‘This year's judging demonstrated the overall high quality coming from the US, giving it a well-earned place in the global wine pantheon,’ said James Tidwell MS, who serves as DWWA Regional Chair for the USA and Central America.

In all, California wineries took home 162 medals – a record for the state – across all categories: Best in Show, Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze.

‘The US wine story is becoming broader and more interesting’, commented DWWA Panel Judge Bree Stock MW.

While California’s benchmark varieties reigned in the top tiers of the awards, she said, ‘One of the most exciting developments was seeing newer and less conventional varieties perform with real credibility and a clear sense of place/purpose’.

‘California's Assyrtiko and Moschofilero entries showed freshness and salinity’, she added, ‘with aromatic floral interest, suggesting that the conversation around US wine quality is expanding beyond the classics’.

Grapes from Italy, southwest France and Spain – including Albariño, Cortina, Tannat, Teroldego and Vermentino – all also earned medals.

A three-peat: Clos du Val takes the top award, again

Founded in Napa Valley in the 1970s and now in its third generation of family ownership, Clos du Val earned a Best in Show medal for the third year in a row – and for the second time with its Yettalil blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and Merlot from the Stags Leap District. Last year, Clos du Val captured the top accolade with its 2022 Estate Cabernet Franc.

DWWA judges called the 2023 Yettalil ‘powerful and persuasive’ and a wine of ‘notable finesse’, illustrating the strengths of the ideal vintage in Napa Valley; the wine should easily age for a decade or two.

Three’s a charm: The Platinum elite wines

Clos du Val also notched 97 points and a Platinum medal for its 2024 Estate Sauvignon Blanc, which the judges said showed ‘superb varietal expression, shaped by thoughtful barrel influence and aromatic precision’.

California led the country in Platinum medals, with three in total, at 97 points each.

Among them was AvinoDos, with its ‘sumptuous’ 2022 Blanc De Blanc Extra Brut from Los Carneros. It's only the second US sparkling wine ever to receive Platinum at DWWA, after Chandon’s Etoile Brut in 2025.

Representing a new generation of wineries in Napa Valley, AvinoDos is based within the city of Napa, in a business park known as the Grape Crusher District for its collection of boutique wineries.

Owners Dan and Julie Dexter source their grapes only from growers with plots totalling 3.6 hectares or less – a size that, under Napa regulations, prohibits the growers from opening their own wineries.

New Mendocino County producer Brashley, started in 2017 by Ashley and Bram Palm, also impressed the judges with its 2023 Hacienda Sequoia Pinot Noir from an organically farmed vineyard surrounded by redwoods in the cool-climate Anderson Valley. The judges called it ‘a sophisticated Pinot Noir with a European accent.’

‘It’s a thrilling thing for a winery as small as we are’, said Ashley Palm. ‘To know that it was blind tasted so many times and it ended up where it was, it just blows me away. It helps confirm what we are doing – doing everything organically, doing everything by hand.’

Brashley winemaker Ashley Holland added, ‘For Anderson Valley, I know the appellation belongs on the world stage. I’ve worked so many places around the world. It is truly a phenomenal site for Pinot Noir.’

She describes the 0.8-hectare (2 acres), dry-farmed Hacienda Sequoia site, which sits on 100,000-year-old sandstone, as singular.

‘I knew when the wine was fermenting that it was really extraordinary. We used to waft the top of the fermentor because it smelled so good’.

Golden State Gold medals: Values and firsts

California collected 13 Gold medals in 2026, with two of the wines receiving 96 points from the judges: Sonoma County winery Marimar Estate’s ‘plush and zesty’ 2024 La Masía Don Miguel Vineyard Chardonnay from the Russian River Valley and Napa Valley producer Nichelini’s ‘vivid’ 2023 Petite Sirah. Nichelini’s 2024 Reserve Zinfandel earned another Gold and 95 points.

The state also secured the country’s only one of the 35 Top Value Gold medals given out this year, honouring the best wines globally in the under £15 (or $20) category.

That went to the plump, juicy 2025 Sonoma County rosé (95) from Angels & Cowboys, a winery founded in 2014 by Israel-born Yoav Gilat, who has started a handful of wine brands to fill what he saw as a gap in the market: high-quality California wines for $20 or less.

Angels & Cowboys winemaker Ondine Chattan described her reaction as one of ‘elation and gratitude’ that their delicate rosé, which she says has a ‘distinctive fruity/savoury interplay’, was recognized by the judges.

‘It is so rewarding to have one of my wines appreciated and understood for its style,’ she said, adding that she is grateful for ‘all our grape growers and winery team members who assisted at every step of the process to deliver the style and quality we set out to produce’.

Three other wines were designated as Value Golds at 95 points: Clos du Bois’s ‘indulgent’ 2024 California Chardonnay, Asda’s ‘gorgeous’ 2024 Exceptional Zinfandel from Lodi and Mina Mesa’s ‘flamboyant’ 2024 Zinfandel from Paso Robles region, which brought the region another Gold medal after an earlier win in 2022.

The Cienega Valley AVA, in western San Benito County within the Central Coast, celebrated its first DWWA Gold medals with Eden Rift’s 2023 Terraces Chardonnay, which has a ‘gorgeous penetrating acidity’, and ‘deeply concentrated’ 2023 Lansdale Slope Pinot Noir.

In another indication of the exceptional quality of Napa’s 2023 vintage, three varietally labelled Cabernet Sauvignons earned Golds: Navigator with its 2023 Napa Valley bottling, SOM’s 2023 Beckstoffer Bourn Vineyard selection from St. Helena and kosher wine producer Herzog Wine Cellars’s 2023 Special Edition from Rutherford.

On the Sonoma Coast, Three Sticks earned the award with its ‘deftly crafted’ 2024 Gap’s Crown Chardonnay.

A global guide to excellence: Decanter’s annual wine awards

Launched 23 years ago, DWWA has become the world’s largest wine competition, recognised as a global standard for quality.

The Awards combine international reach with a commitment to sustainability, a transparent tasting process and unsurpassed judging expertise. Of the 245 judges in 2026, more than one-third of them were Masters of Wine or Master Sommeliers.

‘The results of Decanter World Wine Awards are valuable because they provide both consumers and producers with a trusted and easily recognisable guide to quality in a crowded global wine market,’ explained DWWA Co-Chair Ronan Sayburn MS.

DWWA awards five tiers of medals: the 50 Best in Show – which represented just 0.3% of wines tasted this year – then Platinum and Gold (all scoring 95+ points), Silver and Bronze. In 2026, US wines won a total of 466 medals – nearly double the country’s previous highest tally.

Although California, Oregon and Washington remain the leading states, the 2026 awards reflected the diversity of wine within the US.

Texas took home its first Gold medals with four wines that show what the state can achieve with Portuguese, Spanish and southwestern French reds: Souzao, Tannat, Tempranillo and a Tempranillo-Petit Verdot blend.

Virginia added five more Golds, following two strong years in 2025 and 2024, with Cabernet Franc and Viognier among the standouts, along with blends containing Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

Pennsylvania also achieved its third straight year with a Gold medal – this time for a Chambourcin, a hybrid grape that does well in cooler climates. Wineries in Massachusetts, Missouri, Colorado and North Carolina claimed Silver medals.

The full list of 2026 winners from around the world can be found at awards.decanter.com.

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The Colli Orientali (‘Eastern Hills’) of Friuli is the natural geographical extension of the Collio DOC, separated only by an administrative boundary.

While Collio lies in the province of Gorizia, Colli Orientali belongs to Udine.

The two regions share a great deal: predominantly hilly terrain, similar elevations, and the same calcareous marl soil locally known as ponca. They also share the white grape varieties that made Friuli famous.

What truly sets the Colli Orientali apart, however, is red wine. While a marginal presence in Collio, red wine accounts for around a quarter of the Colli Orientali DOC production, according to the Consorzio Tutela Vini Friuli Colli Orientali.

More significantly, while Collio lacks its own local red varieties, Colli Orientali boasts a trio of native red grapes that are vital to its terroir: ageable Pignolo, dark and fruity Refosco, and dry, spicy Schioppettino.

Refosco: The late-ripening survivor

Refosco is not a single variety, but rather a family with at least half a dozen members in the Colli Orientali alone.

Historical references date back to the 18th century, though the generic use of the name makes its exact lineage uncertain.

Peduncolo Rosso

Today, the most widely planted iteration is Refosco del Peduncolo Rosso, named for its unusually red stems. This vigorous, thick-skinned variety is late-ripening and demands abundant sunshine.

While under-ripe versions can suffer from dominant acidity and harsh tannins, it is currently thriving thanks to a string of warm vintages.

When it succeeds, the variety boasts a bright, deep ruby-violet colour, vibrant cherry and raspberry fruit, and a vigorous mid-weight palate.

Because it can suffer from reduction if aged solely in stainless steel, judicious barrel-ageing is highly recommended.

Nostrano

A lesser-known family member, Refosco Nostrano, shares only a name with Peduncolo Rosso.

It is an entirely different variety, yielding highly attractive wines with less rugged tannins and greater finesse.

The DOC even includes a sub-denomination, Refosco di Faedis, dedicated to Nostrano wines from this specific village.

Schioppettino

Extensively grown in the upper Judrio valley until World War I, Schioppettino subsequently vanished, likely due to its delicate nature, irregular flowering, and susceptibility to disease.

In 1977, pioneering wine writer Mario Soldati reported finding only three or four remaining producers making wine from this variety.

Paolo Rapuzzi of the Ronchi di Cialla estate is widely credited with saving Schioppettino from extinction.

He perilously planted an unauthorised vineyard from old vine cuttings, risking government mandated grubbing-up.

Fortunately, the vines survived, and Schioppettino entered the national grape register the same year Soldati visited.

Highly site-specific, Schioppettino rarely travels outside the village of Albana and the neighbouring Prepotto, which boasts its own DOC sub-zone.

Like Refosco, it ripens late and retains high natural acidity, but features much more refined tannins.

The wines pour a pale ruby colour, offering dark berry fruit on the nose and a mid-weight palate that finishes with distinctive peppery spice.

Approachable in its youth, it acquires a silky elegance with age that distinctly recalls mature Pinot Noir.

Among the region's native grapes, it has made the most significant strides in both volume and quality in recent years.

Pignolo

Wine writer Ben Little famously subtitled his book on Pignolo ‘Cultivating the Invisible’ (self published in 2021). It perfectly captures the paradox of this grape: despite being grown by around 60 producers, it accounted for a mere 44 hectares in the 2024 Colli Orientali vineyard register.

Rescued from obscurity around the same time as Schioppettino, Pignolo's trajectory has been slower.

Once highly regarded in historical texts, it lost ground by the mid-20th century and practically vanished by the 1950s, until it was rediscovered close to the Rosazzo abbey, where a few surviving vines remained.

Pignolo is notoriously complicated to grow: it suffers from low, irregular yields, is prone to disease, and is incredibly fussy about its site due to its late-ripening nature.

The resulting wine is equally uncompromising, possessing high acidity, potentially high alcohol, and – thanks to small bunches and thick-skinned berries – a massive concentration of tannins, comparable to Sagrantino.

The plus side of this structural intensity is that Pignolo has a prodigious capacity for ageing.

The DOC mandates a minimum of three years, at which point the wine typically displays dark berry fruit and a dense, tactile palate.

It starts to come to life after five or six years, and at eight to 10 years I have tasted fascinating examples of complex, mature wines of classic stature.

The road ahead for Colli Orientali’s native red grapes

Two decades ago, red grapes made up 40% of Colli Orientali's surface area, led predominantly by Merlot.

While red wine may not easily regain that kind of volume, producers nevertheless feel that a renaissance of kinds is underway.

Interestingly, this new momentum is not driven by the former champion, Merlot, but by the distinctive, characterful native grapes of the region.

Watch this space!

12 wines to highlight Colli Orientali's red potential

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If they have any 2016 Côte Rôtie, grab one. It should be a safe bet.

Is it the greatest vintage in the last 20 years? No, that’ll be 2015, or perhaps 2010. There are individual wines from these two that fly even higher.

But after tasting nearly 30 examples, what 2016 offers is this: quality, classicism and consistency.

And almost all are ready to drink.

Slow and steady wins the race

After a mild winter, the season got off to a fairly late start, with Bernard Burguad writing in his notes that ‘budbreak occurred quite late compared to the average of recent years’. Spring was mild and quite wet, leading to outbreaks of mildew.

Flowering took place unhindered in mid-May, leading to plenty of fruit; the showers, however, continued. The season wasn’t looking terribly promising until July, when hot, dry weather finally arrived.

‘Harvest took place under excellent conditions,’ Burgaud notes, ‘yielding grapes with perfect ripeness and sanitary health.’

He didn’t finish picking until mid-October, ‘something we hadn’t done in a long time,’ he remarks.

As long as grapes reach full ripeness, late harvests can be a good sign in Côte-Rôtie; slow and steady ripening often results in delicacy and precision.

Jean-Paul Jamet says: ‘I like this vintage a lot, thanks to its gradual ripening, harvesting between 28 September and 12 October, which conferred a lot of elegance and freshness.’

‘A great classic’

Coming after the bold, concentrated 2015 vintage, the 2016 was clearly less powerful, but was notable for its sense of balance, freshness and its classic proportions.

They’ve aged well – better than expected in fact – thanks to these qualities. At 10 years, they are largely beyond that awkward phase around seven to eight years of age and are ready to open.

Only a handful would benefit from a few more years in bottle. Julien Barge says: ‘I am very fond of this vintage; it is evolving beautifully.’

In fact, I would open the 2016s before the 2015s.

What I particularly appreciate about the 2016s is how frank and easy to read they are, clearly reflecting their origins and house style.

In the words of Jamet, the 2016 vintage ‘reflects the terroir of Côte-Rôtie magnificently. A great classic’.

Burgaud agrees: ‘It is the most sincere expression of Syrah from Côte-Rôtie.’

All the typical Côte-Rôtie markers are there, and are true to their soil type: those from the more southerly Blonde side are perfumed and elegant, those from the Brune side are darker and more intriguing.

The harvest might have been late, but there were clearly no problems achieving ripeness – there’s no greenness or bitterness and the wines are texturally very fine.

None that I tasted were past their best. If kept well, most will age for at another seven to eight years, and the best will endure twice as long.

Sign of the times

That these wines were made 10 years ago was clear from the tasting. Several had (non-dominating) hints of brett, which is less common today.

Use of smaller barrels and new wood was more common too in 2016 than it is today.

Some wines that appeared oaky when tasted from barrel have successfully swallowed it, but a proportion still display marked oak flavour and tannins that can blur some of the more subtle details of the terroir.

Barge is one of many winemakers who have changed their approach since then.

‘In the cellar, the ageing periods used to be longer – typically two years in demi-muids. Today, I prefer shorter ageing in foudres to better preserve the wines’ freshness and expression,’ he says.

He continues: ‘Paradoxically, my work has become more traditional over time. I have gradually come to appreciate the value of the practices handed down by previous generations.

‘My evolution, therefore, stems not only from personal exploration or technical advancements but also from a more conscious return to that heritage. What appears simple in winemaking is often the result of long, careful reflection.’

The summer felt very warm at the time, but compared to this summer it would feel decidedly comfortable. Tasting these wines made me pine for another 2016.

And today, with refined winemaking practices, more organic viticulture and vines that are 10 years older, the resulting wines would be even better.

But that doesn’t detract from what was achieved in 2016 – a great classic indeed.

Côte Rôtie 2016

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Rosé Champagne is often bottled in clear glass, but bottles that sit on brightly lit shelves or in windows are vulnerable to ‘light strike’, a fault that gives wine an unappealing vegetal, savoury flavour.

The red wine factor

Most rosé Champagne is made by the ‘assemblage’ method, with red wine from Pinot Noir added at the blending stage.

The amount of red wine added is the major factor in how deep the style is; Taittinger and Ruinart, for example (with at least 15% red wine), are deeper and fruitier than Bollinger or Charles Heidsieck (below 10%).

Upping the intensity

Less common are ‘macération’ or ‘saignée’ styles, which are made by extracting colour directly from Pinot Noir or Meunier grapes at harvest time.

Wines labelled ‘saignée’ tend to be darker and more intense.

Pink for white lovers

If you enjoy the blanc de blancs style of Champagne (made from the Chardonnay grape), there may well be a rosé for you – producers such as Ayala make delicate, citrussy rosés with more Chardonnay than Pinot in the blend.

Cellarworthy styles

Just because it’s pink doesn’t mean it won’t age. Vintage and prestige rosés can be just as ageworthy as the white versions; try cellaring them for at least three years after release to bring out delicious spicy, dried fruit complexity.

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From the earliest explorers to more recent immigrants, people have turned to both native grapes and imported European varieties to see which can make the best wines ‘from California to the New York island’.

While the most important events in the founding of our country were fuelled by imported wine, American winemakers and viticulturists have since proven sceptics wrong, shocked French wine judges, resurrected near-dead wineries and lured prestigious European wine companies into expanding to the States.

How much do you know about US wine history, from the colonial era up to the early 1990s? Find out with our 14-question challenge.

Take our US wine history quiz

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After two decades making wine at her family estate Kechris and forging a reputation for new-wave Retsina, Eleni Kechri has created 1979 Kallos. Established in 2024, after four years of research, 1979 Kallos is focused on exploring the finer nuances of this distinctive Greek wine. Trained as both a chemical engineer and oenologist, Kechri has done extensive studies on the pine resin used in Retsina – crafting the first modern wines to use sustainably sourced resin – a method that has just been granted a patent by the Hellenic Industrial Property Organisation.

Now she is exploring the influence of a forest’s terroir on the resin and resulting wine – using resin from different areas in the same wine to shine a light on “single-pineyard” expressions. We caught up with Kechri and Yiorgos Darlas, who works alongside Kechri at 1979 Kallos, to find out more.

A drink with Eleni Kechri and Yiorgos Darlas

Eleni Kechri: 'We call it meta-retsina. I saw that the resin is not the same every year. It’s not the same from every region. It's not the same from one forest to another. But the most interesting thing to see for me was the collection without sulfuric acid. The collector puts sulfuric acid in order to make the tree release more resin, more quickly.'

Yiorgos Darlas: 'This is the conventional method. The sulfuric acid paste keeps the wound open and this way the tree gives a larger amount of resin and it’s much easier for the collector. When you leave it without sulfuric paste, the resin closes the wound, so you have to go and tap the tree again.'

Eleni Kechri: 'But this sulfuric acid, it influences the quality a lot. I said, okay, what if we don't put any chemicals on the tree and, where the tree is giving us resin, we leave it free-run? We’ll have less in quantity, but I was feeling that the quality would be much, much higher. But what about the quality of our wine?

'So I started to make lots of experiments – some lots with conventional resin and some lots with sustainable resin.

'We worked three years with lots of different protocols and we found clearly [confirmed with tastings, gas chromatography and liquid chromatography] that the conventional resin has a more oily character and the sustainable resin produced more limonene, which is the citrus character, and more terpenes – the components that we like to have and are more refined.

'Not only this, we found that in sustainably collected resin, the nature is expressed: the retsina produced from the pines near the sea smells differently from the retsina produced from the pines on the mountain every year. The trees that are by the sea, they have almost the roots in the sea, so you smell the saltiness, and the mountains are different.

'It’s the first time that we are putting in the conversation the terroir of the pine in the background: imagine how many different combinations of areas, of vineyards, of grapes, of pineyards…

'It is an enormous topic – with a lot of factors to explore: the area, the family, the age of the tree, and the freshness for me. We are going to make new research now, more specific in the same areas, how different it will be family by family of trees.'

Yiorgos Darlas: 'We are going to look deeper into the terroir of the microclimate of the forest.'

Eleni Kechri: 'And we are researching now the early collection – the collection of very cold resin in April, versus hot resin in August or September – because most of the time the collectors prefer to collect resin in the hot months because it flows more easily.'

Yiorgos Darlas: 'But we know from experience, and it makes sense, that resin that flows in April and May is different, has different qualities and different aromas.'

Eleni Kechri: 'In the style of retsina that I’m making, I like mature Assyrtiko – harvesting golden grapes. I also like very low yields in the vineyard in order to have a very concentrated wine, with a lot of elements.

'With conventional resin, I had to do things during the vinification in order not to take the resin’s heavy character. But if the resin doesn’t have the oily, heavy aromas that I don’t want, I can put more [in the wine] because I want this character – so I’m not afraid to leave it.

'It’s the first time that we speak not only of the terroir of the vineyards, but in the background, we have the terroir of the pine-yards.

'It’s a matter of mentality for us – to leave the nature to be expressed. It is the sense of place of Greece: the terroir is the plant, the climat and the human. In Retsina, there are all these things two times – once for the vineyard, once for the pineyard.'

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At the table with Alejandra Chadwick

Alejandra will share her knowledge of Chile and exclusive insights into her family's benchmark Chilean wine Seña during a masterclass at the Decanter Fine Wine Encounter London on 7 November. The tasting will include several Seña wines, from 1998 to the new-release 2024 vintage.

A perfect Chilean dinner party

Insider travel tips: From Chile to London

At the coast itself, there is little better than a chiringuito on the sand: fresh seafood, something cold in the glass and the Pacific in front of you.

We're increasingly opening the vineyards to visitors. We would love to welcome people to Viñedo Chadwick, Seña and Errázuriz, because each offers a different perspective on Chile.

Join Alejandra Chadwick and taste several Seña vintages back to 1998 at the Decanter Fine Wine Encounter London on 7 November.

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As France editor, I’ve been lucky enough to taste some thrilling Burgundy over the years, from the new Domaine de la Romanée-Conti releases shrouded in mystery, to sipping samples of Domaine de Montille, Domaine Dujac and Domaine Leflaive while listening to hip hop in a 16th-century château.

I understand the compulsion to search for the kind of tension, precision, poise and concentration that stops you short mid-sentence.

But Burgundy prices remain at an all-time high, despite a general softening of the secondary fine wine market.

And with plenty of other fine and honourable wines available at far more accessible price points, the question has to be asked: why look to Burgundy at all for value or everyday drinking?

Well, even on a modest home-drinking budget, when you find the right bottle, things can just...slot into place. When you pick up a wine that’s reasonably affordable and delivers freshness and pleasure and not disappointment, you’ll keep going back to it.

So instead of abandoning the search, it’s a region I’ll keep hunting for value in – and if you have some good insights, there’s nothing like the thrill of a canny buy.

Confession time

When I’m opening wine at home, I don’t really think about how it will pair with what I’m eating. I’m just not that big on food and wine pairings. There, I’ve said it.

My partner is a great cook, so we pick a dish we want to eat, and we simply pick a wine we feel like drinking – unless there’s heavy spice and heat involved, in which case we tend to stick to beer or cider.

