may promote longevity in their drinkers as well. We tasted the wines under a large photo of the legendary Lulu. In a satisfying affront to those who obsessively count how many ounces of water they consume daily, when Lulu Peyraud turned 100 in 2017, “she was drinking red wines and Champagne—no water,” Ravier told me. “She would say, ‘L’eau, même sous la douche, je ferme la bouche’”—for water, even in the shower, I keep my mouth shut. She lived to the age of 102.

When talk turned to the appellation rules, Ravier felt strongly that a proposed change to allow 100 percent mourvèdre bottlings was a negative one: making Bandol a blend is part of the appellation’s identity. “Sometimes if the mourvèdre is too aggressive, and you have 3 to 5 percent of very interesting carignan or something in the blend, the dimension is even greater,” he explained.

He lamented the unpopularity of the 18-month elevage rule with the growers as well, though he felt that there should be some flexibility built in, contingent on conditions, while still preserving the idea of aging the wines over two winters in wood.

Working Beyond Appellation in Provence

Pulling back for a moment from the world of Bandol, these discussions may seem like splitting hairs to a lot of wine drinkers. What’s the difference between 12 and 18 months, really? Does 95 percent versus 100 percent mourvèdre make that much of an impact? It does when you have a strong identity to protect—one that’s highly distinct from the Provence Rosé brand.

But I was about to get a little palate cleanser from all the appellation rules. Later that week, I drove east from Aix-en-Provence, bustling with students returning for classes and tourists in town for a blockbuster exhibit of the city’s most famous resident, Paul Cezanne. Heading into the foothills of the Mont Sainte-Victoire mountain range, the air was distinctly cooler and fresher. I glimpsed lavender farms, the plants long-past bloom and wet with morning dew, through breaks in the trees as I followed the winding road.

In the tiny little town of Pourrières, I met winemaker Jérôme Maillot, of Le Temps des Rêveurs. He started his winery in 2014, when he took over his family’s vines that grew grapes for the local cooperative. Working organically and biodynamically from the outset, he planted more vines and now works over 6 hectares. Maillot farms four sites in this dry, windswept part of the region, where the elevation gives a greater diurnal range, slowing ripening and retaining acidity in the grapes. His winemaking is experimental and minimalist, with just a touch of SO2 at bottling. The resulting wines are ones of remarkable freshness in this hot region.

He works with old-vine carignan and ugni blanc planted by his grandfather. Old vines are a rarity in Provence: they tend to get replanted when yields aren’t high enough to meet the massive demand for rosé. Maillot has also grafted massal selections of grenache, syrah, grenache gris, carignan gris and blanc, and macabeu, choosing late-ripening varieties resistant to climate change.

But it’s the carignan, dismissed historically as a “workhorse” grape, that he especially loves to work with. “It’s a variety which is very easy to read, how the vine is growing and developing,” Maillot explained. Carignan doesn’t have the reputation of a great variety because in the past it would produce big yields and ripened too late. With old carignan vines, Maillot’s yields are naturally restricted on these soils, producing wines of concentration and complexity.

Maillot works within the delimited area for Côtes de Provence, but he eschews the appellation because it accommodates neither his experimental vinification methods nor his love of carignan. His Eric Pfifferling-esque red wine, Sirène, for example, uses the classic blend of grapes: grenache, mourvèdre, cinsault, a bit of cabernet sauvignon. But with Maillot’s winemaking techniques, it exists in that beautiful liminal space between a rosé and a red wine—outside of that bugbear “typicity” with which the Bandol producer organization is so preoccupied.

Maillot also has two 100-percent bottlings of his old-vine carignan, which is not allowed under the appellation’s mandate for blends. All his wines are thus bottled as Vin de France. This doesn’t bother him, though; he would rather put the effort he would spend fighting the appellation rules to better use selling his wines to the consumers who will appreciate what he’s doing.

There’s a lot of this happening in Provence. Beyond Bandol and maybe a few other areas, the appellation system won’t help you much. Its purpose is ostensibly quality control, but I drank some very poor AOC wines while in Provence, and several of the best I tasted were non-appellation.

I tried some gorgeous rosés while I was there, too, but there are impressive wines of every hue and style being made, both within and without the appellation system. It’s a shame that the forward-looking spirit of a lot of winemaking here is overshadowed both by Provence Rosé’s dominance and the rigid appellation regulations. One of the most stunning rosés that I tasted was Château Pradeaux’s Vesprée cuvée, but even this wine—Bandol through and through—butt up against the appellation system: in the past, it was denied Bandol appellation status multiple times for stylistic reasons, and labeled Vin de France.

All of this is to say, winemakers have so far defaulted to Vin de France when AOC regulations prove too inflexible, in Provence and throughout the country. Vin de France has become shorthand to consumers (especially young ones) for experimental winemaking, often minimal or low intervention. This serves a purpose for marketing—Vin de France is now a brand of its own, in a way. But will there come a day when the INAO has a mess of Corpinnats and Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüters (VDPs)—private organizations that broke away from the appellation systems—to contend with? How many Château Lafleurs will it take before things change?

Maybe this battle will simply devolve further along the lines it’s already taken, where the consumer has to simply know producer names—both the AOCs/Château Pradeauxs and the Vins de France/Le Temps des Rêveurs of the French wine world—and the story behind them to know who is making the styles of wines they want to drink in the way that consumer prefers that they be made: traditionally, transparently, organically, regeneratively, low-intervention, etc. For so many wine consumers who think in this dimension, appellation labels are already just that—simply a label.

26 Wines from Bandol and Beyond

Below are a mix of AOC wines and Vins de France from Provence, of every style and hue; some of them may not yet be available stateside, but I’ve linked to the importer’s site where wine-searcher.com comes up empty-handed. Note to importers of Provence wines: the people want more than rosé!

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As someone who harbors pretensions about being part of the wine cognoscenti, I guess I should apologize: I have never visited the Republic of Georgia. I know that a lot of my wine friends have been there to experience the ancient Georgian winemaking culture that reportedly dates back to at least 6,000 B.C. But they are cooler than me.

I did write about about Georgian grapes such as rkatsiteli, kisi, mtsvane and saperavi in Godforsaken Grapes. But the closest I’ve ever come to Georgia is to dine at my favorite Georgian restaurant, in the Russian-speaking neighborhood around Bustleton Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia, where I’ve enjoyed khachapuri, khinkali, and phkhali for years.

Fortunately for me, last weekend, a bunch of top winemakers from Georgia came to New York to pour more than 150 wines at an event called Amber Georgia, organized by Alexis Percival, partner in Ruffian wine bar and a friend of Everyday Drinking. Amber Georgia was a great example of the sort of themed, well-curated, focused—but totally fun and open to the public—events that should be be the future of wine tastings. (Karakterre a few weeks back was another example)

In Georgia, they’ve been making skin-contact wines, aged in earthenware vessels called qvevri, for thousands of years—long before the idea of orange wine became a mainstream trend. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that Georgian winemakers have a bit of a chip on their shoulder to be lump in with all the johnny-come-lately orange wines. “Part of today is that they’re trying to reclaim ‘amber’ from ‘orange’ wine,” Percival told me on Saturday.

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