We cook hearty vegetarian dishes where good quality organic vegetables take centre stage. Pulses and grains feature heavily and bring great textural variety.

Our staple flavour palette ranges from the herbs and olive oil of the Mediterranean, to the deep spicing of harissa, ras el hanout, paprika and cumin, to miso, sesame and soy.

It’s simple cooking, but deep and warming. I get as much joy from the food and the wine as separate pleasures as I would from fussing over matching exact flavour, fat or acidity profiles.

That means when I buy Burgundy to drink at home, I’m not looking for a wine that needs a dish to complete it.

Wines that stand on their own

I recently discovered this £30 Montagny 1er cru 2023 from Domaine de Montorge. that packed in so much zesty flavour, there was more than enough going on in the glass to hold its own throughout the evening.

Looking for something more opulent, I recently reached for Maison Roche de Bellene’s Bourgogne Côte d’Or Chardonnay 2022. It has this gorgeous burst of ripe pineapple, the richness of vanilla cream and toast and a really appealing succulence of sweet fruit, balanced by the salinity of crushed sea shells.

It offers a lot of pleasure at the £25-£28 price point.

Beyond style I look for lesser-known appellations that punch above their price. The Pouilly-Loché Les Mûres 2022 from Clos des Rocs is one.

Loché is less well known that neighbouring Fuissé, so it’s a little cheaper, and from the 2024 vintage this site will be reclassified as premier cru, making this 2022 a sweet buy while it lasts. It’s vibrant, racy, with a little confit lemon and tarte tatin.

Auxey-Duresses is another example. The 2021 from Domaine Lafouge is a dainty, perfumed Pinot from a cooler vintage that’s perfect for early drinking and still retails under £30.

Some sleuthing pays off too. I love finding wines that are much more than what they appear.

Secret insights

Domaine Arlaud’s Roncevie Bourgogne 2023 is a favourite of mine for this reason. This 4.8ha plot of Pinot Noir was historically classified as Gevrey-Chambertin, but when Joseph Arlaud, an incomer from neighbouring Morey-St-Denis, bought it in 1964, Arlaud’s half was declassified while the other half remained Gevrey.

Essentially village-level red Burgundy at a regional-level price point, under £30.

I also look for lesser appellations made by renowned producers. Bret Brothers, the négociant side of top producer La Soufrandière, makes Cuvée Terroir du Mâconnais, Mâcon-Villages 2023 which is sourced from from parcels in Pouilly-Fuissé, Pouilly-Loché and Pouilly-Vinzelles.

It’s so mouthwatering yet also has these notes of buttery biscuit and spiced apple.

Or there’s Domaine Tessier’s Cote d'Or Bourgogne – made by a small Meursault domaine from two lieux-dits (Les Pellans and Les Herbeux) in the Meursault appellation and one (Femelottes) in Puligny.

With its rich and silky texture, it’s a steal for the quality.

I have a real soft spot for Aligoté; at its best it can be fragrant, floral, crisp and juicy. The Domaine Jean-Baptiste Ponsot, En l'Asne, Bourgogne Aligoté 2022 is a serious wine in its own right.

From 65-year-old vines (old vines are another thing I look out for, for the extra concentration and depth they can bring) grown in Rully.

And under £20?

If I want something under £20, I've more or less accepted Burgundy isn't really the place to look – personally for that money I'd rather buy something knockout from the Languedoc.

But when I need Burgundy that’s widely available and decent, I turn to a reliable cooperative, like Cave de Lugny.

It produces a fair amount of the own-label Burgundy sold at lower price points in the UK.

I particularly like the Bourgogne Blanc it makes for Yapp Bros (£18.50), and the Crémant de Bourgogne it makes for Tesco (£15).

I’m yet to be truly wowed by red Burgundy at lower price points, so for great value reds with real character I tend to look south instead, to Beaujolais, where fine and ageworthy Gamay can be found for a fraction of the equivalent quality in the Côte d’Or.

Finding everyday drinking wines in Burgundy isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible either, and once you find some favourites they’ll have been worth the wait.

Some Burgundy to drink at home

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With regards to seasonal food pairings, Fusto shares her love of Sauvignon Blanc, especially when sipped with citrus, cilantro, or anything with a hint of spice (think ceviche, crudo, and other raw bar favorites). If grilled meats and veggies are on the menu, she looks to darker-hued rosés and chillable reds, especially those made from Grenache, Gamay, and other high-acid varieties.

For crisp summer produce, crunchy pickled veggies, or when she’s really not sure what she’s in the mood for, Fusto usually lands on easy-drinking bubbles.

'When I don’t know what to drink, I reach for something sparkling,' she says, highlighting the versatile and spunky personality of Prosecco.

From budget-friendly bubbly to refreshing whites, rosés and chillable reds, Fusto’s following bottle recommendations promise to keep you satiated all summer long.

Fusto's five wines to sip this summer

Sommariva Prosecco di Conegliano-Valdobbiadene Superiore Brut NV

'When it's 100+ F in New York and I'm sticking to my clothes, I am not looking to think too hard, ball out, or show off–I want bubbles that are easy-going, juicy and straightforward,' she says. The answer? An ice-cold bottle of high-quality Prosecco, particularly the Superiore Brut NV from Sommariva. 'It has the lip-smacking tart juiciness of a fresh Granny Smith apple, delicate white floral aromas and zingy acidity to keep everything playful and bright,' Fusto says. 'Think of it like the sparkling equivalent of a refreshing glass of lemonade. It’s so pleasurable, you could drink it all day long–no need to be super cerebral about this.'

Dog Point Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2024

In the words of Fusto, haters need not apply here. 'Sauvignon Blanc is "that girl" and always will be,' she says, citing the signature herbaceousness and distinct citrus notes synonymous with wines made from it. Additionally, Fusto notes that Sauvignon Blanc-based wines typically have high acidity, making them perfect for summer fare, as well as cracking open and sipping solo on a hot day. 'I’ve been drinking Dog Point Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc nonstop, and I even pour it by the glass at Manhatta – yes, I said New Zealand,' she says, highlighting the wine’s unique, savory curry leaf and Thai basil aromas, as well as its long, salty finish. 'It’s a showstopper,' she affirms.

Tiberio Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo 2023

Rosé and summer go hand in hand, and for Fusto, Tiberio Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo 2023 has become a go-to. Crafted entirely from the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo grape, this vibrantly colored wine oozes with flavors of pomegranate, sour cherry, blood orange, and Mediterranean herbs–though don’t let its dark hue fool you. Contrary to the numerous myths surrounding rosé, darker-hued bottles don’t mean sweet or heavy. 'The wine is lifted and drinkable like a white, but has more stuffing and concentration than a lighter, less extracted rosé style,' she says. 'I highly recommend it with barbecue.'

Domaine de Terrebrune Bandol 2024

During her time at Cote, Fusto discovered her passion for pairing rosé and grilled meats, especially less rich cuts. 'I used to be more or less indifferent to rosé, as I would typically reach for a chilled red if I wanted some substance; however, I’ve since come to enjoy the summer spoils of a juicy grilled skirt or hangar steak with a darker, more full-bodied rosé,' she says, emphasizing that textured, fuller-bodied expressions produced with a bit more extraction – like Domaine de Terrebrune Bandol 2024 – work best here. Crafted from a Mourvèdre-dominant blend, the wine’s structured body and complex notes of red fruits, juicy citrus, and salty sea air come to life when paired with equally savory summer meats.

Domaine Giacometti 'Sempre Cuntenu' 2024

Come warm weather months, Fusto reveals that Manhatta’s customers can’t get enough of chillable reds, though not all bottles are created equal. 'A chillable red wine should have a higher acidity-to-tannin profile (or softer tannins in general) and a fruit-forward, juicy flavor profile,' she says. While Beaujolais is a classic option, she’s been reaching for light Corsican reds made from the Sciacarello grape. 'This bottle offers a great bang for your buck and absolutely sings with a chill,' she says, stating that wine has become a non-negotiable fridge staple for her. 'It's great with food, it's great alone. Sempre Cuntenu literally translates to "happy wine" in the Corsican dialect, and I couldn't agree more.'

Summer is made for exploration

Above all, Fusto states that summer is one of the best times to experiment with regions and varieties, thanks to the season’s light-hearted, laid-back nature.

Currently, she’s diving deeper into the wine regions of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, as well as the appellations of coastal California. 'There are a ton of premium producers in these areas, and you’re also going to get a lot more value for your money,' she says. 'Trust me, there are so many bangers to be found at solid entry points.'

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Browsing the shelves of Moore Wilson’s, the iconic grocery store in Wellington, New Zealand, I came across a bottle labelled Petit Manseng, from the Marlborough grower Forrest.

It sounded vaguely Chinese, possibly a miniature horse breed, though it is in fact one of Jurançon’s two principal grapes.

I took it home, where the off-dry little Manseng made a big splash: lush yet electric, exuberant yet poised – a tropical beach party in a wine glass. Yet each time I returned, the bottle was gone, and life beat on.

We were reunited years later in Paris, thanks to an astute sommelier at Macéo restaurant, who pointed me to a Jurançon Sec from Domaine Bellegarde.

Though the appellation is traditionally associated with sweet wines, this was a dry expression of striking tension and lift.

In the foothills of the Pyrenees

Spread across the verdant foothills of the Pyrenees southwest of Pau, Jurançon's vineyards climb in south-facing amphitheatres, framed by the Pic du Midi d'Ossau.

The appellation divides into three distinct zones: Chapelle de Rousse, to the northeast, where vines root into poudingue – a cement-like soil of chalk and river-worn pebbles; Monein, to the west, on more varied, molasse-dominant soils and now the most widely planted; and Lasseube, in the south, smaller and sandier.

Situated in the lee of the Pyrenees, the mountains shield the vines from harsher continental extremes, while the Atlantic keeps the growing season temperate – together preserving the acidity and aromatic intensity that define these wines.

Winemaking in Jurançon dates back to Roman antiquity and by the 14th century the Parliament of Navarre had classified its best sites – one of France’s earliest examples of vineyard classification.

Legend holds that the infant Henri IV had his lips touched with a drop of Jurançon at his 1553 baptism, by which time it had become a wine of court ritual.

Colette, 19th century French writer, actress and journalist, would later call it ‘a prince – warm, imperious and insidious, like all great seducers’.

Sweet to dry

For most of its history, Jurançon was synonymous with sweet wine. The appellation was classified for its moelleux (sweet) style in 1936 – among France’s earliest APs – while the dry expression was not recognised until 1975.

Since then, momentum has shifted toward the dry style, in line with a broader retreat from dessert wines.

Petit Manseng – the very grape that started all this – excels across the entire spectrum. Small and thick-skinned, it is defined by acid and concentration, which only intensifies through foehn-fanned passerillage (drying on the vine).

The traditional engine of sweet Jurançon, in dry form it delivers density, minerality and ageworthy grip, often developing truffled notes over time.

Its offspring, Gros Manseng, is the workhorse: larger-berried, less concentrated and more reliably ripe, generous and fruit-forward.

Supporting local varieties such as Camaralet, Lauzet and Courbu round out some blends, adding spice, aromatic lift and finesse, with Camaralet especially prized in dry wines for its peppery, cinnamon accent.

Three delectable styles

Like its three distinct zones, three styles express a striking range.

Jurançon Sec, often led by Gros Manseng, can be broad in texture yet focused by Petit Manseng’s vivid acidity, with flavours ranging from citrus and stone fruits to pineapple and quince, sometimes picking up a smoky or savoury edge over time.

Sweet Jurançon, the appellation’s historic heart, layers ripe mango, candied citrus, apricot and spice over a structure that keeps richness in check.

Vendanges Tardives (late harvest wines) are almost impossibly concentrated, unctuous yet vibrant thanks to the tensile acidity that is Jurançon’s signature.

Across all three styles, what lingers is not simply opulence or freshness but a radiant tension, like an autumn sun rising over cool Pyrenean hillsides.

The future is bright

‘What has always fascinated me about the Mansengs is their ability to reconcile power and freshness,’ says Antoine Arraou of the biodynamic Château Lafitte, one of Jurançon’s standout estates.

‘Few grape varieties are capable of reaching such high levels of ripeness while retaining such acidic energy.’

He is among the growers expanding Jurançon’s stylistic range and sharpening its contemporary identity.

‘Many astute observers have said this is the next Jura,’ says Arraou.

Having heard the same comparison applied to other up-and-coming appellations, such as Savoie and Bugey, I ask him to explain.

‘A hilly vineyard, a cool climate, distinctive grape varieties, geological diversity, limited volumes and wines with strong personalities – the reasons that drew wine lovers to the Jura also exist here.’

Yet while Jura’s cult success has pushed its prices steadily upward, Jurançon still offers striking value. At the cellar door, most Jurançon Sec sells for €12-€20; a smaller tier of ambitious cuvées runs closer to €30, with rare bottles climbing to €50-€70.

For readers who love the tension of Loire Chenin Blanc or the structure of serious dry Alsace, Jurançon Sec offers a compelling alternative: distinctive, long-lived and affordable.

As in love, what begins in contingency ends in necessity. Jurançon, for my money, deserves a seat at the table of noble white wines.

Whether you seek it out or stumble upon it by chance, taste and see if you do not fall for this great seducer, the little prince of the Pyrenees.

Six Jurançon wines to get you hooked

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The distinction is both geographical and cultural. It separates countries with centuries of vinous heritage from those where winegrowing took root from the Age of Exploration onwards.

At the same time, it contrasts Europe’s view of wine as an everyday staple, identified primarily by its place of origin and produced under strict appellation laws, with the greater regulatory freedom of the likes of Australia and Chile, where winemakers enjoy wider creative latitude and grape variety is often central to the liquid’s identity.

The distinction carries some stylistic archetypes, too.

Old World wine is associated with restraint, structure, higher acidity, firmer tannins, and a profile shaped to complement food or reward ageing.

The New World, by contrast, is thought of being defined by generosity, ripe fruit, and immediate approachability.

These broad stereotypes were once a useful – although imperfect – framework for understanding wine. Today they are simply obsolete.

The global dissemination of ideas and techniques, climate change, and shifting economic and geopolitical realities have blurred the boundaries between regions and their approaches to winegrowing.

Producers around the world are now borrowing from each other, creating regional and national identities that are neither wholly ‘old’, nor ‘new’, but something far more nuanced and utterly unique.

Redrawing the wine map: A short A–Z guide covering key growing areas

Australia

The rich, jammy Shiraz that defined Australia’s international image in the 1990s remains an important part of the country’s output, but winemakers are now also producing mineral, citrus-driven Chardonnays, perfumed Pinot Noirs, and vibrant Grenache.

Australians are embracing cooler-climate winemaking in regions such as Tasmania and the Mornington Peninsula, and adopting Mediterranean varieties, better suited to the country’s warm (and warming) climate.

Central Europe

The likes of Germany, Austria and Hungary are redefining what Old World means today, with wineries doubling down on precision, freshness and site expression through complex Rieslings, perfumed Grüner Veltliners, and laser-sharp dry Furmints.

Eastern Europe & the Caucasus

While many former Soviet republics still produce the unassuming semi-sweet wines traditionally popular with Eastern European palates, they have steadily shifted towards drier styles with greater character, quality and regional identity.

Romania and Moldova offer some of the world’s best-value bottlings from both indigenous and international grapes.

Georgia has successfully revived the ancient winemaking tradition in clay qvevri, while neighbouring Armenia – whose millennia-old winemaking heritage was interrupted during the Soviet era – is forging a new identity through experimentation and innovation.

England & Wales

Britain’s modern wines are largely inspired by France, from traditional-method fizz (the flagship style) to the high-quality still Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs that are becoming increasingly common as the climate warms.

Yet all of it is produced within a framework of entrepreneurial freedom more often associated with the New World.

France

France is the archetype of the Old World, with appellations and a strong sense of local heritage still at the heart of its wine culture. Still, new approaches have percolated here, too.

Vignerons craft wines that are more approachable in their youth, including in strongholds of tradition like Bordeaux and Burgundy, but without sacrificing structure, elegance or sense of place.

Many place greater emphasis on grape varieties too, particularly in more viticulturally liberal regions such as Languedoc-Roussillon (now part of the Occitanie region), and a growing number are even stepping outside the appellation system altogether to experiment with new styles, philosophies and techniques.

Italy

Italy’s wine identity is a mosaic of local cultures, landscapes, and climates, all linked by food-friendly acidity, savoury character, firm tannins and a remarkable wealth of indigenous varieties.

Alongside these elements, there exists an equally important universe of international grapes, innovative or unconventional winemaking and more contemporary approaches, with dramatically different interpretations of the same grapes or style often coexisting within a single region.

The Mediterranean

Winemaking in the eastern Mediterranean predates the Old World itself, stretching back thousands of years to the Phoenicians and the ancient Greeks.

That millennia-old heritage remains central to the area’s identity today, through ancient grape varieties such as Lebanon’s Merwah and historic wines like Cyprus’ Commandaria.

It’s only through the adoption of modern winegrowing, however, that these regions have emerged onto the international stage, with wines such as Santorini’s Assyrtiko earning acclaim from sommeliers around the world.

New Zealand

New Zealand’s international reputation was built on the vibrant, intensely aromatic and instantly recognisable Sauvignon Blancs of Marlborough, but the country’s identity has broadened considerably in recent years.

New Zealand is now equally respected for Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Syrah that combine finesse and structure with an unmistakable New World exuberance.

Portugal & Spain

Portugal and Spain are one of modern wine’s greatest success stories. For much of their recent history, their wines were honest regional expressions destined largely for local consumption, with the likes of Port or Rioja some of the most notable exceptions.

Today, the Iberian Peninsula offers arguably the best value in Western Europe, its wines combining distinctive regional identities and a remarkable wealth of native grape varieties with modern technical precision.

South America

Argentina and Chile helped define the quintessential New World stereotype by building their international reputations on fruit-forward expressions of varieties such as Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon and Carmenère.

While those wines remain central to their identities, both countries have increased their awareness of alternative stylistic approaches, with Argentina’s Mendoza in particular leading the way in exploring the influence of altitude, vineyard site, and soil.

South America is also contributing to redefine viticulture’s geographical limits, from the arid landscapes of Chile’s Atacama Desert to the cool, wet vineyards of the Bío Bío Valley in the far south, and the breathtaking high-altitude vineyards of Argentina’s Salta province.

South Africa

South Africa is often seen as bridging the stylistic divide between Old World restraint and the fruit-driven approach associated with the New World.

It offers some of the world’s best value, while its wealth of old bush vines and a new generation of quality-focused producers are crafting liquids of remarkable character and structure.

USA

American wine was once exclusively synonymous with the bold Cabs and heavily oaked Chardonnay of California’s Napa Valley.

In recent decades, however, quality winemaking has spread across the country, with states such as Oregon and New York's Finger Lakes producing elegant cool-climate expressions, and Washington State bottling exceptional reds from its hot, dry east.

California itself has been challenging its stereotypes, with a new generation of winemakers exploring cooler sites, Mediterranean varieties and lighter, more restrained styles.

The Rest of the World

Once confined to a relatively small slice of the world, wine has become a truly global cultural phenomenon.

It’s now made in almost every corner of the earth, from Mexico and China (both rapidly emboldening their vinous ambitions) to the Balkans, where countries are reinterpreting their winemaking heritage through a more modern lens.

At the same time, improved viticultural techniques, climate change and humans’ uncontrollable drive to push boundaries are expanding the map of wine even further.

The emergence of wine industries in Nordic countries such as Sweden and Denmark, or tropical regions like Bali and Thailand, would have been unimaginable a few decades ago.

Wine is no longer ‘old’, nor ‘new’, but rather defined by the constantly evolving relationship between place, people and the global exchange of ideas.

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Although it is endowed with the smallest vineyard area among the ‘golden triangle’ villages of Meursault, Chassagne and Puligny, it boasts some or all of no fewer than four grands crus: Montrachet, Bâtard-Montrachet, Chevalier-Montrachet and Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet.

From this epicentre of grands crus, top-notch premiers crus radiate north, and village-level vineyards stretch down the slope.

It is a compact, ideally situated terroir. Superlative wine, though, requires more than a brilliant site.

It also needs winemaking talent, and Puligny today enjoys a rich array of talent ranging from experienced domaines with deep traditions to newer domaines and innovative young winemakers that make this a truly exciting village.

Puligny: Five family names to know

Domaine Leflaive & Olivier Leflaive

Domaine Leflaive is among the finest producers of white wine – not just in Puligny, but in the world.

Despite a period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s when the domaine struggled with premature oxidation, the wines are today better than ever, thanks to the efforts of previous winemaker, Pierre Vincent.

A recent tasting of the 2024s showed that his replacement, Amandine Brillanceau, is carrying the domaine forward in style.

The domaine farms an enviable portfolio of vineyards, from the grands crus of Bâtard-Montrachet and Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet (where it is the largest landowner), to Chevalier-Montrachet and on to the equally compelling premier cru offerings, making magical wines that age supremely well.

This domaine, however, is not the only Leflaive in town. Olivier Leflaive produces a range of delicious wines under his eponymous négociant business, alongside his brother Patrick.

Although Olivier became co-manager of Domaine Leflaive with his uncle Vincent in 1982, in 1984 he founded his négociant operation, and by 1994 he had departed the family business to focus entirely on this business.

The Olivier Leflaive négociant business has flourished; his Bourgogne Les Sétilles is among the most reliable entry-level white Burgundies.

He always makes wines from his own vineyards, marked ‘Récolte du Domaine’, which include Chevalier-Montrachet and the Puligny premiers crus Pucelles and Folatières.

The winemaking today is overseen by Solène Panigai, successor to Franck Grux, who had been the technical director for 35 years.

Chartron

Another luminous name in Puligny is Chartron. The domaine produces delightful wines throughout the range, but is known above all for its three clos: Clos des Chevaliers, Clos du Cailleret, and the Clos de la Pucelle monopole.

The family has owned these plots since the early 20th century. Portions have been replanted over time, and the oldest vines date to the 1950s and 1960s.

Jean-Michel Chartron is the fifth-generation owner and the winemaker. His style is elegant and sophisticated: the wines are concentrated and focused without showy amounts of reduction or oak, making them wines of restraint and timeless beauty.

The Carillon clan

The Carillon family has lived in Puligny longer than either the Leflaives or the Chartrons, tracing their ancestry to the 16th century.

Well into the years following World War II, however, the family was selling the majority of its production to négociants.

By the 1990s, the domaine, then known as Louis Carillon, was run by brothers Jacques and François. With the 2010 vintage, the brothers split the vineyards between them.

Jacques got the slice of Bienvenues-Bâtard Montrachet, premiers crus Referts, Champs Canet and some of the Perrières, and labels under Domaine Jacques Carillon.

François farms the Folatières, Combettes, Champs Gain and the balance of the Perrières and produces village-level wines from Enseignères, Aubues and Clos du Vieux Château, labelling under Domaine Franc.çois Carillon.

François’ sons Paul and Mathis have recently branched out on their own as Carillon Frères, and are producing delicious wines.

To date, there is the village-level Noyer Bret, and a premier cru Cuvée Loulou blended from the family sites and named for their grandfather.

Pernot

Another winemaking dynasty in Puligny is the Pernot family. The older wines from Domaine Paul Pernot age gracefully, while young Alvina Pernot is among the most exciting new voices in the village.

The granddaughter of Paul Pernot, she and her husband Philippe Abadie began their own domaine in 2018.

Alvina’s style is beguilingly taut, slightly reductive, with a racy finesse that suits the character of the village.

She presses the grapes as whole bunches without sulphur under the press and ferments with native yeasts in mostly used barrels.

The grands crus from Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet, Bâtard-Montrachet and Chevalier-Montrachet are superb, but the entire range bears investigation, particularly the premiers crus Peux Bois, Champs Canet Clos de la Jaquelotte, Clos de la Garenne, Clos des Folatières, Caillerets and Pucelles, and the village-level Rue aux Vaches and the Clos des Noyers Brets.

Thomas-Collardot

I was seduced on my most recent visit by the wines from another relative newcomer, Domaine Thomas-Collardot, whose vineyards were leased out until 2010.

The mother-and-son team of Jacqueline and Matthieu Collardot began bottling the wines under their own label in 2015 and received organic certification in 2023.

The wines are fermented and matured partly in barrels (mostly used) and partly in glass globes.

They produce delicious village-level Puligny wines from Enseignères, Nosroyes, Derrières les Velles, Houlières, Au Paupillot and Rue aux Vaches, along with a blended wine called Les Climats.

The range is completed by the premiers crus Hameau de Blagny and Folatières Au Chaniot.

Change is in the air in Puligny, and the village’s unique combination of established domaines and a new generation of players augurs well for the future of great white Burgundy.

Eight wines to try

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Most of us think of Sauvignon Blanc as an aromatic, early-drinking style, but Sancerre offers so much more.

Do as the growers do and wait a few years for the primary fruit characters to soften, revealing the complexities of the terroir.

The 2022 vintage is drinking beautifully right now.

Check out cuvées parcellaires

Small-batch wines from specific sites have proliferated in recent years, reflecting the appellation’s complex geology.

While there are no designated premiers crus in Sancerre, look out for wines from premium vineyard sites such as Monts Damnés, Cul de Beaujeu and Chêne Marchand.

The significance of silex

Following the success of the late Didier Dagueneau’s wine Silex, the name has almost become a brand in its own right, featuring on many Sancerre labels. ‘Silex’ is a reference to flint or silica.

These soil types make up a minority of the vineyard area in the region and produce wines said to possess a distinctive, powerful and smoky minerality.

It’s a great destination for wine lovers

One of the prettiest villages in France, Sancerre is perfect for a tasting trip. There are countless opportunities to visit and taste, often paired with a plate of the local goat’s cheese.

The vineyards are crisscrossed by a network of hiking paths and cycle trails for those wishing to get up close and personal with the vines.

Producer name is key

Sancerre sells at a premium these days, so it pays to seek out good producers.

Happily, there’s no shortage of winemaking talent, to be found at domaines Tabordet, Paul Prieur, Denizot, Claude Riffault and Jean-Philippe Agisson, to name a few.

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Then look no further than the wines of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). We asked three regional experts for their views at this year's Ultimate Central and Eastern Europe wine fair, an annual trade event for wines from that part of the world.

For Decanter World Wine Awards Co-Chair Beth Willard, we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. ‘These are old wine-producing countries that have undergone something of a renaissance over the last 20 to 30 years, and now we are seeing just how good these wines are.’

The personal touch

And one of the key reasons for this growing interest? The personal side of things. ‘I love the human story,' says Caroline Gilby MW, the joint Regional Chair for Central & Eastern Europe at the Decanter World Wine Awards. 'I think that is what is so exciting about this part of the world.'

Recent decades have witnessed a huge wave of investment and winemaking experimentation. Fair organiser Zsuzsa Toronyi explains: ‘CEE wines also come with compelling stories. Many family-owned wineries have revived historic vineyards and traditions, creating wines that reflect local culture, heritage, and a strong sense of place’.

As new generations take the lead of these revived traditional family wineries, excellence is to be found from both international and local varieties. In the mood for pale pink bubbles? Try a Moldovan pink spumant from Dom Davidescu made from the Rară Neagră variety. Keen on a traditional Blanc de Noirs style? Why not pick up a bottle of Serbian producer Aleksandrović's saline and steely Trijumf Noir Brut.

Travel through the glass to the Croatian island of Vis, where intriguing red wines are made from the local Plavac Mali variety. Pair a sticky Tarte Tatin with a decadently sweet late harvest Furmint–Muscat blend from Hungary.

Taste widely. Most importantly, have fun while you are at it.

A journey of discovery that’s kind on the wallet

More than a mere talking point for the table, there is great value to be found among these lesser-known discovery varieties and regions. As Toronyi comments: ‘They offer a combination of quality, value, authenticity, and discovery that is increasingly hard to find in more established wine regions’.

Bolstered by year-on-year successes at the Decanter World Wine Awards and a promising rise in carefully curated wine bar lists featuring lesser-known wines, the diversity on the UK market is exciting.

Gilby, also a co-organiser of the fair, notes: ‘You may still have to hunt down some of these wines from specialist importers and independent merchants, but even some supermarkets are recognising that CEE wines deserve space in their ranges.’

Five wines to try

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In 2021, I organised a blind tasting of Cinsaults from all over the world and it revealed countless brilliant examples of this wonderful grape.

So, five years later, it was time to repeat the exercise to see how Cinsault has progressed.

I was joined by two top tasters – Natalie Earl, Decanter’s regional editor for France, and author and podcaster Henry Jeffreys – and together we worked our way through 52 examples of this unsung grape.

A stellar variety

It turns out there has been an important development in the world of Cinsault since the last tasting. A group of like-minded winemakers has formed a body to promote this under-appreciated grape, called Les Cinsónautes.

One of the founders is Guillaume Baron of Clos de la Barthassade in Aniane, Languedoc. ‘I’ve always loved Cinsault,’ he says, ‘its drinkability, lightness, suppleness and its ability to translate terroir.’ He describes it as a cross between Gamay, Pinot Noir and Grenache.

He’s also part of Les Aligoteurs, a group formed in 2018 to promote another underrated grape – Aligoté. ‘I realised that Cinsault shared the same poor treatment that Aligoté suffered from in the past,’ says Baron, and so he wanted to help reverse its fortunes.

For too long, Cinsault has been widely considered a second-class grape variety, cropped highly to bulk out blends, make cheap rosé or basic vin de soif.

In fact, some believe the grape’s name comes from cinq sauts, meaning five buckets: if you crop it highly enough, one vine will give you that many grapes.

But with lower yields, gentle handling and appropriate care, Cinsault can make beautiful wines. What’s more, it ripens at just 11.5%-13.5% abv.

The tasting

Five years ago, it was South Africa that dominated the leaderboard. Since then, France has improved dramatically.

The top 10 this year contained five wines from each of these countries – but France took the top three places.

‘One of Cinsault's real strengths is its beautiful soaring fragrance,’ says Earl, ‘and that was really on show in the French wines… Many examples felt extremely well handled and cared for.’

Some of the French bottlings felt clunky and over-extracted last time, but now the grape’s innate delicacy and tenderness is being embraced and celebrated.

‘The French are clearly doing something exciting, they’re rediscovering it,’ says Jeffreys.

South African examples don’t seem to have progressed quite so quickly, and are stylistically more varied.

‘The South Africans weren’t as strong as last time but there were some absolute stand-out wines, especially from Natte Valleij,’ says Jeffreys.

There were very good individual wines from Chile and the USA, too.

Brightest stars

We all picked our top seven from the tasting, and occasionally our favourites overlapped. Four wines were chosen by two tasters:

- Domaine Allegria, Spirale, Pays d’Hérault, Languedoc, France 2024

- Mas Cal Demoura, Belle Fiolle, Vin de France, Languedoc, France 2024 (grown near Terrasses du Larzac)

- Leeu Passant, Old Vines Basson Cinsault, Wellington, South Africa 2023

- Domaine Sainte Marie de Crozes, L'Escapade, Vin de France, Languedoc, France 2024 (grown near Corbières)

Two wines were unanimously selected as favourites by all three tasters:

- Alain Chabanon, Cinq Saut, St Guilhem le Désert, Languedoc, France 2023

- Domaine du Pas de l'Escalette, Ze Cinsault, Pays Hérault, Languedoc, France 2024 (grown near Terrasses du Larzair

There was one main criticism however: the grape is prone to reduction, which caused certain bottles to show rubbery aromas on opening.

But there were fewer instances this time round, and usually a brief decant helps reduce this.

Cinsault doesn’t produce blockbusters or icon wines. Rather than structure, power and complexity, what it offers is freshness, aromatic precision, lacy tannins and a sense of purity and levity.

And it’s delicious on its own, lightly chilled.

‘They were incredibly drinkable, concentrated but not cumbersome or heavy, with refreshing acidity. A wine for modern times,’ says Earl.

The stars have aligned, and it’s Cinsault’s time to shine.

Matt Walls 20 highest-scoring Cinsault

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Global sales of Italy’s budget-friendly fizz reached 307 million bottles in 2013.

That meant Prosecco overtook Champagne for the first time (by volume), and it has pulled well clear in the ensuing years.

Annual production now stands at 700 million bottles, and fans can’t get enough of this light, refreshing sparkler.

Many enjoy Prosecco on its own, but it’s also a key ingredient in popular cocktails like the Aperol Spritz.

Scroll down to discover 10 award-winning Prosecco wine wines from DWWA 2026

Why is Prosecco Day on August 13?

Riondo, one of the leading Prosecco producers, established Prosecco Day in 2016.

By that point, Prosecco was a cultural phenomenon in the UK and other parts of Europe, but Riondo wanted to boost its popularity in the US.

The winery chose August 13, as it’s the height of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, making it the perfect time to enjoy a chilled glass of Prosecco.

What began as an American marketing campaign has been enthusiastically adopted around the world.

In 2021, the US overtook the UK as Prosecco’s largest export market.

More than 80% of Prosecco is typically exported, with the US, the UK, France, Germany and Belgium among the top destinations.

A village, a grape and a name change

Prosecco takes its name from a small village near Trieste, which is close to Italy’s border with Slovenia. The grape is thought to have grown there for centuries.

Both the wine and the grape were traditionally called Prosecco, but that changed in 2009.

Italy wanted to protect its local industry from global competition, so it renamed the grape Glera and turned Prosecco into a strict geographical designation.

Prosecco must now be produced from grapes grown across a defined zone spanning the Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia regions.

Some of the finest expressions come from the steep hills between the towns of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene.

The landscape there is so striking that UNESCO added it to the World Heritage list in 2019.

Wines from this area carry the superior DOCG classification, and the tiny Cartizze hill within the zone is treated as the region’s unofficial grand cru.

How Prosecco gets its sparkle

Unlike Champagne, which gains its bubbles through a slow second fermentation in the bottle, Prosecco is made using the tank method.

The second fermentation happens in large pressurised steel tanks. It’s faster and less expensive, but it preserves the fresh, fruity aromas of the Glera grape.

Prosecco is designed to be light-bodied, youthful and easy-drinking, offering a different experience to Champagne.

One label quirk is worth knowing. A Prosecco labelled Extra Dry is sweeter than one labelled Brut, so if you prefer your fizz dry, Brut is the one to reach for.

You’ll also find fully sparkling (spumante) and gently sparkling (frizzante) styles, while Prosecco rosé – which is made with a splash of Pinot Noir – has been an official category since 2020.

Prosecco conquers the world

Prosecco’s rise has been remarkable. In the early 21^st century, it was relatively unknown outside of Italy, but it became the world’s bestselling sparkler in the space of a generation.

It’s easy to see why Prosecco has proved so popular, as combines a crowd-pleasing style with an affordable price tag, offering everyday luxury and easy-going charm.

Prosecco is also the engine behind two of the world’s bestselling cocktails: the almost ubiquitous Aperol Spritz and the peachy Bellini, which was invented at Harry’s Bar in Venice.

Its success has even sparked an international turf war. In Australia’s King Valley, growers planted the grape back when it was still legally called Prosecco.

They continue to sell Australian 'Prosecco' at home and in some export markets – much to the fury of the Italians, who insist the name belongs to their protected hills alone.

Wherever you stand on the dispute, it’s proof of how valuable those eight letters have become.

Prosecco Day is the perfect excuse to put a bottle on ice. Pour a glass, raise a toast to the summer and join the celebration.

DWWA 2026: 10 award-winning Prosecco wines to try

Il Colle 1978, Rive di Rua di Feletto Extra Brut, Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore Rive, Veneto 2024
Platinum, 97 points
Expressive apple blossom, pear and peach aromas sizzle over the nose and voluminous texture, tamed by steely mineral undertones. Lush lemongrass, thyme and lime notes furnish the infinite perlage and chalky acidity. Long and precise. Alcohol 11%

Bisol 1542, Dry, Prosecco Valdobbiadene Superiore di Cartizze, Veneto 2025
Gold, 95 points
An absolute treat, demonstrating immaculate depth and precision. Pear, citrus, elderflower and acacia aromas swirl around the nose with a melon succulence glazing the mousse. Alc 11.5%

Borgo Molino, Motivo Millesimato Brut, Prosecco Asolo Superiore, Veneto 2025
Gold, 95 points
Fragrant pot pourri, blossom and baked apple notes decorate the nose and sink into the peachy palate with its fine mousse and subtle mineral aftertaste. Alc 11.5%

Casa Farive, Brut, Prosecco di Valdobbiadene Superiore, Veneto NV
Silver, 92 points
Intense, honeysuckle, green melon, grapefruit pith, orange, sweet dough and almond blossom, well-supported by a bright chalky white fruits finish. Alc 11%

Collalto, Isabella Di Collalto Brut, Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore Rive, Veneto 2024
Silver, 92 points
Spicy and intense aromas of white flower, crushed herbs, showing some chalkiness, long finish with green fruit notes: really well-made! Alc 12%

Montelvini, Collezione Serenitatis Extra Dry, Prosecco Asolo Superiore, Veneto NV
Silver, 92 points
Vibrantly fresh and fruity with fuzzy peach and Gala apple flavours; lovely purity of the fruit for the price point. Alc 11.5%

Luca Ricci, Brut, Prosecco di Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore, Veneto NV
Silver, 91 points
Bright and vibrant jasmine, sea breeze and white peach; gently frothy and creamy with fresh almond character. Alc 11%

Tenuta Amadio, Brut, Prosecco Asolo Superiore, Veneto 2025
Silver, 91 points
Frothy and fun with loads of pear drop and fuzzy peach flavours. Generous and moreish style with pink grapefruit finish. Alc 11.5%

Tenuta Castaldo, Brut, Prosecco Asolo Superiore, Veneto 2025
Silver, 91 points
Bright notes of green apple and tinned pineapple framed by fresh herbs and grapefruit, lingers with fine bubbles. Alc 11.5%

Vedova, Extra Brut, Prosecco di Valdobbiadene Superiore, Veneto 2025
Silver, 91 points
Candied fleshy peach, melon, honeysuckle, white rose mingle with jasmine, lime peel and white fruit with salty, mineral-chalky finish. Alc 11%

Search all DWWA 2026 results

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It’s hard to say for sure, but recent data points to a gradual, if limited, challenge to reds’ fine wine market hegemony. Chardonnay, and specifically white Burgundy, is the spearhead.

Geraint Carter, of Bordeaux Index and the LiveTrade online trading platform, said: ‘The white Burgundy share of our [total] trading over the last decade has gone from about 2% to about 5%, by value.’

Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, said trading by value on still white wine rose 650% from 2010 to 2025, when it reached 10.5% of total trade value. Sparkling wine also jumped 1,100% in that period, while reds dropped 15%.

Carter said the trend should be seen within a wider context of Burgundy, Champagne and other regions diluting red Bordeaux’s dominance. ‘It’s a much more heterogeneous [market] picture than it was 15 years ago.’

Tom Burchfield, head of decision intelligence at Liv-ex, told Decanter: ‘Collectors’ cellars have undoubtedly become more diverse, and that will be a factor. It is perhaps reflective of a broader change in taste and consumption habits, but I don’t think you can underestimate the impact Burgundy has had. Interest in Burgundy (both red and white) has soared over the past decade.’

How far can this go? Carter said trading was focused on icons (see table below), yet it’s necessarily a thin market due to relatively tiny production volumes on individual wines.

Prices are correspondingly high. While it has been affected by the broader recent market downturn, there is some evidence that top white Burgundy has been relatively resilient.

‘White Burgundy didn’t rise [in price] to the same degree as red Burgundy between 2021 and 2022, and subsequently didn’t fall as far,’ said Burchfield.

US auction house Hart Davis Hart highlighted white Burgundy’s allure after its June fine wine sale, noting: ‘White Burgundy continued its skyward trajectory, with everything from 1980s [Domaines] Leflaive and Ramonet to 2020s Bernard-Bonin and Paul Pillot setting new record prices.

The Bordeaux Index view

Fine wine & spirits specialist Bordeaux Index kindly sponsors this section of Decanter, and provides its view on the market here every issue. It can be found at bordeauxindex.com

Back to the future

The fine wine market is often described as fragmented and lacking direction.

In reality, today’s landscape looks less like disorder and more like a return to historical norms.

The true anomaly was surely the 15-20 years of boom, bust and boom again, when Asia exerted an extraordinary influence, elevating Bordeaux to an unprecedented position of dominance.

That era has passed. Bordeaux remains the cornerstone of the fine wine market, but its decline from overwhelming supremacy is the single biggest structural shift of the past decade.

The beneficiaries are well documented: red Burgundy, Champagne and, on the white side, white Burgundy have all captured a greater share of collectors’ attention.

Fragmentation extends beyond buying preferences. The days when one critic could make or break a vintage are over, and wine styles are less uniform.

Climate change is demanding new approaches in both vineyard and cellar.

And at the same time, outstanding wine is now being made almost everywhere. Even the most historic domaines increasingly face competition from ambitious terrea novea.

Perhaps the greatest change, however, is cultural.

Fine wine now behaves more like other luxury markets: trends emerge faster, information travels instantly and fashion exerts a greater influence than ever before.

Today’s market may feel fragmented, but it’s also broader, more transparent and, arguably, far more interesting.

Auction highlights: Italy & rare Sherry

Italian fine wines have been a highlight of the auction scene in recent weeks, but rarely sighted 19th-century Sherry also commanded bidders’ attention.

Giacomo Conterno, Monfortino is a hallowed name for Barolo lovers and, in late June, US-based Hart Davis Hart (HDH) brought forth what it described as ‘the most comprehensive offering of Monfortino ever to appear at auction’.

Highlights included the superstar Barolo 2010 vintage. Six bottles of Monfortino Barolo Riserva 2010 sold for $11,950 (high estimate: $9,500), including buyer’s premium, while a single magnum of the same wine fetched $4,183 (high e: $3,200).

From Tuscany, six bottles of Soldera, Case Basse, Brunello di Montalcino Riserva 2004 sold for $17,925 (high e: $14,000). HDH’s June auction was 100% sold – its fifth consecutive ‘white glove’ result.

Elsewhere, Zachys offered Italian gems from New York’s legendary, now-shuttered Barbetta restaurant; the Rolling Stones and Al Pacino are listed among its past patrons.

A Delaware-based ‘live’ sale in late June featured several wines from the 1990s, including 12 bottles of Bruno Giacosa, Santo Stefano di Neive, Barbaresco 1995: sold for $3,750 (high e: $3,000), including buyer’s premium.

In a change of pace, a Christie’s online auction ending 19 June featured library wines direct from Sherry producer González Byass.

A lot containing a bottle each of Pio IX Moscatel 1846 and La Cuadrada Palo Cortado 1997 sold for £2,500, including buyer’s premium (e: £2,000 – £3,000).

LiveTrade and Wine Hub link up

Private collectors and merchants can benefit from a new partnership between the LiveTrade fine wine trading platform powered by Bordeaux Index and a leading business management system, Wine Hub, created by Wine Owners.

Both partners said their deal enhances access to global fine wine trading, such as by enabling businesses using Wine Hub to trade directly on LiveTrade, plus see real-time pricing and stock availability.

LiveTrade has nearly £50m of in-bond, pristine blue-chip stock readily available for trading at any one time.

On the benefit to collectors, Matthew O’Connell, co-CEO of Bordeaux Index, said: ‘Integrations such as Wine Hub make it easier for merchants to participate in the marketplace as part of their daily workflow.

‘Increased participation drives greater liquidity, and that means broader access to fine wine, improved pricing transparency and a stronger trading experience for private collectors using LiveTrade.’

Coming up

Burgundy charity sale

Christie’s will co-host a charity auction of rare Burgundy wines sourced directly from celebrated producers, plus exclusive experiences, from 4-19 September – in aid of restorations at the historic Cistercian Abbey of Cîteaux.

The sale’s conclusion will also coincide with a charity dinner at Chȃteau Clos du Vougeot.

Ex-Chȃteau Haut-Brion

August is broadly a quieter month for auctions, but autumn is hotting up. Sotheby’s announced in July that it will offer Château Haut-Brion wines sourced directly from the Bordeaux first growth’s cellars.

Bidding opens 17 September and concludes with a ‘live’ auction in Paris on 1 October. Stay tuned for more details.

The Golden Vines weekender

Philanthropy-focused fine wine and gastronomy event The Golden Vines returns to London in 2026, from 6-8 November, said organiser Liquid Icons in July.

Held in support of the Gérard Basset Foundation, the weekend includes The Golden Vines Awards Gala. Tickets are £10,000 per person. See liquidicons.com/london

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A wine weekend in Northern Virginia is one where you can do it all. That sounds like a big statement, but Northern Virginia has a distinct advantage over many other U.S. wine regions: geographical convenience. Flying into Dulles International Airport places visitors within a 20- to 30-minute drive of premium wineries in Loudoun County and the Middleburg AVA. This makes the region one of the most accessible wine destinations in the country.

The proximity to D.C., brings with it a level of flexibility for itineraries, especially for groups who want to intersperse wine tasting with other activities. Visitors can spend the morning tasting distinctive wines, enjoy a museum or nature in the afternoon and experience fine dining in the evening. This seamless partnership between rural agribusiness and urban nightlife makes for a weekend worth a trip.

Virginia wine and fine dining are big draws

In 2024, Virginia attracted nearly 45 million visitors who spent more than $35bn across the state, putting it in the top 10 of U.S. tourism economies. Food and beverage made up nearly 30% – nearly $10 billion – of total spending that year. Northern Virginia accounted for close to half of both the food and beverage spending (around $4.2bn) and total spending (about $16bn).

“For the most part, a traveler wants to know, ‘Where can I go drink wine, enjoy beautiful scenic views, and find fun things to do nearby?’ For us, it's about selling the experience and why we're different,” said Juliana Thomas, director of communications for the Virginia Tourism Corporation. She and her team build itineraries that give travellers a way to experience all of the things the state has to offer, even when wine is the main focus of the trip.

‘There are some really unique spots that pair beautifully with a sophisticated wine audience,‘ Thomas noted about Northern Virginia. ‘I think of the National Sporting Library and Museum in Middleburg, staying at the Goodstone Inn, or eating at the historic Red Fox Inn & Tavern or the nationally recognised Red Truck Bakery. There is so much to discover right next to the vineyards.‘

Wineries to suit many interests: from Bull Run to Stone Tower

Northern Virginia is now home to more than 110 wineries, accounting for more than a third of the state’s 300-plus wineries and encompassing some of its top names. The region spans the area from the Potomac River west to the Blue Ridge Mountains, including Loudoun and Fauquier Counties and beyond. The land is diverse, with elevations from 400 feet to 1,900 feet and soils ranging from greenstone and granite along the mountains to sand, silt and shale farther east.

Working together, winegrowers and producers have helped the area evolve. ‘Ten years ago, our focus was entirely on baseline quality, ensuring wines weren't flawed or structurally reduced. Today, the shift is phenomenal,’ says Aimee Henkle, owner of Lost Creek Winery and treasurer of the Loudoun Wineries & Winegrowers Association. As Loudoun County expands to 50 wineries, the organization is now focused on telling a more nuanced story – one focused on subregional identity and a sense of place.

Wineries in Northern Virginia are as diverse as they are accessible, serving a range of interests. For the wine lover who is passionate about history, the Winery at Bull Run is perfect, sitting between a battle post and wartime hospitals from the two major Battles of Bull Run during the Civil War. The winery offers a wide array of varietal wines and blends, including Cabernet Franc and Norton, a hybrid grape first grown in Virginia.

A visit to Stone Tower winery feels like leaving D.C. for Napa Valley. Its unobstructed views of the Blue Ridge Mountains allow the 400-acre property to dazzle visitors. The views are matched only by the impressive hospitality of the friendly, knowledgeable staff, who host ‘somminar’ wine education events in the evening. Stop in for a tasting or grab a glass of their estate sparkling wine, Chardonnay or Nebbiolo.

Northern Virginia’s fine-wine history: Linden Vineyards

After Prohibition, Virginia didn’t begin to rebuild its wine industry until the mid-1970s. Pioneers like Italy-born Gabriele Rausse, who planted vitis vinifera to help launch Barboursville Vineyards near Charlottesville, and Burgundy-trained winemaker and consultant Michael Shaps, who also opened the first contract winemaking facility in the state in 2007, paved the way for the modern era in Northern Virginia.

When Linden Vineyards opened in 1988 in the Blue Ridge Mountains, it helped define the state’s style and chart a path forward. Founder and winemaker Jim Law is known as the architect of modern Virginia wine. He pushed the state away from casual, tourism-focused operations towards the terroir-driven, scientific standards that drive the state’s winemaking today, introducing site-specific viticulture and single-vineyard wines.

Law also mentored notable Northern Virginia winemakers, including Rutger de Vink of the famed RdV Vineyards (now under French ownership and renamed Lost Mountain) and Jeff White of Glen Manor.

Today, Linden boasts 72 acres under vine, spread across three properties. The space continues to focus more on quiet, educational, immersive experiences rather than entertainment and events. Check out their Hardscrabble Chardonnay, Petit Manseng and Bordeaux blends. The Chardonnay vines sit on well-drained, volcanic-based greenstone, which gives the wine a distinct minerality and the complexity and structure to age for a decade or more.

A new generation of winemakers: Walsh Family

The contributions of Law, Rausse and Shaps ushered in a new wave of winemakers, including Matthieu Finot of King Family Vineyards and Maya Hood White of Early Mountain Vineyards in the Charlottesville area. In Northern Virginia, this second generation is well represented by Nate Walsh of Walsh Family Wines.

Walsh Family clearly takes inspiration from Linden, focusing on expressing the local terroir and bringing it into the tasting room with side-by-side comparisons that make it clear why site-specific viticulture matters to the end result. ‘For example, we bottle our Sauvignon Blanc from different vineyard sites. When guests taste the wines and experience those differences firsthand, it’s a light-bulb moment. Terroir shifts from being an abstract wine term to something tangible and easy to understand,’ says Walsh Family founder Sarah Bryant Walsh and Nate’s wife.

For an intriguing tasting experience, compare the following two pairs at Walsh. For whites, look for the Sauvignon Blancs from the Bethany Ridge and Twin Notch Farm vineyards. Bethany Ridge sits on shallow, stony soils and its wines tend to be ripe and more textured, while Twin Notch’s silty loam results in a leaner, crisp and aromatic profile. For reds, try the mineral-driven, structured Cabernet Franc from Dutchman’s Creek against the softer, more fruit-forward version from Twin Notch Farm.

Going high-end and more exclusive: Crimson Lane

As the D.C. metro area consistently ranks as one of the wealthiest regions in the country, that has created a demand for luxury experiences and elevated tasting spaces. Wineries like Crimson Lane are working to meet this demand.

This winery is uphill from Linden Vineyards, with 160 acres of forest and views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The tasting room is clean, sleek and modern, designed by Napa-based architects to distinguish itself from other wineries in the state.

Visiting Crimson Lane requires a reservation, with a maximum of six guests per reservation, ranging from $45 tastings to a $110 tasting of the full portfolio. The winery focuses on low-yield, high-elevation grape growing, only producing about 4,000 cases per year, which go to wine club members and special events. The winery is known for its rich, bold, red blends, Collina and Parral. Both boast concentrated dark fruit, with ripe tannins and acidity that provides a great balance.

Crimson Lane serves as a compelling example of the contrasts in Northern Virginia wine country, with its proximity to the big-city amenities of D.C. and the charms of small-town life near the Blue Ridge Mountains.

While wine lovers can spend hours exploring the area’s sense of place through the vineyards and in their glasses, they can also keep their whole family or group of friends happy enjoying Virginia hospitality, American historical and cultural sites, music, hiking and other nature activities. This combination turns a wine weekend into an unforgettable adventure for all.

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Far to the south, in the pastoral rolling limestone hills around Fredericksburg, visitors sip those wines under live oaks and string lights, often unaware that a bottle of Texas wine frequently begins in one landscape and is sold in another. The industry is unusually dependent on relationships between growers and wineries separated by more than 644 kilometres.

‘The High Plains is just such a wonderful place’, says Remi Immler, head winemaker at Becker Vineyards, one of Texas Hill Country’s legacy wineries and a significant buyer of High Plains fruit. ‘You have this high, dry, desert climate where you can grow a lot of wonderful varieties: Italian, Spanish, Bordeaux and really beautiful whites. They all just do so well up there’.

Texas wine has been called ‘emerging’ for so long that the word has begun to obscure more than it explains. Today, with stronger ratings from critics and growing international recognition, the state’s wine industry is better understood as established but still misunderstood. The question is whether the long-distance agricultural system behind its quality can endure.

Better grapes, but lower demand

That system has always required trust. Grapes grown in the High Plains shape wines poured in Hill Country tasting rooms, and relationships built over years on handshakes and repeated harvests have long held the system together.

During the early years of the pandemic, many Texas wineries saw sales surge as consumers bought more wine to drink at home. ‘From 2020 into early 2023, we couldn’t keep wine on the shelf’, says Ron Yates, owner of Ron Yates Wines and Spicewood Vineyards. Wineries bought grapes aggressively, growers responded to that demand, and higher prices followed. Then consumer sales softened, inventories backed up, and growers had fruit in the vineyard with fewer buyers ready to commit.

‘The irony is that 2025 might be one of the best vintages we’ve ever seen in Texas’, Yates says. ‘It was cooler, the storms dropped the temperatures at the right time, we didn’t add a single grain of tartaric acid, and yet a lot of that beautiful fruit struggled to find a buyer’.

The weather this spring may have countered that two-year dip in demand. A freeze across both the High Plains and Hill Country on 17 March significantly lowered yields, particularly among white varieties. Several growers and winemakers see the short crop as a painful but potentially useful reset, helping bring supply back into balance.

This is the paradox defining the High Plains right now. The region is not struggling because Texas failed to improve. Many winemakers argue the opposite: the best High Plains fruit is better understood, better farmed and more important than ever. But quality alone cannot stabilise a farming economy.

The pressures of High Plains viticulture

High Plains grapegrowers have always faced weather challenges. Spring frost, hail, wind, drought and synthetic pesticide drift from nearby row-crop agriculture are part of the region’s reality. But recent pressure has come as much from the market as from the sky. Wineries with excess inventory have pulled back on grape purchases. Multi-year contracts have become less common. Some buyers wait until harvest to see what fruit can be found on the spot market at a lower price.

For Katy Jane Seaton of Farmhouse Vineyards, that uncertainty directly affects how she farms. ‘The High Plains is always going to carry on quality for the same old reasons’, she asserts. ‘We’re a region of generational farmers. Many of these families farmed row crops for generations before planting vineyards. It’s agriculture for a living, here’.

But agriculture requires planning and capital. At Farmhouse, fully contracted blocks receive the premium program: nutrition, hand work, pruning and detailed canopy care. Blocks with likely buyers get solid but reduced attention. Uncontracted fruit receives only enough care to keep vines healthy.

‘If it was contracted, you got an A-plus farming plan’, she says. ‘If it wasn’t contracted, we give nutrition down the drip line, and that’s it’.

From one of the state’s largest and most diverse High Plains properties, Akhil Reddy of Reddy Vineyards sees the same fragility. His father, Vijay Reddy, planted the family’s first vines near Brownfield in 1997 and later added a winery. Akhil grew up around the farms, became a dentist, built practices, and eventually returned full-time to vineyard and winery life. Today, the vineyard spans just under 162 hectares, with 38 grape varieties.

For Reddy, diversity is both ambition and insurance: the dozens of varieties, clones and more than 100 blocks are designed to absorb Texas volatility. Freeze, hail, heat and market shifts rarely affect everything equally.

Still, he is candid about the economics. ‘It’s extremely hard to farm and to make a profit’, Reddy says. ‘And then it’s extremely hard to make really great wine, but you can only do that with really great fruit. And what’s even harder is selling the wine’.

Looking beyond Texas’ borders

If wine does not sell, grapes do not sell; if grapes do not sell, vineyards lose investment. For Reddy, one answer is professionalization. The handshake culture of earlier decades no longer feels sufficient, so he now uses formal grape contracts, including deposits to ensure buyers have ‘skin in the game’.

Connor Wilmeth, vineyard manager at Lahey Vineyards, is also pushing beyond old assumptions. At 33, he oversees roughly 405 hectares of vines and brings a row-crop marketing background to grapes. Much of his crop goes to wineries such as McPherson Cellars and Becker Vineyards, but he has also been driving to East Coast states, introducing Texas grapes, juice and wine to buyers that already source from California and South America. For many East Coast buyers, Texas also offers a shorter freight route than California.

‘I try to apply my experience in the row-crop industry’, Wilmeth says. ‘I was on the board of a cotton marketing cooperative that merchandises cotton all over the world, and for me the question was, why are we only selling grapes locally’?

He understands the importance of strengthening Texas wine, but he also has a business to run. Rather than leaving fruit to rot when local demand softens, Wilmeth argues that Texas should compete where it has advantages: its proximity to eastern markets and its broad range of prestigious vinifera grape varieties.

That idea has support from Kim McPherson of McPherson Cellars, one of the few prominent producers making wine in the High Plains itself. After decades working with regional growers while building a brand that sells beyond the tasting room, McPherson argues that the next chapter depends on wider distribution and wines that can compete outside the state’s local markets.

Seeking a succession plan

Several growers who helped build the High Plains’ reputation are now trying to transition out of the business. Jet Wilmeth of Wilmeth Family Vineyards is retiring; Andy Timmons of Lost Draw Cellars has reduced the acreage he farms; and families such as the Binghams and Newsoms are considering how to carry important vineyard sites into the next phase.

Neal Newsom, whose vineyard has long been regarded by winemakers as one of the state’s benchmark sites, is not pessimistic. Last year, he says, was one of his worst for moving fruit, but demand has improved.

‘I’m not worried about the industry’, says Newsom. ‘This is at least my third or fourth rodeo when it comes to these types of challenges. It’s going to come back; it is already happening’.

His personal question is succession. Over 70 years old, he wants to slow down without walking away, ideally by finding a working partner with enough local presence and financial resources to help carry the vineyard forward.

For wineries that depend on Newsom fruit, the transition is critical. Mike Nelson, winemaker and co-founder of Ab Astris, considers Newsom one of the state’s benchmark farmers. ‘Growers like Neal Newsom prove what’s possible in the High Plains’, he says. ‘But that old guard is aging out, and we need others to continue his level of work’.

Making and keeping connections

Despite this pullback from pioneering growers, others, such as Tony and Madonna Phillips of Phillips Vineyard, are choosing to stay in. Last year, despite a substantial decrease in demand, the Phillipses were able to place their 2025 crop.

‘It took a lot of phone calls and emails, but we found a home for every grape in our vineyard,’ Madonna Phillips says.

For Tony, grapes remain different from other crops such as cotton or peanuts. ‘When you grow and sell cotton, you have no connection to where that cotton ends up’, Phillips says. ‘The grapes we grow show up as wine in a bottle, often with our vineyard name on it. We can share that with friends and family’.

That emotional connection helps explain why many High Plains growers still believe the work is worth doing.

Chris Brundrett, CEO and co-founder of William Chris Vineyards, sees the current market as a correction, not a collapse. The best growers and most committed wineries will align more closely. But he also warns wineries against exploiting the short-term situation. ‘It’s a buyer’s market today, but that’s not going to last forever’, Brundrett says. ‘How we got to where we are today isn’t by win-lose on the grower side. It’s got to be win-win’.

Immler, 29, brings a younger voice to that same idea. Her focus at Becker in the years ahead is on direct communication: honest reports from growers, honest feedback from wineries, and earlier conversations when weather, quality or cash flow change the plan. ‘It has to be built on relationships’, she says.

For Texas wine to keep moving forward, the Hill Country and High Plains must remain connected not only by refrigerated trucks and purchase agreements, but by a shared understanding of what each side makes possible.

The correction in the High Plains is real. Yet it is also revealing the industry’s strengths: growers willing to rethink markets, families choosing to commit to the difficulty of managing vineyards, wineries still betting on High Plains fruit, and a younger generation interested in building something durable.

Texas has already shown it can make compelling wine. Its next test is whether the long-distance relationships underlying those wines can become as mature as the best bottles now suggest.

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A second growth Pauillac, it is renowned for the sleekness, polish and ageworthiness of its Cabernet Sauvignon-driven wines, produced from 92 hectares of vines planted in the region's famous gravels.

The estate was created in the 17th century when Baron Jacques Pichon de Longueville married Therèse de Rauzan, the daughter of a wealthy and enormously influential wine merchant.

The barons de Longueville owned the property from 1694 to 1933. In 1850 the estate was split with Baron Raoul de Longueville keeping the property known today as Pichon Baron, while his sisters inherited the other half that we know today as Pichon Comtesse.

The estate was bought by insurance group AXA – part of a wider portfolio of estates under the umbrella of AXA Millésimes – in 1987.

Under the group's ownership, the estate has been extensively renovated and remodelled, with state-of-the-art winemaking facilities and cellars.

The core plot at the centre of the estate's vineyards, the 'Butte de Pichon Baron', has been used to make the grand vin since 1694.

The property also produces two 'second labels', Les Tourelles de Pichon Baron and Les Griffons de Pichon Baron, and a white wine.

Pichon Baron vintages

Looking back over the most recent available vintages, we can see that Pichon Baron has averaged a score 97-points from various Decanter critics.

This puts it in the same category as Château Cheval Blanc or Château Haut-Brion.

However, an average case price of £1,038 (per 12x75cl) is a sizeable discount to either of those other estates which clock in at over £4,000 and £3,000 a case on average respectively.

Even better news for fans of polished Pauillac, there are currently four well-scored vintages available for under £1,000.

The most surprising of these is the 2017, which received a score of 98-points during a panel tasting. Not an especially renowned vintage, one judge, Andy Howard MW, called it: 'A classic Pauillac, which is remarkable in the context of 2017 overall.'

The wine has a current market price of £960 per case. According to Liv-ex, it is down from previous highs over the course of 2022-2024 but has seen some positive gains so far this year.

Another vintage that looks good value relative to other peers is the 2020. Like the 2017 it has a score of 98-points and costs under £1,000, with Georgina Hindle calling it: 'Generous, elegant and refined'.

Both vintages look even better value when compared to the 2022, which also has a score of 98-points but currently costs just over £1,200 per case. It's the better-viewed vintage but perhaps buyers have been overlooking other wines of similar quality?

Finally, the 95-point 2021 is really a very delicious wine, especially given the otherwise rather average vintage and the 2024 with 96-points is the cheapest available vintage by far at around £838 per case.

Although they sit under Pichon Baron's score-average their relative affordability makes them tempting potential pick-ups for thirsty buyers, especially given the estate's current track record for producing standout wines even in mediocre vintages.

Château Pichon Baron: Selected tasting notes

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With perhaps two exceptions (1984 & 1987) the 1980s was a transformative period in the region both economically and qualitatively after the various shades of brown that the preceding decade yielded.

Things were looking up for the world’s most aristocratic wine region, and it started with a bang…

1990

Many would argue that 1990 is a contender for the greatest global vintage in recent history, showing outstanding uniform quality in most regions around the world.

Bordeaux was no exception. This generally warm vintage has produced wines that are often voluptuous and decadent, a trait that we would not see again for a number of years.

The vintage is littered with stars on both banks and perhaps even more so in Sauternes.

Now 36 years-old the very best wines are hitting their peak but be warned that lower end examples may have succumbed to flamboyance and lack the structure of some other great vintages.

The finest wines are effortless: Château Margaux, Montrose, Léoville Las Cases, and Lynch-Bages to name but a few on the left bank.

Cheval Blanc, Petrus and Clinet all flirt with perfection on the right bank, as does La Mission Haut Brion in Graves.

There are dozens more world beating wines, but notable misses too. Latour is variable, but on its day one of the finest ever produced, while Mouton Rothschild and Pichon Comtesse both somehow miss the magic of so many of their neighbours.

Generally speaking I would happily buy well stored class growth claret across the board and expect to find a beautiful expression of plump, mature claret within.

1991

Now, dear reader, 1991 is a vintage where my opinion may differ from many of my esteemed colleagues.

My justification for the perceived quality of this wildly overlooked vintage is based upon dozens of bottles in recent years and an almost obsessive desire to vindicate my theory that, in this frost plagued vintage, those closest to the river fared best.

There is no denying that the right bank was not a success, with some châteaux opting not to produce a Grand Vin, but many of those in the Médoc that could afford to crop their yields produced good wines.

Palmer is the wine of the vintage, and even comparable to their legendary 1990, while neighbours Pichon Comtesse and Latour come a close second.

I would not suggest you research 1991 as extensively as I have, but if the vintage is of significance, then do try well cellared left bank wines from the most familiar names.

1992

Unlike 1991, I do not have such positive news for anyone who holds 1992 dear.

Generally the wines are well past their best, but passable bottles of Clinet (a wine I loved a decade ago), Gruaud Larose and La Mission Haut-Brion have piqued interest in recent years but perhaps not offered much on the hedonistic spectrum.

However, dry whites were largely a success with Laville Haut-Brion offering a genuinely outstanding effort even three decades on.

1993

More of the same sadly as the dearth of quality continues, even if 1993 is stylistically different, often hard, dry and tannic.

A recent bottle of Clinet, drunk at the château, was delicious as the plump nature of this great Pomerol overcame the tannins of the vintage.

Gruaud Larose and Beychevelle are wines I have enjoyed over the years, similarly Lafleur on the right bank.

But don’t go out of your way!

1994

There was an initial feeling that 1994 might have been the saviour of the region after a string of troublesome harvests.

The quality was undeniably better, but not close to what was about to follow. Latour is the wine of the vintage, closely followed by neighbour Pichon Comtesse.

At the more affordable end, half a dozen recent bottles of Branaire-Ducru have been delicious, if drying out a little.

The wines here feel more classic than either 1992 or the austere 1993s. If it’s a milestone year for you then I would suggest sticking to the Médoc for best results.

1995

Finally, Bordeaux waits no more! For decades to come Bordeaux lovers will argue the various merits of 1995 v 1996, but what the former has in its corner is a much stronger showing on the right bank.

I’ve always found the vintage slightly foursquare compared to its successor but the quality is undeniable and uniform.

On the right bank both Lafleur and Cheval Blanc are sensational.

Similarly on the left bank, not many people missed the mark, so perhaps it is more useful to mention the wines that I favour in 1995 to the more fleshy 1996s that followed: Pichon Baron, Léoville Barton, Haut-Brion and La Mission Haut-Brion to name four.

This is a vintage to buy with confidence, on both banks, relying on the fact that the structure here supports beautifully balanced wines that are just hitting their prime.

1996

Is this the vintage of the decade? For the left bank, probably. The wines from the Médoc are generous but reserved, structured but also ethereal.

A genuinely glorious vintage for almost everyone on the left bank. If I am splitting hairs, Pauillac performed best, with Latour, Lafite Rothschild and Pichon Comtesse all contenders for wine of the decade.

Lynch-Bages, Grand Puy Lacoste and Batailley are crafted from the same mould without the price tag.

Outside Pauillac, Léoville Las Cases and Margaux are also potentially perfect wines.

Almost everything west of the Gironde is worth seeking out.

The right bank is more patchy, so my recommendation would be to opt for 1998.

1997

Thought to be one of the weaker vintages of the decade, 1997 is (however) superior to 1992, 1993 and 1994.

The vintage is much lighter than those that surround it, which has given drinkers pleasure over that last few decades, in a way that other years have not.

There is no excess structure or greenness as you find in the early half of the 1990s. Just elegant, balanced, drinkable Bordeaux that would have, at one time, been labelled ‘luncheon claret’.

Recent bottles of Potensac, Meyney, La Conseillante and Gazin have all been delicious. Not more or less, just simply delicious.

Sauternes, however, is sensational. Those with a connection to 1997 may find some bargains as the wines have remained fairly priced.

A vintage that grows in my affection as I age and understand its place among its far more lauded siblings.

1998

If 1996 is THE left bank year, then 1998 is THE right bank year. The year Merlot turned to gold.

There are more successes on the left bank in 1998 than on the right bank in 1996, most notably a sensational bottle of Palmer knocked 1989 off the table, but St-Emilion and Pomerol displayed an embarrassment of riches.

It is little surprise that Petrus and Cheval Blanc both crafted wines that could last a century as well as La Mission Haut-Brion and Haut-Brion in Pessac.

The one word of caution I would add is, in this ‘peak Parker’ era, some estates were unnecessarily exuberant with their extraction.

Most wines here, on both banks, are still approaching full maturity.

1999

A curious and almost anonymous vintage to round off the century. Overshadowed by what was to come, I feel little affection for 1999, and the wines somewhat generic.

Perhaps because the top wines are some way off full maturity, but the first growths are all solid, if unexciting.

Gruaud Larose has always been nice as have dozens of other châteaux that produced very good examples on both left and right.

That said, an honourable mention should go to the often forgotten Tertre-Roteboeuf which produced a sensational wine to round off the decade.

The best is yet to come...?

It is fair to say that, next to the consistency of the 1980s, the 1990s was a more variable decade to end the millennium, but what was to come next might just be the greatest of them all…

Bordeaux vintages of the 1990s

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Sometimes an estate will be eagerly anticipating the first wines from a new vineyard. Ask where those young vines come from, and chances are the answer will be a proud ‘Rauscedo’.

With around 60% of Italy's vines and a quarter of those growing globally originating here, VCR is by far the world's largest vine supplier.

The 430 wine grape clones VCR works with represent 90 major world varieties, sold in 38 countries across five continents.

‘Nowadays we produce around 90 million grafted vines each year,’ explains Alessandro Leon, VCR president and one of 200 member growers.

Roots

The nursery cooperative was founded in 1933 to organise the growing local trade in vine grafting, which began 15 years earlier thanks to skills taught by a locally based army officer.

European wineries were still reeling from the Phylloxera epidemic, and replanting was underway with vulnerable European Vitis vinifera varieties grafted onto naturally resistant American rootstocks.

Grafting takes place between February and March. After protective paraffin waxing and a few months of growth at member nurseries, each vine is checked manually by one of the 1,300-strong team during an all-important winter selection process, ensuring only perfectly grafted, healthy plants are sold.

Around 78% pass the test.

The laboratory

For the past 60 years, VCR has been a major player in vine research. Alongside members' nurseries, VCR has 22ha of experimental vineyards and various plots across Italy and beyond.

Its contemporary, alpine-style research centre houses eight futuristic laboratories where around 10,000 genotypes (grown from individual seeds) are trialled annually.

Lab staff undertake the meticulous job of isolating seeds, genome testing, and micropropagation.

The tiny proportion selected for aromatic quality, productivity, or disease resistance may eventually become registered clones.

‘It gets busy’

Each year, VCR carries out roughly 700 microvinifications in small steel vats and glass demijohns.

‘It gets busy,’ says winemaker Massimo De Candido, ‘but I'd find working with regular-sized equipment a challenge after 20 years of microvinifications here.’

Clients can configure orders online from over 4,000 variety-rootstock combinations, but most prefer to discuss options and taste the results from different clones.

VCR's tasting room boasts a mind-boggling archive of bottles arranged by clone codes and varieties.

‘We have, for example, 15 Merlot clones,’ points out Elisa De Luca, head of the research centre.

‘Many producers choose to plant a mix of clones of the same variety to mitigate the risks of increasingly unpredictable weather.’

Pioneering PIWIs

Exciting ongoing research involves new resistant varieties, or ‘PIWIs’ – hybrids created by crossing traditional European Vitis vinifera with naturally disease-resistant American or Asian vines.

These allow for reduced vineyard intervention and mitigate climate change risks.

VCR holds exclusive rights to 14 PIWI varieties, including Pinot Iskra, Sauvignon Nepis, and Merlot Khorus, developed with Udine University.

Two of VCR's own resistant varieties derived from Glera (the Prosecco grape) will soon be released, with more due in 2027, followed by resistant versions of Grenache and Chardonnay.

While the EU approved PIWIs for denomination wines in 2021 and regions like Champagne have altered protocols to allow small percentages, Italy has been slow to follow suit.

Some Italian regions authorise PIWI cultivation, but no regulatory changes have been approved to include them in DOC/DOCG wines.

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New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc: Panel tasting scores

163 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 6

Highly recommended 57

Recommended 90

Commended 10

Entry criteria: UK retailers and agents were invited to submit their latest release, still, dry Sauvignon Blanc wines from any region in New Zealand

Over two days, three of us tasted 163 New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs that presented a brilliant overview of what’s on the market right now.

Most wines, four-fifths in fact, hailed from Marlborough and most, just under two-thirds, from the 2025 vintage.

Two things stood out.

First: while Marlborough still rules the Sauvignon Blanc roost and provided all the top-scoring wines, other regions offer worthwhile alternatives. Second: the 2025 vintage is weaker than 2024 but still holds plenty of treasure.

Sauvignon Blancs submitted from Central Otago where temperatures differ between day and night scored really well, while wines from warmer Hawke’s Bay were weakest, showing that the latter is a better hunting ground for other varieties.

2025s are good to go

As regards the vintages, 2025 with its higher yields and tricky growing season, featuring a cool January, i.e. midsummer in the southern hemisphere, meant we could really tell the wheat from the chaff.

Vines needed careful handling and management to ensure full ripening and thus aromatic development of the crop load.

Roger Jones put it succinctly when he noted that ‘wines that had some love and care, with time on lees, or with some careful oak age, but not necessarily always with oak’, did best.

This means that you should enjoy the 2025 wines while they are young and alive with primary fruit and flavours.

Those who adore varietal Sauvignon Blanc aromas in the greener spectrum will be in for a treat, especially with wines from the Awatere Valley sub-region, which is vibrant in 2025 with pea shoot, lime and green asparagus.

Freddy Bulmer noted another clear and positive development, particularly pertinent for 2025.

He found the wines well-integrated ‘with relatively few that seemed to compensate for underripe fruit by adding sweetness, which has been a particular issue at the entry level in the past’.

See all notes and scores from the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc tasting

The judges

New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc panel tasting results:

Wines were tasted blind

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‘We’ve been waiting, waiting, waiting for the 2022 Grange for some time,’ admitted chief winemaker, Peter Gago at the first global tasting of the 2026 Penfolds Collection, held in London.

‘It comes off 2018 and the terrific 2021 of last year, so there’s a little bit of pressure… But it’s risen to the occasion,’ he added, with typical understatement.

The 2022 vintage

Grange has always been a multi-vineyard, multi-district blend, aged in US oak.

For the 2022 vintage fruit was sourced from Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and Coonawarra.

The growing season across South Australia was defined by a cool and measured year, with winter rainfall above average, which supported steady early vine growth.

Unsettled temperatures, wind and hail in spring affected yields for Barossa Shiraz but this was also a year that benefitted from an extended ripening period, producing small berries with a firm tannin structure.

The resulting 2022 Grange is both full-bodied and full of life; immediately approachable even at this young age (full tasting note and score below).

‘The 2022 Grange assuredly authenticates its flagship role and 75th anniversary credentials. No pressure. Both timely and lucky to avail such a stellar vintage in such a symbolic year,’ noted Gago.

‘I always like the cooler years,’ he added, drawing comparisons with the 1998 vintage. ‘The 2002 is my favourite after 2018, and that was one of the coldest years in the Barossa.’

Commenting on the immediate approachability of the 2022 Grange, he said: ‘I think a lot of people will drink it very early, but it’s going to look great in 50 years.’

2026 Penfolds Collection highlights

Aside from Grange, standout reds from this year’s collection are the St Henri 2023, Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon 2024, Magill Estate Shiraz 2024 and ‘Baby Grange’ Bin 389 Cabernet Sauvignon 2024.

Top white Yattarna Bin 144 Chardonnay 2024 also impressed. ‘The 2024 Yattarna is defined by purity and composure… A quietly assured release promising remarkable endurance,’ said Kym Schroeter, Penfolds’ white winemaker.

The collection once again includes wines from France, the US and China; testament to both Gago’s global vision for Penfolds and the extensive vineyard holdings of parent company Treasury Wine Estates.

They include Châteaux Cambon La Pelouse, Lanessan, Gironville, Bolaire and Belle-Vue in Bordeaux.

‘No longer a novelty, no fancy wordsmithing – all of these wines are unmistakably Penfolds, sourced from different hemispheres,’ says Gago.

Finally for collectors and investors, the newly updated ninth edition of Rewards of Patience by Andrew Caillard MW has also been published alongside the 2026 collection.

First published in 1995, it’s regarded as the definitive reference guide to Penfolds wines, with the new edition containing updated tasting notes on every vintage of every wine in the Penfolds portfolio, with contributions from some of the world’s leading wine critics.

When and where to buy

Wines in the 2026 Penfolds Collection were released globally on Thursday 6 August.

The five new release icon wines – Grange, St Henri, Yattarna, Bin 707 and RWT – will also be available via La Place de Bordeaux to customers in the UK and Europe from 8 September.

The following Australian wines from the collection will be available to customers in Australia and other select markets worldwide, but won’t be available in the UK or Europe: Bin 51 Eden Valley Riesling, Bin 169 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon, Magill Estate Shiraz, Bin 150 Marananga Shiraz, Bin 21 Grenache and Bin 23 Pinot Noir.

Wines from the US and China will also be available to customers in Australia and other select markets worldwide, but won’t be available in the UK or Europe: Oakville Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, Bin 149 Cabernet Sauvignon and CWT 521 Cabernet Sauvignon Marselan.

Grange La Chapelle 2022 is already available in Europe and the UK. It is a special release, so not part of the 2026 Collection.

The Penfolds Champagnes are also not part of the new collection.

The Grange legacy

The pinnacle of Penfolds’ multi-vineyard, multi-district blending philosophy, Grange is officially listed as a heritage icon of South Australia and is a sought-after bottle for collectors around the world.

First made as an experimental Shiraz bottling in 1951, it boasts an unbroken line of vintages since then.

From the start Grange was always intended to be an icon that epitomised fine Australian Shiraz.

Its creator Max Schubert (1915-1994), first chief winemaker at Penfolds, had travelled to Bordeaux and Germany in 1950, returning with a resolve to create an Australian red capable of ageing for decades; a wine that could rival Europe’s greatest bottles.

Aiming for consistency and commercial appeal, Schubert sought out fruit of exceptional ripeness – regardless of which vineyard region it was planted in.

This approach led to the multi-regional blend philosophy that Penfolds still embraces today. Ageing in new American oak added the finishing touch to the wine’s revolutionary style.

At the time, Schubert’s bosses and colleagues at Penfolds disapproved of his new wine. They were particularly critical of the high volatile acidity that has since become a hallmark of Grange.

Ordered to stop production, Schubert made subsequent vintages in secret, but an in-house tasting in 1960 proved the wine’s worth. In 1962, the 1955 vintage won honours at the Royal Sydney Wine Show and the same vintage was declared a Decanter Wine Legend decades later in 2017.

2026 Penfolds Collection: tasting notes and scores

NOTE: All white wines were double-decanted before tasting. Red wines were served as you’d open them at home and were not decanted. Tasting notes are written by Julie Sheppard, tasting in London and David Sly, tasting in Adelaide, South Australia.

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It’s the latest high-profile vineyard property deal in sought-after Provence, where vineyards mingle with lavender fields and olive groves close to the Mediterranean sea.

Vignelaure is one of the region’s pearls, said Adam Dakin, founder of independent property specialist Wine Objectives that helped facilitate the recent deal.

Once home to ancient Roman winegrowers, Vignelaure's modern era began in the 1960s under Georges Brunet, ex-owner of Bordeaux’s Château La Lagune.

While the estate makes rosé – now a Provençal calling card – it has a particularly strong reputation for high-quality reds, which are sourced from vineyards at relatively high altitudes (around 400m) for the area.

New owner Neil Utley said, ‘Having considered a number of vineyards in and around the region we were drawn to Vignelaure as it wasn't a blank canvas – our vision was to elevate something extraordinary. This is one of the few estates in Provence with a genuine red wine pedigree.'

Estate director and winemaker Philippe Bru will remain at the property, having been appointed by the previous owners, Swedish couple Mette and Bengt Sundstrøm.

Immediate plans include replanting some of the vineyard, as well as planting new vines on pre-prepared land. Vignelaure spans around 276 hectares in total, including woodland, with around 56ha under vine.

Utley added, ‘Our role now is to become stewards of an estate that already has so much to offer, and to support Philippe Bru and his team in taking Vignelaure to the next level through focus, patience and long-term investment.’

There are also plans to launch a cosmetics business, Maison Minu, to be based at the estate.

Olive trees will be planted and bee hives installed to both support biodiversity and the new cosmetics operations, the owners said, adding they plan to build an on-site spa in the coming years, too.

Provence and Loire vineyards in-demand

Provence’s vineyard market has ‘taken off again’ recently, said Wine Objectives’ Dakin. ‘There's quite a lot of movement. We've got another transaction down towards St-Tropez underway just now.’

Its appeal comes at a price, though. 'It's an area where land and buildings are relatively expensive', said Dakin.

As a comparison, he said that wine lovers dreaming of buying a vineyard on a tighter budget might find a winery with 10 to 15 hectares of vines for around €500,000 in Corbières in the Languedoc to the west, but it's a different picture in Provence.

‘That said, we’ve got a small vineyard in the process of selling just now at €900,000. It's a modern villa with I think eight hectares of vines around it and another building on the side which could be developed into a winery.

'It's odd, admittedly, to find stuff under the €1m mark in Provence, and reasonably rare to find vineyards under the €2m mark, but they do exist.'

Still, he said the heart of the market is in the €5m to €10m bracket.

Loire Valley is another fashionable area to watch, said Dakin. Wine Objectives recently expanded north in addition to its longstanding focus on Provence, the Rhône and Languedoc in southern France.

‘There are a lot of people visiting, a lot of professional clients looking to buy there,’ said Dakin of the Loire.

Climate change and consumer interest in white wines are among motivating factors for prospective buyers, he said.

In terms of vineyard land prices, Sancerre can reach €250,000 to €350,000 per hectare (p/ha), said Dakin. But he said prices elsewhere, such as Savennières, are much lower and the Loire overall remains relatively inexpensive.

Interest in both regions comes amid a tough market situation facing some of France’s major red wine regions, such as generic Bordeaux and the Southern Rhône outside top appellations.

A recent report by French rural land agency Safer showed Burgundy vineyard prices continued to defy gravity in 2025, yet also found declining values in Bordeaux.

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Perhaps the most famous example is Dom Pérignon, Moët & Chandon's prestige cuvée, first released in 1936. Such bottlings are often associated with the finest vineyard sites, exceptional vintages – although some are released as non-vintage wines – and in many cases, collaborations with the worlds of art, fashion and luxury.

As English sparkling wine continues to gain recognition both at home and abroad, a new generation of prestige cuvées – some of England's leading estates and winemaking talents behind them – is on the rise.

Many produced in small quantities and each with a story of its own, these English prestige cuvées naturally command premium prices (mostly £100 and above). But we managed to get hold of five – let's find out exactly what all the fuss is about.

Nyetimber: 1086 and 1086 Rosé

The unquestionable pioneer, Nyetimber was the first English wine estate to embrace Champagne’s prestige cuvée concept, releasing two premium sparkling wines – a white and a rosé – in 2018, priced at £150 and £175 respectively, on a par with premium Champagne.

The estate named the range ‘1086’ after the year the name ‘Nitimbreha’ – believed to mean ‘newly timbered house’ – first appeared in the Domesday Book, William the Conqueror’s great survey of landholdings across much of England and parts of Wales.

The ambition to produce a prestige cuvée came from Nyetimber’s proprietor, Eric Heerema, when he acquired the estate in 2006.

The winemaking team, led by head winemaker Cherie Spriggs, waited until the 2009 vintage – ‘a year that has all of the right stuff’, as Spriggs put it – to begin creating both the estate’s and England’s first prestige cuvée.

The 1086 wines are made from the finest grapes and parcels across Nyetimber’s estate vineyards in West Sussex, Hampshire and Kent, with the parcel selection and blend varying according to the vintage.

The estate highlighted extended ageing – seven years on lees as the baseline – as a ‘key marker’ of the 1086 range. The principal criteria for selecting a base wine capable of such a journey are not simply flavour, but ‘structure, balance and mouthfeel’, according to the producer.

The latest releases in the range are the 2014 white and 2016 rosé.

Our review

Chapel Down: Kit's Coty Coeur de Cuvée

Although not originally positioned as a prestige cuvée, Chapel Down's Kit's Coty Coeur de Cuvée, released in 2017, also sits comfortably among the pioneers of England's super-premium sparkling wines.

With the 2013 vintage as its first release, Coeur de Cuvée is a 100% Chardonnay sparkling wine sourced from the best parcels of the famed Kit's Coty vineyard – a roughly 40ha (100-acre), steep, south-facing chalk site on the North Downs of Kent.

As the name suggests, the base wine is made from the gently extracted 'heart' (coeur) of the first pressing and is aged in French oak. The current release (£126), from the 2016 vintage, spent seven years on lees.

The Kit's Coty vineyard is also home to DWWA-winning Blanc de Blancs and still wines including Bacchus (one of the most sophisticated expressions of the grape in England) and Chardonnay.

A major player in the English wine scene since the early 2000s, Chapel Down now makes wine, led by head winemaker Josh Donaghay-Spire, from its own vineyards in Kent while also sourcing grapes from Kent, Sussex and Essex.

Our review

Gusbourne: Fifty One Degrees North

The roots of Gusbourne’s late-release bottlings can be traced back to custodian Andrew Weeber, who decided to hold back some of the estate’s 2007 Blanc de Blancs.

The 2007 was eventually released in 2014, and the result encouraged the producer to pursue the idea further. The same year also delivered what the estate describes as a 'textbook' harvest, perfect for building a sparkling wine meant for extended ageing.

After 'eight years of tasting and monitoring behind the scenes', then-head winemaker Charlie Holland oversaw the launch of the estate's prestige cuvée, Fifty One Degrees North, in 2022, named after the latitude of its Kent and Sussex vineyards.

The inaugural release was a 2:1 blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, with 80 months of ageing on lees.

The following year, after Holland’s departure that summer, the estate – known for specialising in vintage releases – announced the second release of Fifty One Degrees North, from the 2016 vintage (£195).

Produced from a warm, dry growing season, the wine retained a similar blend to its predecessor, combining the ‘richness of fruit’ from Gusbourne's clay and sandstone vineyards in Kent with the bright freshness derived from the chalk and flint soils in West Sussex.

After a further two years of ageing, in autumn last year (2025), a magnum edition (£395) was released in small quantities.

This year, to mark Gusbourne's 20th vintage, the team – now led by winemaker Mary Bridges with Laura Rhys MS continuing as consultant and global ambassador – decided to release around 250 bottles from the estate’s library, including wines dating back more than two decades. Among the highlights were just four bottles of Blanc de Blancs from the inaugural 2006 vintage.

Our review

Langham: Perpetual

This is perhaps one of the most innovative entries in this line-up, created by Langham's talented young winemaker Tommy Grimshaw.

When Grimshaw took over as head winemaker in 2019, he inherited a demi-muid (600L) of the estate's top Chardonnay from the 2017 vintage, and a puncheon (about 500L) of the best fruit from the highly prized 2018 vintage.

Inspired by grower Champagne pioneer Anselme Selosse, Grimshaw decided to start creating a multi-vintage cuvée from Langham's 13.8ha (34-acre) vineyard, with its base wine aged in solera.

With top fruit from 2019 added, the reserve was transferred to a 2,000L Slavonian oak foudre (named 'Judy'), purchased by the estate in 2020. Since then, the Dorset-based producer has kept back barrels of the most expressive Chardonnay grown on its belemnite chalk vineyard from each vintage, building a 'perpetually evolving blend', as the winemaker puts it.

The first Perpetual Blanc de Blancs was bottled in 2020, followed by four years of lees ageing, with just 650 bottles released in June 2025.

This summer, Langham released the second bottling of its prestige cuvée – this time a blend of the 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 vintages (as shown on the label), finished with zero dosage and no sulphur.

Priced at £109.95, this is also the first Perpetual release made solely from the 2,000L Slavonian oak foudre, with the ambition to 'express Chardonnay beyond the boundaries of any individual vintage', said the producer.

Our review

Squerryes Estate: Patience

A relative newcomer to the league, Squerryes’s Patience 2014, named after the family ancestor Patience Warde (1629-1696), was just launched in July 2026.

Patience himself was a former Mayor of London and a successful merchant trading British wool for French wine, including Champagne, witnessing the rise of sparkling Champagne in the 17th century.

It was his legacy that eventually led to the purchase of the Kent estate in 1731. Nearly 300 years later, the Warde family still owns the 2,500-acre estate, including 21ha (55 acres) of south-facing vineyards near Westerham, close to the Pilgrims' Way.

The family only truly committed to winegrowing in 2006, two years after eighth-generation owner John Warde, who has a background in agriculture, was approached by a Champagne house searching for English chalk soils – a visit that drew his attention to the estate's potential for sparkling wine.

The estate has since developed a range of single-estate sparkling wines (many of which saw extended lees ageing) on the chalk soils at 140–170m altitude on the North Downs.

In 2013, John's son, ninth-generation owner Henry Warde, joined the estate and soon started preserving older vintages with the support of consultant Laura Evans MW.

More than a decade later, its prestige cuvée, Patience 2014, came to be. Described by the estate as its 'most characterful' and 'most considered' wine to date, it is an almost equal blend of the three Champagne varieties, although Warde believes future releases (with the 2015 and 2017 currently under review) will become increasingly Chardonnay-led.

Among the 3,000 bottles produced, the first tranche of 1,500 bottles are now available at £225 per bottle.

Our reivew

Super-premium English wine: more to come

Beyond these, the list of English prestige cuvée now also includes Sugrue South Downs' sold-out Cuvée Dr Brendan O'Regan (£125 per bottle), Exton Park's Cuvée M. Isaac Blanc de Blancs 'BBB' (£130), and Hattingley Valley's Kings Cuvée (£91).

Meanwhile, top producers are continuing to release highly selective, long-ageing bottlings such as Black Chalk's Eighty Nine Point Six 2020 (magnum, £165), not to mention an increasing number of rare library releases.

Although the concept of prestige cuvée is still relatively new to the English wine scene, and the ranks of this super-premium club remain small, there is little doubt that more are on the horizon.

Are they worth prices that rival the top end of Champagne? The quality and the ambition are certainly there. Whether they’re here to stay, is now up to wine lovers to decide.

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When she and her husband Tony went looking for a property outside Bordeaux in the early 2000s, a vineyard was not the point.

They were looking for peace and privacy, but this year marks 20 years since the Asseilys bought Château Biac and ended up restoring it to its former winemaking glory.

The long way to Langoiran

Both originally from Lebanon, Tony had spent his career in finance in London. Youmna had lived in Switzerland and then in Lebanon before the two settled in London together to raise their children.

For the next 25 years the family lived between Beirut and London, never quite able to go home for good.

In 1990, with flights repeatedly delayed, the family chose to holiday in Entre-deux-Mers, as it turned out, just four kilometres from Château Biac.

They kept coming back to Entre-deux-Mers each summer for a decade and, in 2000, they rented the guesthouse in Biac and fell in love with the place.

The same year, Tony dissolved his wealth management company and began looking for something new to do. Youmna wanted to paint, and Tony wanted to write. Wine was not on the list at all.

What was on the list, when they sat down and made one, was oddly specific: half an hour from Bordeaux, 35 minutes from the airport, close to a motorway, near a town with everything they needed close by, a view over the Garonne, and, above all, somewhere private, not visible from the road.

Château Biac answered every point on it. The previous owners wanted to sell the main house but keep the vineyards and holiday homes.

Talks stalled over the split, and it took until 2006 for a contract to finally be signed.

A renaissance

Despite once carrying a serious reputation – Cocks & Féret's second edition guide to Bordeaux in 1868 rated Biac among the finest in the region – the property had been neglected for years.

The famous Bordeaux enologist Denis Dubourdieu, nicknamed the pope of white wine, who had once consulted there, told the Asseilys the terroir itself was exceptional regardless of its state.

The Asseilys soon gathered a top team around them.

Patrick Léon, a Château Mouton Rothschild retiree who had tried and failed to buy Biac himself years earlier, waited five or six months to be sure the couple were serious before agreeing to take the vineyard on.

Christine Sourdès, a consultant to Château Guiraud and Château de Myrat, and the first woman to open her own laboratory in the Sauternes-Graves area, came the following year to oversee the sweet wine.

Gilles Rey, an agronomist for Mouton Rothschild and, by his own account, familiar with practically every corner of Bordeaux, joined in 2006 to rebuild the vineyard itself.

Cellar master Sébastien Dupouy has been with the estate since 2008 – the year of Biac's first vintage under the new team.

The winery, meanwhile, was emptied of all the old stock and restored in six months flat.

The vineyard garden

Château Biac runs to 9.5ha split across 14 separate plots. The parcels are vinified separately in 13 small vats. Harvest dates are set plot by plot.

Rey has helped push the estate toward extreme precision, but it's Youmna who sums up the philosophy behind it.

‘We see it more as a garden than a vineyard,’ she says.

The blend changes every vintage – no formula, no house style to defend. As Youmna puts it, no two vintages, like no two children, are quite the same.

What stays constant is the combination of freshness and real ripeness, and the fact that Biac picks later than almost anyone else in the area. Harvest is done entirely by hand and sorted across four stations by a team of local workers.

The range itself has settled, too. There were once three reds, but in 2018 the Asseilys pared the line-up back to two – Château Biac and Félix de Biac.

Alongside them sit a dry white – Félicie de Biac – and a sweet white Cadillac – Secret de Biac.

There's a whisky too, born out of a necessity rather than a grand plan: new barrels are bought every year for the dry white and the sweet wine, which left the estate with a growing stock of good, used oak and not much to do with it.

A joint project with a distillery on the Isle of Harris followed almost as a matter of course, and the resulting single malt, aged in those ex-sweet-wine barrels, goes out under the name Haerach of Biac.

A name and a family behind

For a long time almost nobody outside the estate knew any of this.

Bottles were never sent out to critics or journalists. Biac was never sold en primeur – the Asseilys wanted to offer clients a wine that was ready to drink.

That changed by chance rather than design.

Daniel Boulud tasted the wine on a two-day visit, loved it, and began pouring it in his restaurants.

Jean Moueix director of leading négociant Duclot came separately and reached the same conclusion, and Biac has worked exclusively with Duclot ever since.

In 2013, eldest daughter Yasmina, who worked in finance in New York, took over the mission of building the American market.

Son Gabriel, previously in IT and trained in chemistry, joined as winemaker in January 2019, a few weeks after Patrick Léon's death.

Léon's son Bertrand has stayed on to work alongside him, as has Christine Sourdès.

The names on the labels trace back further still, to Youmna's own family – the Shihab (or Chehab) dynasty, which ruled Lebanon between the 16th and 18th centuries.

Félix de Biac takes its name from the family's coat of arms, a mountain cat representing strength and the protection of life, and the label itself features a stylised Kufic script.

Ask Youmna what the estate has taught her after 20 years of ownership, and she does not talk about wine scores.

‘You do something that will outlive you,’ she says. ‘It gives you the possibility to learn, to stretch yourself, to do something for the future. Agriculture gives you a lot of humility.’

Biac, in the end, seems to have given the family less a wine estate than a place to simply be together. The wine, it turns out, was what happened along the way.

A taste of Château Biac

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Six decades later, the same instinct is on display again, this time backed by a far bigger check.

Robert Mondavi Winery has reopened its original Oakville estate after a three-year renovation that owner Constellation Brands calls the most significant transformation of the property since it was founded in 1966. That’s not an overstatement.

The doors officially opened on 20 April 2026, timed to the winery’s 60th anniversary. Constellation has not confirmed the final cost, but industry estimates have put the investment at around US$200 million.

I attended the opening celebration, capped off with a humble performance by Grammy–winning singer-songwriter John Legend, and came away with one clear impression: even with hundreds of guests moving through the property that night, the redesigned space retained a cozy, upscale intimacy that is difficult to engineer at such scale.

In the weeks around the event, I also interviewed the winery’s key figures separately – head winemaker Kurtis Ogasawara, winemaker emerita Geneviève Janssens, director of vineyard operations Blake Wood and brand marketing director Peggy Hemphill – and became the first wine critic to taste with Ogasawara inside the new cellar.

A wine cellar built for precision and site expression

The new To Kalon Cellar introduces optical sorting, gravity-flow systems, temperature-controlled fermentation vessels and rooms for warming or cooling barrels, allowing for smaller, more precise lots from the estate’s 178-hectare portion of To Kalon Vineyard, which gained CCOF organic certification in 2023.

This fancy new winery is missing one big thing (well, a few big things): the 16-ton oak vats that were used for more than three decades to ferment and age Mondavi’s top Cabernets, including lots from To Kalon.

They were repurposed into the wooden ceilings throughout the facility.

‘We’ve added smaller stainless steel and concrete tanks to be able to isolate vineyard blocks and sections at ideal ripeness’, Ogasawara said. ‘Our goal is to push ourselves every vintage and continue to make wines that stand beside the greatest in the world’.

The cellar also puts production on display for visitors, he added, and has floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the vineyard: ‘Guests can see harvest activities firsthand and get a better understanding of what it takes to craft wines.’

To Kalon Vineyard itself is undergoing a renovation of sorts. ‘We are replanting a portion of the vineyard this year, about four percent’, said Blake Wood, director of vineyard operations.

‘We’ve replanted a bit more than one-third of the vineyard in the past decade now, focusing on highlighting the various micro-terroirs’.

Individual stars

The To Kalon grapes are now split across four labels under the Constellation umbrella: Robert Mondavi Winery, Schrader Cellars and Double Diamond (both led by winemaker Thomas Rivers Brown), and To Kalon Vineyard Company (Tony Biagi).

Each operates independently, with its own picking decisions.

‘There are blocks that are exclusive to one another and some blocks that we share’, Ogasawara said. ‘We taste each other’s wines and share different perspectives to ensure we are staying on top of our game’.

Janssens, who trained under Robert Mondavi himself, still sits in on blending. ‘Geneviève joins blending sessions to give her thoughts and holds us accountable’, Ogasawara said.

‘It's amazing to have her experience and palate in the room to ensure we are following what Robert Mondavi had intended’.

Architecturally, the project, led by Aidlin Darling Design with interiors by BAMO, preserves architect Cliff May's original arch and tower while adding a new hospitality wing: the light-filled Vineyard Room and terraces for most guests, the restored Tower Library and Barrel Room for private tastings, and the new To Kalon Collective tasting room.

Outside, a linear water feature echoes the valley’s old agricultural aqueducts, and landscaping by Surfacedesign folds the property into its surroundings so thoroughly that indoors and outdoors barely feel separate.

Tasting fees don’t break the bank

Perhaps the smartest innovation is in the decision not to charge extortionist fees to visitors in a region where entry-level tastings often carry luxury price tags and fees can range from $85 to $300.

For the Mondavi wines, Hemphill explained: ‘Our tasting experiences range from $60 to $150 per person. We also welcome walk-in guests for any of our experiences, as availability allows’.

The signature culinary offering, The Mondavi Table, is a three-course, family-style, wine-and-food pairing for $95 per person – notably affordable for a chef-driven, estate menu in Napa Valley today.

‘We believe true luxury is defined by the quality of the experience, not by exclusivity’, Hemphill said.

The To Kalon Collective is the newest experiential room, where the focus is entirely on the iconic vineyard rather than a single producer and private tastings cost $180 to $195.

‘Most people only ever experience [To Kalon Vineyard] through a single producer or a single wine,’ Hemphill said.

‘The To Kalon Collective brings together wines sourced from To Kalon Vineyard, including Robert Mondavi Winery alongside Schrader Cellars, Double Diamond and the To Kalon Vineyard Company, to tell a broader story about place’.

The idea, she explained, is to provide context – showing how vineyard blocks, farming and winemaking philosophy shape different wines from one renowned vineyard.

Blending winemaking and culture

When pressed again about the renovation costs, Hemphill shifts the focus of the question: ‘For us, it’s about creating an exceptional experience for our guests that can continue to raise the bar for hospitality here in Napa, much the way Robert Mondavi did when he first opened this winery’.

That’s the point. Yes, they ‘want this winery to continue to stand the test of time’, and yes, they want to ‘honour our legacy’, and yes, they want to ‘deliver against the values and vision under which the winery was founded’, and all that marketing speak.

But the real reason – even if they can’t express it themselves – is that they want people to come back to Napa and have an experience that creates real memories, without walking away wondering if they spent too much money.

Pointedly, the reopening comes during a challenging moment for the wine world, with an ongoing barrage of reports about falling consumption and industry layoffs, amplified by anecdotal conversations re-hashing those doom-and-gloom stories.

‘I flatly reject the idea that wine culture is heading for extinction’, said Hemphill. ‘What we are witnessing right now isn’t a funeral; it’s a massive cultural evolution. The next generation of consumers doesn’t want the stuffy, velvet-rope exclusivity of the past. They want authenticity, values that align with their own, and incredible, unpretentious experiences’.

The reopening is meant to make Mondavi ‘that loudspeaker for Napa’ again, she said, by ‘blending world-class winemaking with contemporary [wine] culture.’

Passing the winemaking baton

Another momentous shift for Robert Mondavi Winery is the passing of the torch to winemaker Kurtis Ogasawara, who is not only one of the nicest people you’ll meet in Napa Valley, but one of the most humble.

Ogasawara has spent more than a decade working in the cellars alongside Janssens, who was named director of production at Opus One in 1989 and director of winemaking at Mondavi in 1997.

‘He understands that a great winemaker doesn’t try to force their own signature onto a legendary terroir’, Janssens says of Ogasawara, ‘but rather listens to the land to bring out its purest elegance and power. There is no one more deeply rooted in our winemaking philosophy than Kurtis to lead us forward’.

Tasting with Ogasawara in the new cellar gave me a front-row seat to his frame of mind. Yes, he has big shoes to fill. Huge shoes, in fact. But he’s more than ready – confident and sure of himself.

And, to extract a new era of wines from Mondavi’s grape sources, he has a new cellar full of shiny new tanks and concrete vats designed to emphasise fruit – or, more fittingly, place.

‘I see it as continuing the mission to create wines that stand beside the greatest in the world’, Ogasawara said.

‘I have worked with and learned from some of Napa Valley’s best winemakers, from Geneviève Janssens and Andy Erickson to Thomas Brown and Tony Biagi. I promise to never settle and keep pushing to see what else we can accomplish’.

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The Awards helped solidify the reputations of two established Pacific Northwest appellations in particular, as their wines showed ‘a strong level of consistency’, according to Oregon-based DWWA Panel Judge Bree Stock MW. ‘Oregon’s best Pinot Noirs were very compelling, particularly from established Willamette Valley sub-AVAs such as Dundee Hills, where the wines showed aromatic definition, layered spice and the capacity to age’.

The Washington wine submissions showed ‘real strength and perform well, with Walla Walla Valley standing out for Cabernet Franc and Syrah that has depth, savoury complexity and a clear regional voice’, Stock added. ‘Royal Slope Riesling was another bright point’.

Oregon excellence: Pinot Noir, Cabernet and white wines

Domaine Serene, one of Oregon’s top producers, took home Best in Show – given to just 0.3% of the nearly 17,000 wines tasted in 2026 – for its 2023 Aspect Pinot Noir. The wine is sourced from the winery’s highest-elevation estate vineyards in the Dundee Hills, one of Willamette Valley’s prime winegrowing appellations. In fact, every one of the previous three Best in Show winners from Oregon (in the 2016, 2020 and 2023 competitions) has been a Pinot Noir from Dundee Hills.

The judges gave Aspect a score of 97 points, noting its ‘impressive craftsmanship’, ‘outstanding fruit’, supple palate and ‘textbook Dundee Hills aromatics of cherry cola and sassafras’. Domaine Serene also earned a Gold medal and 96 points for its ‘seductive’ 2023 Grace Vineyard Pinot Noir, a single-vineyard bottling from its Evenstad Estate, as well as Silver medals for three other Pinot Noirs and two sparkling wines.

To be recognised with a collection of medals ‘is deeply meaningful to our entire vineyard and winemaking team’, said Michael Fay, Domaine Serene’s vice president of winemaking and viticulture. ‘These awards reflect our commitment to wines expressing the character of the Dundee Hills and Willamette Valley while representing the world-class quality Oregon brings to Pinot Noir and sparkling wine. This recognition gives us an important opportunity to introduce more consumers to our wines and the remarkable region we are proud to call home’.

Another 2023 Dundee Hills Pinot Noir, an ‘elegant’ and ‘stylish’ selection from Alexana’s sustainably farmed estate vineyard, won a Platinum medal, scoring 97 points. ‘I see it as a high water mark for us,’ said general manager Jeff Lewis.

‘It’s the coalescence of so many things’ – including the work of new head winemaker Tresider Burns, new director of viticulture Drew Herman, the estate’s conversion to organic farming and a shift in winemaking approach.

Being recognised as ‘one of the great wines of the world’, Lewis added, ‘is a validation of the direction in which our team – in terms of farming and winemaking – had been evolving after 20 years, continuing to push ourselves in a really meaningful way to make wines of unique personalities that express what we feel is so special about Alexana and the Dundee Hills’.

Oregon wineries also collected three other Gold medals, for a total of four, including for Amaterra’s excitingly complex 2022 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir (96 points) and Watermill’s rich, supple 2021 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (95) from The Rocks District of Milton-Freewater in Walla Walla Valley, where Bordeaux varieties and Syrah thrive. And bhn’s compelling, layered, off-dry Oregon Riesling 2023 (95) became the first orange wine from the state to receive Gold at DWWA.

In all, the state racked up 72 medals, a new high.

Washington wine winners: Walla Walla and Wahluke Slope reds

Washington winery Echolands earned a Platinum for its ‘lush,’ ‘harmonious’ 2023 Blue Mountain Vineyard Cabernet Franc (97), from one of the coolest sites on the Washington side of Walla Walla Valley. This follows the same wine’s Platinum success last year for the 2022 vintage – quite an achievement for a winery that was founded in 2018 and released its first wines in 2020.

‘The Walla Walla AVA is an incredible place in the world to grow winegrapes’, said Echolands winemaker and general manager Brian Rudin. ‘There is a great diversity of options for winemakers: the higher-elevation, cooler and silt-laden slopes are a sweet spot for Bordeaux varieties, especially when aromatics and elegant textures are the goal’.

The state also saw its strongest-ever Gold medal performance in 2026, with five diverse wines achieving that honour. ‘Washington State continued to have a strong showing with their characteristic powerful styles of wine,’ said James Tidwell MS, DWWA Regional Chair for the USA and Central America. Its medal total for the year came to 46.

While most of the Washington winners were red wines, Echolands’ harmonious 2024 Frenchman Hills Vineyard Block 1 Riesling (96) became the first Gold medal winner from the Royal Slope AVA. ‘We’ve always revered these two vineyards [Blue Mountain and Frenchman Hills] as the best-suited sites in Washington for their respective varieties’, commented Rudin.

UpWest’s 2023 Syrah (95) secured another first: Gold for Washington’s Wahluke Slope appellation.

Two Washington icons also took home Gold. L’Ecole No. 41 demonstrated the benefit of working with a suite of mature vineyards with its 2022 Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (95), from vines averaging more than 20 years old. That was just one of its four medals. Like Echolands, Spring Valley Vineyards put Cabernet Franc in the foreground in its 2023 Uriah (96), a blend with 40% Merlot, also from Walla Walla Valley.

Walla Walla’s parallel strength with red Rhône varieties was on display in the robust, meaty Francisca’s Vineyard Syrah 2023 (95) from Hoquetus Wine Co., a tiny producer with a wide range of wines, from Riesling to Roussanne and Nouveau-style Syrah to amphora-fermented Mencía.

Decanter’s annual awards: a guide to global wine standouts

Launched in 2004, DWWA is widely regarded as the global benchmark for wine quality based on its rigorous tasting process, its international reach and the expertise of its judges (245 of them in 2026, more than one-third of them Masters of Wine or Master Sommeliers). ‘With so many choices available, consumers often look for reassurance when selecting a bottle, and the DWWA medals help simplify the decision’, commented DWWA Co-Chair Ronan Sayburn MS.

Twenty-three years on, DWWA has become the world’s largest wine competition, awarding medals in five tiers: the 50 Best in Show, then Platinum and Gold (all scoring 95+ points), followed by Silver and Bronze.

In 2026, US wines won a total of 466 DWWA medals – nearly double the country’s previous highest tally. With two Best in Show wines, five Platinum and 32 Gold (one in the Top 35 Value Golds list), this is the biggest haul of top-tier medals the country has brought in at the competition.

Although California, Oregon and Washington continue to dominate, Texas took home its first Gold medals, while Virginia and Pennsylvania both achieved their third consecutive years with Gold medals. Wineries in Massachusetts, Missouri, Colorado and North Carolina claimed Silver medals.

The full list of 2026 winners from around the world can be found at awards.decanter.com.

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What I found was the beginning of a new era for this fifth growth in the Haut-Médoc appellation south of Margaux. It’s a property reborn.

What a contrast to the Cantemerle I saw on my first visit to Bordeaux more than 40 years ago. Back then, the old cellar sported a dirt floor.

A few chickens pecked among the barrels. The grey-with-age limestone château and its ivy-covered tower seemed to echo a distant romantic past.

The cellarmaster dribbled wine from an ancient barrel in a smudged glass for me to taste, and later he proudly pulled out the château’s weather records, thick ledgers with tiny handwriting on yellowing paper.

The 20^th century proprietors kept a meticulous log of temperatures, precipitation, and weather events, and today they’re a brilliant source for tracking climate change.

Back then, Cantemerle seemed ripe for rescuing. There was the size of the property, nearly 500 acres, a long, fascinating history, complete with medieval lords, 19^th century awards in Paris, a visionary widow, and, of course, the gravelly terroir ideal for making great red wine.

Fast forward to its revival, which began with new ownership in 1981. The final part of the revamp was finished in time for the 2025 vintage, signalling a bright future for the wines, always at the top of the list of best value-for-money Bordeaux.

But on my visit, I learned there was much more.

A surprising history

Longevity testifies to tenacity and resilience, and Cantemerle’s origins go back to the 12^th century, way before Bordeaux’s most famous châteaux in the Médoc were founded.

It started as a fort that acted as a toll point, and the first record of vines was in 1354, when lord Ponset de Cantemerle paid a debt with a barrel of wine.

One theory suggests the name comes from le merle y chante, the song of the blackbird.

Then came various owners, but its golden age was during the 300-year tenure of the Villeneuve-Durfort family, which took charge in 1579 and oversaw it until 1892. The château as we know it today was built after the French Revolution.

Most important to its legacy was feisty visionary widow Caroline Villeneuve de Durfort, whose husband died in 1834.

Though her son inherited, he was only 19, and responsibility for the estate initially fell to Caroline. Then her son died tragically young, and she was left completely in charge.

She modernised everything, from the château to the winemaking, and pioneered an innovative method for fighting mildew.

She successfully sued a neighbour for using the name Cantemerle to sell his wine, but her unique contribution was making sure the estate was included in the 1855 classification.

One of my favourite Bordeaux tales is how she accomplished it. The famous list was based on the sales prices that local courtiers recorded, and she had long sold all the wine in the Netherlands, finally switching to Bordeaux négociants in 1853 or 1854.

When she discovered Cantemerle hadn’t been included, she was furious, demanded a meeting with the deciding brokers and brought 40 years of sales receipts to prove Cantemerle’s wine prices were higher than a few other châteaux on the list. It was added as a fifth growth at the last minute.

Then came the devastation of phylloxera, with Cantemerle among the worst hit estates in the Médoc. The influential Dubos family stepped in, owned it for nearly a century, and restored its reputation.

But, weakened by World War II, it was eventually on the road to ruin.

A real fixer-upper

I’m a huge fan of comeback stories, and so, apparently, was Albert Parment, the head of mutual insurance company SMABTP.

A passionate Bordeaux aficionado, he saw run-down Cantemerle as a unique long-term investment opportunity and, in 1981, paid 25 million francs (the equivalent of nearly US$6m) for it.

SMABTP was the first major insurance company to acquire a Bordeaux vineyard, and Parment poured in millions more to restore it.

First up was replanting and expanding the vineyard, which had shrunk to just 20 hectares. The idea was to bring it back to the 100ha it was at the time of the 1855 classification, using Mexican workers imported from California.

But the replant also included a shift in varieties, doubling the amount of Cabernet Sauvignon to nearly 70% by grafting over much of the Cabernet Franc, a change that’s reflected in current vintages of the wine.

Another ambitious woman, Laure Canu, arrived from Château Angelus to oversee the final phase (which started in 2022) and chart Cantemerle’s future course.

The renovated château, its stone façade cleaned, impresses, but the innovations in the huge vat room and underground cellar stunned me, especially a ceiling crafted from the recycled staves of 600 old barrels.

The delicious 2025 wine owes its quality partly to the parcel-by-parcel viticulture and winemaking that’s now de rigueur in Bordeaux châteaux with new cellars.

The vast vat room holds 114 shiny, conical stainless-steel vats, so each plot can be vinified separately, while the latest satellite technology tracks individual vines.

On a wall monitor with an interactive vineyard map winemaker Gregory Thibault showed me how he can zero in on the state of each vine, giving him the ability to pick old and young vines in each micro-plot at exactly the right moment.

The design of it all is, of course, eco-conscious, like the geothermal loop system that powers water from a pond to the entire facility.

Nature and the oenotourism future

Even as drinking wine is declining, wine tourism is rapidly expanding, and SMABPT – and Laure Canu – saw the trend.

The atmosphere in the new wine bar and boutique, featuring wine pairings, the chateau’s honey, children’s colouring books, and more, reminded me of the latest tasting rooms in the Napa Valley.

Cantemerle goes further, opening its park and woodland to visitors for the first time, as have other huge Bordeaux properties such as Châteaux Giscours in Margaux and Olivier in Pessac-Léognan.

While wandering the shady winding paths of Cantemerle’s leafy park, designed in the 18^th century, you get a sense of what biodiversity means: century-old trees, giant ferns, and about 160 species of plants and animals, including wild boar.

A wooden vat in the center of a labyrinth has been converted for observing wildlife. Hazelnut trees shelter ladybugs needed in the vineyard. There’s guided Japanese forest bathing, a floral cooking workshop, and, of course, you can picnic.

But what most fascinated me is their unique botanical project of collecting seeds from the estate’s plants, cultivating them, and then making space in the vineyard to replant them and create hedges and ‘ecological corridors’ connecting it to all those natural areas.

Spending a day at the revived Cantemerle is like immersing yourself in Bordeaux’s green future, discovering how important the ecosystem is to wine and people, while sipping great affordable wines that will only get better.

And there’s more to come. This year, Canu told me, they plan to graft over a hectare of vines to Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon.

Château Cantemerle: 2010-2023

Wines are listed by vintage youngest to oldest

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But even if you’re staycationing this summer, this boutique white wine region is well worth investigating.

Spanning the border between Lombardy and Veneto, Lugana’s breezy white wines – plus a smattering of vibrant sparklers – are made from Turbiana. This local variety is a bit of a chameleon; delicately fruit-forward on its own, but with enough structural complexity to give winemakers endless room to play with different styles.

‘We don’t want to cover the character of Lugana,’ says Alessandro Cutolo of Marangona, an organic 35-hectare family estate. His vineyards are in Lombardy, yet his cellar just over the road is in Veneto. He prefers unlined cement and Tava terracotta amphorae for their gentle oxidative capabilities, preserving the grape's bright fruit and translating its signature minerality and salinity straight to the glass.

Meanwhile, Roberto Girelli, the fourth-generation winemaker at nearby Montonale, champions stainless steel, although he employs Austrian oak for his tiny-production, single-vineyard ‘Orestilla’. ‘My goal is to represent the soil and the minerality of Lugana in the wine,’ he explains.

Le Morette is one of around 20 wineries (of a total of just over 100) experimenting with Riserva bottlings, pushing the boundaries of ageability for what was until recently considered a young and fresh wine.

‘With time in bottle, you have more the influence of the soil and less the influence of the grape,’ explains Cutolo.

It's in the soil

To truly understand Lugana, you have to look down. Established in 1905, Ottella is one of the region's historic pioneers. In 1964, chief winemaker Lodovico’s grandfather, also called Lodovico, designed a map of the Lugana denomination based on its unique clay soils. This compact, mineral-rich white clay is key to Lugana's character; it naturally tames the vigour of the bounteous Turbiana grape, resulting in whites that boast impressive weight, concentration, and a hallmark longevity that punches far above their casual 'summer-sipper' weight.

Four Lugana to change your mind

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The law unleashed the first wave of ‘agriturismo’.

Its effects were felt most strongly in Tuscany, where historic wine estates and olive farms began to open their gates to visitors, transforming centuries-old agricultural properties into experiential destinations.

Agriturismo is ‘actually really old’, says Mania Castelli. ‘It was abused for many years and now it’s coming back properly.’

Castelli runs La Torre alle Tolfe, a 700-year-old wine estate near Siena in Tuscany – part of the modern, ‘new wave’ of agriturismo.

While tax benefits and simplified bureaucracy made the agriturismo label attractive to people who weren’t actually farmers, this new wave is agricentric.

La Torre alle Tolfe exemplifies this.

Castelli, a veterinarian who returned to run the family property in 2015, now runs a working wine and olive oil estate that integrates hospitality, agricultural education and regenerative farming practices.

Authentic experiences

Like Castelli, Alessandro Varagnolo – owner of Cadgal, a winery and agriturismo in Piedmont (pictured, above) – thinks the key to successful agriturismo is staying true to its agricultural roots.

‘Here,’ he says, referring to Cadgal’s location between Langhe and Monferrato, ‘vineyards are not just a backdrop for tourism, but an active part of everyday life and work.’

Today, Cadgal offers a B&B experience with breakfast prepared using local produce, wine tasting, horse riding and more. ‘It’s a genuine connection to wine, land and people,’ he says, ‘rather than a standardised tourism product.’

Capitalising on the tourism boom, today’s agriturismo model gives wineries an opportunity to share their area’s heritage and winemaking traditions with visitors from around the world.

‘We have to do something to tell our stories, especially if we’re small,’ Castelli says. ‘People coming to your farm is much more powerful than any kind of internet or social media [exposure].’

Castelli notes that another driver of the new wave of agriturismo is the fact that many wine producers are trying to diversify their income streams in today’s climate of market instability and extreme vintage conditions.

This is particularly powerful when direct sales can achieve the same margins as exporting far larger volumes.

Strength in diversity

But for Elisa De Lulis of legendary biodynamic estate Emidio Pepe in Abruzzo, it isn’t about money.

‘For us, diversifying into agriturismo was never about following a market trend or seeking a simple revenue stream,’ she says.

‘It was a natural, almost inevitable, extension of our winemaking philosophy. We realised that the best way to communicate and protect our heritage was to let people see it with their own eyes.’

Regional differences shape the form agriturismo takes.

De Lulis describes Abruzzo, a region located between the Gran Sasso massif and the Adriatic sea, as ‘wild, rugged and profoundly honest’.

She explains: ‘Unlike other more manicured Italian regions, our agriturismo scene is still deeply rooted in true peasant culture. Guests here can experience a biodiversity that is still intact and spontaneous.’

In Piedmont’s rolling hills, where tourism is more advanced, different agricultural sectors feed into one another.

Truffles and hazelnuts are part of the same cultural ecosystem as wine, creating what Varagnolo calls ‘slow, experiential tourism’.

As for Tuscany, the region that experienced a tourism renaissance in the late 1980s and early ’90s, when the agriturismo movement was first taking shape, wineries face a different set of considerations.

‘The word Tuscany helps you, in the sense that it attracts,’ reflects Castelli. ‘On the other hand, there’s a lot of competition.’ And high expectations.

Rather than competing in isolation, producers recommend tourists visit each other’s wineries, sell each other’s olive oils and create wine trails across regional lines.

‘Our mission is not individualistic,’ Castelli explains. ‘We’re just trying to contribute to a much bigger cause.’

Looking ahead, she envisions farms integrating tourism, education and ecological restoration into their operations, with each property shaped by its unique landscape and history.

‘Every place is different,’ she says, ‘so there’s much less competition once you do that.’

Five new-wave wine-country properties to visit

Cadgal

Piedmont

cadgal.it

Alessandro Varagnolo runs Tenuta Valdivilla and Tenuta La Cova, two agriturismo estates between Langhe and Monferrato, where he has built a business around what he calls ‘genuine, familiar hospitality’.

When he took over the properties, one already operated as an agriturismo; the other he immediately expanded.

‘From the very beginning, I strongly believed in wine tourism as a key driver for the future,’ he says.

Guests can stay in B&B accommodation with homemade breakfast prepared using local products.

Wine experiences centre around the estates’ signature Moscato variety and tastings of their most representative bottles.

Guided vineyard walks trace the journey from vine to bottle, while partnerships offer truffle hunting, horse riding and e-bike rentals in the surrounding hills.

According to Varagnolo, the model works because guests develop connections, which more often than not means they return after their first visit.

‘People become emotionally involved with the place, the wines and the people behind them,’ he says. ‘That level of loyalty is something you don’t always expect.’

Cascina Degli Ulivi

Gavi

cascinadegliulivi.it

Zita and Stefano Bellotti opened Cascina Degli Ulivi’s agriturismo in 1998 to introduce guests to the winery and its natural wines.

Today, daughter Ilaria Bellotti runs four rooms – all built using bio-construction methods – with 12 beds in the Gavi area.

The farm-to-table restaurant serves lunch on weekends and dinner from Wednesday through Saturday, using ingredients harvested directly from their biodynamic gardens.

Guests tour vineyards and the cellar, walk scenic trails through the Piedmont hills and participate in educational grape harvests. Many young people come specifically for the harvest experience.

The agriturismo generates direct income while building lasting connections with customers who experience the estate’s philosophy first hand.

‘We’re very well known in the world of natural wine,’ Ilaria says, ‘and people want to see where it’s produced.

Valleponci

Liguria

valleponci.it

In contrast to the more familiar, family-run properties, Valleponci emerged with a different origin story: five friends who met while studying food ecology at the Slow Food movement’s University of Gastronomic Sciences in Piedmont, united by a vision of ‘using food as a tool to reactivate local economies and regenerate the landscape’, according to one of Valleponci’s co-founders, Gianluca Demarchi.

Unable to secure traditional financing for the 50ha property near Finale Ligure, on the coast west of Genoa, they created a cooperative model in 2021, selling shares to about 70 investors who became co-owners with annual credits to visit.

After two and a half years of fundraising, they had their first season in 2024.

Today, an international team of up to 18 people representing eight nationalities runs four bedrooms, two apartments and a restaurant that can cater to up to 70 guests.

The restaurant reflects the network they’re building.

While 90% of the ingredients come from their regenerative vegetable gardens and Korean natural farming practices, the rest is sourced from nearby producers.

The menu blends regional Ligurian ingredients with international influences such as Nordic ferments and Middle Eastern spices.

Two hectares of vines in the humid, forested valley produce a Pigato (Vermentino) white blend and a Granaccia (Grenache) red, plus a pét-nat made using Barbera sourced from friends in Piedmont. But hospitality serves a larger purpose:

‘At the very core of our model is the cultural development of the farm,’ which Demarchi explains means publications, university partnerships and educational programs.

La Torre alle Tolfe

Tuscany

latorrealletolfe.com

Mania Castelli returned from the UK in 2015 to revive her family’s 700-year-old property near Siena, creating a 54-bed hotel and restaurant that serves up to 10,000 guests annually, alongside 13ha of regeneratively farmed vineyards and 17ha of olive groves.

Guests can join morning and evening animal feeding rounds, tour underground passages and an eighth-century tower, and participate in a variety of agricultural courses.

The property also runs a social agriculture project – a permaculture vegetable garden employing people with autism – where breakfast eggshells become compost, grape skins mix with biochar from olive prunings, and animals that graze the vineyards double as educational encounters.

‘We don’t talk about tourists, we talk about visitors who join our community,’ Castelli says.

But if that all sounds a little serious, there’s ample space to indulge and relax, too.

The restaurant menu reads like a map of the property. Alongside wines from the estate’s cellar, they serve up dishes such as hand-cut pici with Sienese garlic from the vegetable beds, and guinea fowl stuffed with cinta senese (a local heritage-breed pig) sausage and wild herbs.

Guests can engage as deeply as they want, or simply enjoy the landscape over an organic Tuscan feast.

Emidio Pepe

Abruzzo

emidiopepe.com

‘Our agriturismo is, above all, a reflection of our family’s DNA,’ says Elisa De Lulis, third-generation member of the Emidio Pepe winemaking family in Abruzzo.

‘We are a large, close-knit family, and our hospitality is rooted in the way we live every day – the decision to formally open the agriturismo was the idea of making it an extension of our home.’

Launched in 2020, the agriturismo offering has evolved from accommodation into something far deeper.

With eight rooms and a restaurant that can serve 30 guests four to five times a week, it offers privileged access to the Emidio Pepe universe: the historic wine library, artisanal winemaking traditions and a working farm where ancient grains grow alongside organic vegetable gardens. A stone mill and bakery are on the way, too.

‘We don’t offer a curated “tourist version” of farm life; we offer the life itself,’ De Lulis explains.

The restaurant – run by chefs Giuseppe Polzinetti and Jonathan Maravalli in collaboration with gardener Martina Pasqualini – serves a tasting menu that changes near-daily, dictated by what’s available. De Lulis curates wine pairings featuring rare vintages from the family’s cellar.

It’s a closed-loop ecosystem: the same biodynamic soil that nourishes the vines produces the vegetables on guests’ plates.

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Spanning approximately 80km north to south, its main geological feature is a vast canyon of millefeuille pink sandstone, whose skyscraping vertical rock faces appear hyperreal in dazzling high-altitude sun.

At the base of this canyon, lush green valleys skirt the Rio Grande and Rio Chica rivers.

Closer inspection reveals them to be ‘forest’ vineyards, where ancient, ungrafted criolla grapevines wind up into the canopy of molle (pink peppercorn), algarrobo (white carob) and chañar (green wood) trees.

Small-scale and high-altitude

Though viticulture has existed in Cinti since the arrival of the first Spanish missionaries more than 500 years ago, this remote region’s emergence as a South American premium wine region of note is new.

The majority of Bolivia’s wine production – mostly large wineries working with international varieties – centres on Tarija, a three-hour drive across deep valleys and mountain passes to the south.

Wine is also made in a tiny coffee-producing sub-region of Santa Cruz called Samaipata.

Cochabamba, a region far better known for producing coca, also has a smattering of wineries.

But Cinti stands out from them all.

The valley encompasses three principal districts – Camargo, Villa Abecia and Las Carreras, all characterised by extreme high-altitude viticulture and small-scale production that is necessarily focused on premium wines.

Typically, wine is subordinate to the production of singani – a clear brandy made from Moscatel de Alejandría and Bolivia’s national spirit – but in recent years the region’s winemakers have begun to show greater ambition.

Paradise regained

The first vines were planted in Cinti in the mid- to late 1500s, brought by Dominican Spanish missionaries who followed the route of the conquistadores from Peru.

Augustinian monks further established viticulture in the valley, also producing singani and wine for the silver mining settlement of Potosí to the north.

At the time, Potosí was home to the largest silver deposit in the world, which bore the riches upon which the Spanish Empire was founded.

Towards the end of the 16^th century, Jesuits arrived in the valley, continuing to industrialise winemaking and distillation as they extended their influence from La Plata (present-day Sucre) and Potosí into the southern valleys of Chuquisaca.

To this day, along the northern Cinti Valley, ruins of adobe haciendas provide evidence of the Jesuits’ industry.

Some have been preserved by wine and singani makers who continue the work their families have been doing in Cinti for generations.

Following the Jesuits’ expulsion in 1767, four families – Vacaflores, Rivera, Mendoza and Leyton – rose to prominence.

These families retain a presence in the valley through several important wine and singani producers: Luis Balanza, fifth-generation owner of Hacienda Virreinal Real Compañía Baja in Camargo, of Vacaflores lineage; Jaime Rivera, fifth-generation owner of Bodega Cepa de Oro in Camargo; Patricia Mendoza, fifth-generation owner of Bodega Yokich in Camargo (raised in Cinti, trained at Plumpton College, Sussex); and fourth-generation Marcelo Vacaflores of Bodega San Francisco de la Horca in Camargo.

To these names one should add other important wine producers with Cinti family roots: Jorge ‘Don Piti’ Samos, of Bodega La Encantada in Villa Abecia, and Alejandro Medina of the négociant label Bitoque, also co-owner of the natural wine-focused restaurant Bibi-Ji in Santa Barbara alongside Rajat Parr.

Sister act

With similarly deep roots in wine and singani, though based in Tarija, is Jardín Oculto (secret garden).

Established in 2019 by sisters Maria José and Mercedes Granier – and from 2020 until 2024 guided in the cellar by well-travelled British winemaker Nayan Gowda – this winery offers perhaps the clearest evidence of Cinti’s winemaking ambition.

The Graniers’ link to Cinti comes through their great-grandfather, Julio Ortiz, the owner of Bodega San Pedro at its productive peak in the 1920s.

Founded in the 16^th century, San Pedro grew to become the biggest distillery in Bolivia. As Maria José explains, when the distillery fell into decline in the 1990s – the cumulative effect of the decline of Potosí, geographic isolation and competition from other distilleries – the knock-on effect for Cinti was huge.

While grapes were once transported from Tarija to be processed at San Pedro, suddenly the tide turned; Tarija’s wine industry grew as Cinti shrunk.

Then came the intervention of Cees van Casteren, a Dutch Master of Wine recruited by the Dutch-funded Fautapo Foundation to help prepare Bolivian wineries for export.

In 2014, Van Casteren introduced Maria José Granier to Cinti’s extraordinary ‘forest’ vineyards, ultimately persuading her to purchase the historic Hacienda San Roque in Camargo.

In 2018 he organised the first MW trip to Bolivia, visiting wineries in Cinti and Tarija.

‘It’s impossible to talk about Bolivian wine today without talking about Cees,' says Maria José Garnier.

'He recognised right away how special the Cinti Valley's arboreal viticulture is, and he became a dedicated advocate for it.’

Arbolito viticulture

Cinti’s arboreal, or ‘arbolito’ (‘little tree’), vineyards are a powerful living symbol of Bolivia’s little-known viticultural history. Maria José estimates that 15-20% of Cinti’s 300ha of vineyards are of the arbolito kind.

Some, including Jardín Oculto’s San Roque, are single-ownership and dedicated to winegrape cultivation.

Others remain fully functioning polycultures of stunning fecundity and colour, in which as many as a dozen people may each own a parcel of a quarter or half a hectare.

The arbolito vines tower over gobelet-style vines and, occasionally, V-shaped trellises planted to optimise crop yields within a densely planted area.

Anecdotal estimates of their age range from 100 to 200 years, if not more.

But they are no mere historical curio; they can produce extraordinary wines, often with a gargantuan fruitload – 30kg of grapes per vine is not unusual – which defies all that is taught about grapevine cultivation in textbooks.

Helios McNaught, husband of Maria José Granier, has overall responsibility for the management of Jardín Oculto’s vineyards.

He believes one of their most important tasks is to apply a modern, scientific understanding of viticulture to this ancient heritage.

‘It’s about respecting and trying to understand why people did what they did,’ he says, ‘but also when to know that’s not enough [...] Each year we try to make small adjustments, like in the pruning, because you can’t make large adjustments to a complex ecosystem without messing it up.'

Cinti’s unique terroir

While the concept of ‘terroir’ is relatively new in Cinti, the valley’s favourable conditions for producing superior wine grapes have long been understood.

Its extreme high altitude generates a big diurnal temperature shift – around harvest, daytime highs of 35°C can drop to 15°C – which helps the grapes to retain acidity.

The altitude intensifies the UV exposure, thickening grape skins and encouraging the development of complex aromas and flavours.

Frequent winds and a semi-arid climate foster vine health, while a complex geology – in which sandstone, shale and quartz are found within deep alluvial gravels, alongside sand and calcareous deposits – gives a distinct mineral dimension to the wines.

Another crucial terroir element is the river water used for traditional channel irrigation in the vineyards.

The water of the Rio Grande contains unusually high levels of sodium ions and other dissolved minerals from the ancient shales over which the river runs for several kilometres before it reaches Cinti.

In the Rio Chica, the water is described as ‘agua dulce’, fed by fresh snowmelt and rainwater that descends from the Andes.

This makes it possible to distinguish between Cinti wines based on their water source: salty-mineral from the Rio Grande, softer and more fruit-led from the Rio Chica.

The rise of criollas

Central to Cinti’s identity is its dedication to criolla grape varieties. In the past five to 10 years South America has witnessed an explosion of criolla wines as South American wine producers have honed in on their own viticultural heritage.

In Bolivia, this has been fuelled by La Paz’s newfound status as one of the gastronomic capitals of the world, with stellar restaurants like Gustu and Arami offering 100% Bolivian wine lists on which criolla wines predominate.

The three most important Cinti criollas are Negra Criolla (Listán Prieto/País/Criolla Chica), Moscatel de Alejandría and Vischoqueña, the latter a crossing of Negra Criolla and Moscatel that is unique to Bolivia.

Cinti’s mixed-planted arbolito vineyards feature more than a dozen other criollas. These include Imporeña and Uvilla and others that DNA analysis has so far failed to identify.

Genetic jewel box

Much investment in research is needed to fully catalogue and preserve these rare varieties, which have evolved in isolation in this remote valley for centuries, though this work is already under way.

At Bodega Yokich in Camargo, winemaker Patricia Mendoza and her family are the custodians of Cinti’s only grapevine genetic bank.

Based on the extensive work of her father and grandfather – once the vineyard manager of San Pedro – they are working not only to preserve Cinti’s grape varieties, but also to propagate and distribute them to vineyard owners across Bolivia.

‘The main concern for my grandfather, especially, and my father was that in a few years the old vineyards were going to disappear and then we would lose the genetic diversity that we had,’ Mendoza explains.

‘Nowadays, some of those vineyards no longer exist, but we have the genetic material here. This is a huge responsibility for us, as the new generation. We also work with the governments, for example in Chuquisaca, in Potosí, in Santa Cruz… so the genetic material from the Cinti Valley is all around Bolivia now.’

A new chapter

Bolivia is still trying to find its own identity as a wine country. For now, one is more likely to hear about the big, oak-aged Tannats or Cabernets of Tarija than about the more esoteric delights of Cinti’s high-altitude criollas – if one is to hear about Bolivian wine at all.

‘We used to look up a lot to Argentina,’ Maria José Granier admits. ‘Now we're trying to learn more about what we have, and that’s very important.’

Momentum is building, in Bolivia generally, in Cinti especially. Clear evidence came with the establishment of Denominación de Origen Valle de Cinti – the only DO for wine in Bolivia – in 2014.

Comprising 11 bodegas divided between the valley’s three main winegrowing districts, the DO has an explicit objective to protect the wines and viticultural heritage of the Cinti Valley.

Locally, considerable hope also now exists on the political front: first, from the election in 2025 of centre-right President Rodrigo Paz, who marked his overturning of almost two decades of socialist rule with the declaration that Bolivia was ‘open for business’.

Secondly, the installation of a new mayor for the Cinti region, Marcela Mendoza, whose family owns the Yokich estate in Camargo.

With a sympathetic new mayor’s influence, and appeals to previously overlooked constitutional provisions for support – critically important is statute 774, introduced in 2016 to protect and promote Bolivian singani and wine – Cinti’s artisan producers hope to be able to apply for low-interest government loans that will enable them to purchase new winery equipment, develop their businesses and make even better wines.

With this momentum continuing to build, it won’t be long before the wines of this remote canyon reach their deserved global audience.

Exploring the wines of the Cinti Valley

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It means donning his flippers and heading into the ocean to grab some kina (sea urchins).

‘I’ve been freediving and collecting kaimoana [seafood] my whole life, but sea urchin has always been my favourite. I swim over everything else to get that,’ he says.

‘You eat it straight out of the shell,’ he continues. ‘I stick a knife through the centre then use a spoon to scoop out the orange roe, and just slurp it back. Kina is one of the most nutritious foods out there, with heaps of vitamins and minerals.’

If there are no urchins around, he’ll settle for abalone, red rock lobster, scallops and oysters – as well as spearing fish. ‘You name it, we’ll get it,’ he says.

Keeping culture alive

MacDonald’s vineyard is probably the closest one to the ocean in Marlborough – just 100 or so metres away – so it’s no surprise he spends almost as much time in the water as out of it.

Some of his earliest memories are of learning to freedive with his father. ‘We never had proper gear back then,’ he recalls. ‘Dad would just give us each a screwdriver and we’d use them to prise the abalone off the rocks. Nowadays people have fancy dive knives.’

Freediving and gathering kaimoana is a central part of Māori culture, MacDonald explains. He’s a descendent of some of the earliest Māori arrivals to New Zealand – some 800 years ago – and the skills involved have reached him via many generations.

Now he’s teaching his five children those same skills. ‘I like it even more these days because they’re catching the food for me,’ he jokes. ‘The joy on someone’s face when they grab their first lobster is cool. Those are special moments.’

Of course, freediving isn’t without risk. Just last year, Frédéric Panaïotis, chef de cave at Ruinart, died in a freediving accident.

MacDonald’s scariest moment in the water was realising a dark shadow was a big shark swimming towards him. ‘Luckily a cousin, who was in a boat, got between us,’ he says. ‘I managed to get out pretty quickly… That was definitely a nervous moment.'

But, he adds: ‘I’m too hungry diving to worry about the risks normally. We’ve done it our whole lives. We just instinctively know what to do. But yes, if you don’t respect the ocean, you’re going to get in trouble. You’ve got to adapt to the conditions you’re in – know the tides, know the weather.’

Dwindling resource

While the skills required are the same as those his ancestors would have needed, freediving for seafood is very different today due to overfishing.

‘We’ve got to go further and deeper to get the same seafood they would have gone just ankle-deep to get,’ MacDonald says. ‘I’ve been diving for nearly 40 years and I’ve seen massive changes. It’s a big worry.’

His greatest frustration is with commercial fishing: ‘It’s painful to watch. People don’t seem to care what they’re depleting.’ MacDonald sits on the board of his iwi (local tribe) and has been leading its work calling for downsizing the local fishery to preserve ocean life for generations to come.

While winemaking and freediving may seem like separate worlds, there is some overlap. ‘With both, you must work with the elements and adapt,’ he says.

And luckily MacDonald’s wines just happen to go superbly with freshly caught seafood. ‘If we’re cooking food on the boat trip back, we’ll often have a glass of wine,’ he says.

‘Fresh, raw sea urchin is quite an intense, salty flavour so it needs a richer style. It goes really well with our barrel-fermented Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay.'

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A topic such as this should write itself, yet I found the subject slippery while actually writing it.

Part of the reason is that it is necessarily a moving target, changing with the seasons and the weather, where one is located, and with whom one is dining.

The other difficulty is that one is spoiled for choice – how can the topic be narrowed to a reasonable scope if each day brings an exciting new possibility?

Below are my coups de cœur (heart throb) Burgundy producers, as the French would say; the vignerons I turn to for excellent mid-week drinking.

These personal choices are made on impulse rather than logic, and they are organised geographically for simplicity's sake.

The necessary criteria are quality, availability and price. To qualify for everyday drinking, it must be good, readily available in shops or restaurants, and at least reasonably affordable.

Chablis/Auxerrois

A quick look at my personal website reveals a profusion of Chablis. Once ridiculously undervalued, Chablis in recent years has taken off in renown, and in price, yet northern Burgundy still holds surprising value.

Domaine Jean-Hugues & Guilhem Goisot is not as well-known, particularly to anglophone drinkers, as the best Chablis producers, but it also sits at the top of the hierarchy.

It is based in the charmingly obscure town of St-Bris, where the appellation wines are Sauvignon de St-Bris, a close Kimmeridgian cousin of Sancerre.

The Goisot clan produces perhaps the most expressive versions available of this appellation (often on north-facing slopes, sometimes co-planted with Sauvignon Gris), but when the exposure or soils are better suited to Chardonnay (east-facing) or Pinot Noir (south-facing) these grapes are grown and bottled as Bourgogne Côtes d’Auxerre.

At an extraordinarily reasonable price point, they also produce a winning Aligoté that is widely available.

Côte de Nuits

The Côte de Nuits is the land of grand cru Pinot Noir and one might imagine a struggle to find everyday wines. Luckily, this is not the case at all.

Even top producers can still make wines here that are beautiful and affordable, and Domaine Trapet must surely be at the front rank.

Given the quality here, all the wines could qualify as reasonably priced, but the Passetoutgrain à Minima, a blend of Gamay and Pinot Noir from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ in Gevrey, is a true bargain, as are the Gevrey village-level cuvées 1859 and Ostrea.

These are cuvées produced by Domaine Trapet Père & Fils, formerly directed by Jean-Louis Trapet, whose sons Pierre and Louis are now at the helm.

They have also launched their own label, Pierre & Louis Trapet, where they produce classic styles and some more experimental bottlings.

Worthy of note, the wines from Trapet’s cousin domaine, Domaine Rossignol-Trapet, are also of extraordinary value from superb terroirs.

For the summer months it may be useful to highlight Burgundy’s only ‘cru’ rosé from Marsannay. I often mark the beginning of summer by buying in a case of pink for hotter weather.

The classic producer is Domaine Bruno Clair, whose careful combination of direct press and maceration on the skins produces a delightfully elegant summer rosé.

Bruno’s cousins at Domaine Bart and his neighbour Sylvain Pataille also offer worthy renditions.

Côte de Beaune

The wines of Domaine Henri & Gilles Buisson are among the most frequent weekday visitors on my dinner table. The domaine is located in St-Romain, where they farm 19ha of certified organic vineyards.

Although the family has lived in the village since the 12th century and trace their work as vignerons to 1758, they have bottled wine under the family name only since 1947, the year in which the village received its own appellation.

Before 1947, St-Romain was considered part of the Hautes-Côtes, tucked away in a valley behind Meursault in the region’s upper slopes, which is why the village is less well-known to many.

The higher elevations meant that in the past the grapes ripened with difficulty, but with a changing climate, St-Romain has come into its own to produce wines with lush, forward fruit that still retain plenty of structure, making them excellent companions to food.

The vineyard-designated St-Romain wines are the star of the show at Buisson, but the red and white Bourgogne-level wines are delicious as well at an eminently affordable price.

Côte Chalonnaise

The Côte Chalonnaise is home to many diverse wine styles. One producer has mastered several: Bruno Lorenzon is producing some of the finest wines anywhere in the Côte Chalonnaise.

Although he is based in Mercurey, known for red wines, his 30 years at the family domaine have given him the experience to produce stunning wines in both colours.

He now produces wines from 9ha of vines, six in Mercurey and three in Montagny. As he noted: ‘I’m a white wine guy who makes Pinot Noir in a Chardonnay way.’

He sometimes delights in running counter to received wisdom, deriding the early-picked, reductive style currently in fashion for Chardonnay in very amusing terms, quoting Henri Jayer: ‘A wine must be good from the beginning’.

He presses whole bunches of Chardonnay delicately and vinifies in a minimalist way without chaptalising, acidifying, or adding sulphur, to sublime results.

In either colour or terroir, the master of Mercurey delivers beautiful wines of precision and impressive depth of flavour.

Mâconnais

The Mâconnais is a fertile hunting ground for the everyday value wines that often appear at my house.

The region is broad and varied, and numerous producers are making great wine at great prices.

Across the appellations of the Mâconnais, from Pouilly-Fuissé premier cru to Mâcon-Villages and beyond, however, the style pioneered by Jean-Marie Guffens and Julian Desplans at Maison Verget consistently delivers satisfaction.

They adapt the winemaking style to each cuvée across a broad range, but in general, the wines are concentrated and aromatic, with a slightly smoky, reductive edge imparted by the winemaking.

Despite picking fairly ripe fruit, the wines never lose their balance and retain a lively freshness that makes them refreshing even in a warm vintage.

Even in an era of skyrocketing prices, these producers show that Burgundy still offers abundant choices for everyday drinking.

Favourite Burgundy producers for everyday drinking

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If using this method in the Southern Rhône, Cairanne would come out looking particularly strong.

Cairanne was promoted to Cru status in 2016, and there was never any doubt that it deserved this commendation. Ten years on, its wines are even better.

The Cairanne style is all about balance, elegance and consistency. Its reds have the characteristic generosity of the east bank, but more restrained than punchier appellations such as Rasteau and Châteauneuf.

Its whites too inhabit a comfortable middle ground. They have affable confidence rather than oaky swagger; they are proudly Southern Rhône, and with drinkability.

Both colours are approachable on release, and both can develop beguiling complexity with a decade (or more) in bottle.

And they’re not expensive; on the contrary, Cairanne offers some of the best value drinking in the Rhône Valley.

As in all appellations, the producer is what counts. Below is a list of some personal favourites.

If you can’t find them, there are countless other excellent producers to choose from, including Domaine Brusset, Domaine les Hautes Cances, Domaine Rabasse Charavin and La Cave de Cairanne.

Domaine Alary

The Alary family settled in Cairanne in 1692, and has been cultivating land here ever since.

It was Denis Alary who helped spearhead the passage to Cru in 2016; he has since passed the baton to his son Jean-Etienne.

They make numerous Cairanne cuvées, all with a unique raison d’être, and they excel at both white and red. Their white Estévenas is deep and rich but not heavy.

Of their reds, their Jean de Verde is the essence of Cairanne Grenache, and their red Estévenas is highly distinctive, brimming with mocha and black olive, thanks to its old vine Syrah.

Their 2016 Estévenas red was drinking brilliantly this year, with another decade ahead of it.

Domaine Richaud

If Domaine Alary embodies classical Cairanne, then Richaud personifies its wild side.

Richaud might not be the most consistently reliable estate in the appellation, but when the wines are on form, they’re unbeatable.

Don’t let the simple labels fool you: these can be highly complex wines.

Marcel Richaud has largely passed on the estate to his children Thomas and Claire now. They work organically, add nothing to their wines, or take anything away; yields are very low.

Even their cuvée classique is fresh, zesty and exuberant; their 50% Mourvèdre L’Ebresecade can be phenomenal; powerful and concentrated but crackling with energy. Their white is also delicious, rich or fresh, as the vintage dictates.

Les Chemins de Sève

What Loïc Massart has achieved since establishing his estate in 2013 is nothing short of extraordinary.

In a matter of 13 years, Les Chemins de Sève is among the top names of the appellation. The winery might be new but their vines are up to 85 years old.

He makes two red Cairannes. Métamorphose is 70% Grenache and 30% Syrah, aged in concrete for a round, approachable, juicy but structured style.

Apanage is 50/50 Grenache/Syrah, aged in recent barrels for a darker, more intense expression.

His white Cairanne Opale (40% Roussanne, 30% Clairette, 30% Grenache Blanc) is also highly accomplished. His 2014 Opale and 2015 Apanage, some of his first attempts, were still showing very well in 2026.

Domaine des Amadieu

Yves-Jean Houser, took over this 7ha estate in 2007 and promptly converted it to biodynamics.

His style is uncompromising – authentic wines with no make-up that offer a clear-eyed vision of this terroir.

His whites are broad, rich, supported by mineral freshness rather than acidity. I prefer his vibrant and invigorating reds.

Garrigues is juicily delicious, Vieilles Vignes more structured, made for the dinner table. His first vintage, 2007, was still holding up well in 2026, complex and compelling.

Clos Romane

Clos Romane is a fourth generation organic family estate in the heart of the village, their 30ha of vineyards are dotted around various soils and appellations.

Their wines have been improving from year to year and are now reliably excellent. The style here is all about richness and power, in both colours.

Domaine A. Berthet-Rayne

The Berthet-Rayne family has been making wine in Cairanne since 1880. Current owner André is the fourth generation, his daughter Alexandra joined the estate in 2017.

Their reds are very good, especially their Castel Mireio, which is particularly refined.

A generous 20% of their estate is planted with whites however, a house speciality; their Castel Mireio white is often among the best in the appellation.

Domaine Oratoire Saint-Martin

There were two branches of the Alary family who were instrumental in the history of wine in Cairanne. Domaine Alary is home to one; Domaine Oratoire Saint-Martin was, until recently, home to the other.

This latter estate was run by tenth generation brothers Frédéric and François Alary until 2020, when they sold the estate to the Abeille-Fabre family of Château Mont-Redon in Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

The estate is still being run biodynamically. Red wines are medium-bodied in style and can be enjoyable in good vintages.

Their strength here is their whites (which was always the case) which, in vintages like 2024, can be among the finest in the Southern Rhône.

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Real life is not, sadly – or perhaps fortunately – like in the movies.

If you’re thinking of investing in a winery and making it your retirement project, think again. You might be signing up for early cardiac arrest.

Travelling with photographer Abel Valdenebro, who specialises in wine and other beverages, food and architecture, among other topics, we were certainly left almost out of breath after a few days following two leading Rioja bodegueros – a term that loosely translates as ‘general manager’ (the latter not fully capturing the symbolic weight of the job title in Spanish).

Tailing Richi Arambarri Perez of Vintae and Jose Ramón Urtasun of Remírez de Ganuza as they went about their business was neither easy nor boring.

The fast pace and multiple, often competing, demands that shape the days of a bodeguero reflect the many ways in which the wine industry has changed over the last couple of decades – and the many different challenges and opportunities that continue to arise.

There’s a restlessness in their days, catalysed by a sense of urgency – the need to grab (and create) prospects and compensate for tough market conditions.

However, that sense of urgency and creative anxiety is as much a product of their personalities as it is of the context that surrounds them.

Intensity in focus

These are individuals who don’t know either idleness or loitering.

You won’t find them resting on a hammock, enjoying the comfort of having built successful ventures.

In fact, it’s a deep awareness of the fragility of success that keeps them motivated and determined; an acknowledgement that this is the tough yet beautiful essence of what they do.

The wine industry is, primarily and above all, a farming venture; transience and vulnerability live alongside heritage; it’s a long-term project shaped by short-term, ever-shifting variables.

So Abel and I set our alarm clocks for painfully early wake-ups before jumping onto two intense, albeit very different, rollercoaster rides.

The routines and personalities of the two bodegueros we shadowed are very different – but equal in intensity and focus.

The structure of their days mirrors not only their idiosyncrasies but also the nature of their very different companies.

What did we learn?

That passion and grit take you to the end of each day; competence and strategic thinking keep you going for years.

And that, through it all, you need a good, equally committed team around you.

Morning fever

Arambarri gets out of bed while the house is still quiet and changes into his running gear.

‘I just need the movement and energy to start the day. In winter I might even go to the slopes,’ he explains, referring to Valdezcaray, the pistes around the San Lorenzo peak, 15km southeast of the quaint mountain town of Ezcaray and a mere 45-minute drive southwest of Logroño.

However, spring has sprung, so Arambarri leaves for a run across Logroño’s old town – where he lives with his young family – over the Puente de Piedra bridge and along the Ebro river.

He keeps an eye on his watch and loops back for a shower before taking four-year-old Sofia to the nursery.

After cycling back home to drop off his bike, Arambarri cuddles one-year-old Nicolás before checking in at Vintae’s Logroño offices, down the road from his flat.

The headquarters are the beating heart of the group’s many wineries, brands and projects, including Rioja producers Hacienda López de Haro and El Pacto, Toro’s Matsu and Aroa in Navarra.

Perpetual commute

Urtasun’s day starts very differently – 355km away from Rioja.

Based in Madrid, on any given morning he’s either walking his boys to school, heading to the airport or driving to the winery in Samaniego, 15km west of Haro, north of the Ebro.

Today he’s en route to Remírez de Ganuza for a regular catch-up with the team.

‘It’s important to come back regularly. Beyond the logistical and management side of things, it’s essential to stay in touch with what really matters and the reason we do this in the first place,’ he says.

The drive takes him just over three hours; all going smoothly, he’s in Samaniego in time for lunch.

Weeks can easily go by without time to visit the winery, though.

Juggling personal life, work at the Madrid office and the tough travel schedule he’s been fighting against – with limited success – is notoriously difficult.

‘We’ve expanded the [commercial] team; mostly so that I’m not dealing with so many markets myself and travelling so much. But as soon as [the importers and PR agencies] hear we’ve employed someone, I start getting phone calls: “So Jose, does this mean you now have more time to visit us?”. It’s a losing battle…’

In an industry built upon trust and human connection, Urtasun acknowledges that it’s important for wine companies to have a face. ‘Relationships are the basis of our work.’

Tricky balance

The perpetual tension between ‘working the global room’ and staying put, going through to-do lists, is one of the main challenges of the bodeguero’s life.

Time away means that other things in the business don’t move as quickly or are left on hold. But the quest for balance is not just an operational matter.

‘Time with the kids is precious,’ says Arambarri.

‘[Having children] has changed the way I relate to work. I used to travel more than half of the time, without giving it much thought. Now, I’ve set limits. Nothing makes up for time away from them,’ he concludes.

Those limits are still, however, very much above those of a civilian: no more than two weeks a month, with no more than five consecutive days if possible.

Urtasun echoes this feeling, amplified by the fact that he shares custody of his two boys with his ex-wife.

‘I plan travel around the time I have with the kids. It’s tough, both logistically and emotionally.’

Business of people

With all cogs turning at the office, Arambarri leaves for Cárdenas, the small village between Logroño and Ezcaray that is the epicentre of El Pacto, a range of wines produced in the Sonsierra, in the far northwest of the Rioja Alta sub-region, and Alto Najerilla at Rioja Alta’s southern edge.

Ever the master of optimisation, he’s combined a catch-up with the viticultural team with a visit from Asturian distributors and a nourishing Riojan almuerzo (like ‘elevenses’).

The entourage convenes at Cárdenas’ main square, seemingly doubling the village’s population in a matter of minutes.

The group consolidates by the two four-wheel drives piloted by Arambarri and Fernando García, El Pacto’s viticultural manager, and everyone heads to the two plots – Pieza la Villa and Senda de Haro – that supply the grapes for the El Pacto flagship Jesús Acha wines.

From there, they head to the 100-year-old Valdechuecas vineyard (see ‘Rioja Report 2026. Garnacha & friends - Tapping into history and modernity ).

Following a walk through the gnarly vines, the team sets up a tasting of El Pacto’s new releases and makes a fire from sarmientos (vine cuttings) to barbecue some lamb chops.

Back in Samaniego, Urtasun is catching up with Jesús Mendoza, the star winemaker who has been at Remírez de Ganuza’s technical helm since 2001, having joined the team in 1994.

The relationship between the two evolved through years of a gradual leadership transition from Fernando Remírez de Ganuza to Urtasun, whose family acquired the winery in 2019.

Urtasun spent the following years, until Remírez de Ganuza’s death at the age of 73 in 2024, working alongside the founder to ensure continuity and a full understanding of the winery’s ethos, which Mendoza helped to shape.

The two discuss the evolution of the wines, analytical samples and operational planning before synchronising watches ahead of a visit and tasting with a journalist (yours truly).

‘Jesús is obsessive. His attention to detail, precision and cleanliness are just incredible,’ says Urtasun as if the latter wasn’t obvious, given the pristine condition of the winery – and as if he didn’t share some of that obsessive nature himself.

Focused restlessness

Not wanting to waste either samples or time, Arambarri loads the bottles from the mid-morning barbecue into the boot and calls the team at Nublo, the one-star Michelin restaurant in Haro, to say that he’ll pop in before service if convenient.

The answer is an easy and eager yes.

But before going to Haro, Arambarri needs to stop by the aerodrome where he keeps his small plane.

‘You have to fly regularly. It’s a necessity so you can be safe.’

The wind, however, is not cooperating. ‘I’d fly alone today, but not with a passenger [Decanter’s very relieved photographer] who has never flown with me before. It gets wobbly up there on a day like this and it’s not good if you freak out inside such a small plane,’ he says, not even half joking.

He’s flown his plane to the Balearics, Madrid, Málaga, Galicia and Jerez. ‘Isa [Isabel García Castellanos, Arambarri’s wife and Vintae’s marketing director] is not a fan, though,’ he says. We certainly don’t blame her.

Arambarri is a man of many hobbies. Look closely, however, and you’ll realise that there’s a focus to all of them, an accumulation of personal resources that allow him to perform best on his intense entrepreneurial front.

In early May, Vintae announced a structural and financial plan to take over Bodegas Riojanas after the historic winery went into administration earlier this year.

This comes after the announcement, in 2025, of Vintae regaining 100% ownership of iconic vermouth brand El Bandarra, and of a partnership with Bodega Terramoll in Formentera, whose operations and sales it now oversees.

Sitting (not winding) down

Meanwhile, at Remírez de Ganuza, Urtasun and I are sitting down for a long session of analytical tasting.

He takes a step back and lets the winemaker lead, listening eagerly and commenting occasionally while repeatedly checking his phone.

‘This thing is relentless. There’s no downtime.'

As the tasting wraps up and Mendoza begins tidying up, the winery hospitality team is already waiting for their meeting with Urtasun.

‘Visits and cellar-door sales have grown a lot,’ he explains. ‘It’s important to have the right people and keep things running smoothly.’

Then it’s off to check on how Olagar, the 1978 plot in San Vicente de la Sonsierra that yields the fruit for Remírez de Ganuza’s white Gran Reserva (see ‘Rioja Report 2026. White Rioja: A Successful quest for excellence), is responding after two months of intense rains.

Against the backdrop of dramatic, thunderous clouds, Urtasun acknowledges that it’s time for dinner before it starts pouring down.

Sure enough, the skies open as he’s driving to Haro, for dinner at Los Caños, where the team welcomes him with both familiarity and deference.

He discusses which wines customers have been interested in lately, which bottles most excite the team at the moment; he asks the sommelier to suggest a bottle.

Is he relaxing now? Is he still on the job? These questions are perhaps meaningless.

‘This is not just work,’ he says. ‘It’s almost the way that we see the world.’

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