Editors’ picks: A range of great wines to try – May 2026
Each month our editorial team tastes a lot of wine, but not all of it makes it onto the page. So here’s our in-house pick of other great wines we’ve tried.
Gimblett Gravels: a terroir triumph in 2023
Each year since 2008, Andrew Caillard MW curates an Annual Vintage Selection case of 12 reds from the Gimblett Gravels Winegrowers Association.
It’s a mix of Syrahs and blends, depending on what that year’s growing season brought to this enclave of New Zealand’s Hawke’s Bay.
In February 2023, it brought cyclone Gabrielle and two other extreme rain events; more than 450mm fell that month, 750% above average.
This led to devastating flooding, many writing off the vintage before the fruit was ripe, let alone picked.
But there was a harvest, thanks to the resilience of vineyard and winery staff, and the free-draining alluvial soils that give the Gimblett Gravels its name.
It’s only a six-bottle selection for 2023, with Caillard noting that it’s ‘a magnificent reminder that we are in nature’s hands, but also that nurture, skill and human spirit can prevail.’
The two Syrahs pictured above were my pick, but all are admirable for the terroir and toil involved in creating them.
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The others are: Squawking Magpie, The Chatterer Merlot-Malbec; Mission, Reserve Cabernet; Cuvar, Guardians Cabernet-MerlotMalbec; Church Road, Grand Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot-Cabernet Franc.
Chorus: when Pomerol meets Rioja
Guillaume Thienpont
What happens when a Pomerol maestro is given carte blanche to make a new Rioja cuvée?
You end up with Chorus, a new wine born from a collaboration between Victor Urrutia of CVNE and Guillaume Thienpont of Vieux Château Certan in Bordeaux.
What began as a project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Contino winery, part of the CVNE group, looks like a permanent fixture, with the 2024 inaugural vintage now released and 2025 underway.
‘It’s a 55ha estate, so there were many possibilities,’ Thienpont said during a first taste last month.
Two years of vineyard assessments and grape tastings across the Laserna estate in Rioja Alavesa led him to three parcels of Tempranillo vines, each more than 60 years old: Viña del Olivo (clay-limestone), San Gregorio Encina (clay-loam) and Don Vicente (iron-rich red clay).
Thienpont managed picking, gentle extractions and oak use (French, 50% new) to emphasise finesse over force.
The result is a parcel-vinified 100% Tempranillo of striking elegance: vivid red fruit and floral lift, a silky mid-palate, refined tannins and bright mineral persistence.
Limited to 2,880 bottles at about £150 retail (plus 100 magnums), Chorus stands apart from Contino’s range: more transparent, approachable and, of course, Pomerol-inflected – a harmonious bridge between regions and expertise.
Peter Sisseck’s Spanish love affairs
Peter Sisseck
When Peter Sisseck first arrived in Spain in 1990, little did he know that he would become the parent of one of the country’s modern cult wines, Dominio de Pingus.
That was, however, just the first of a number of projects through which the Danish winemaker has channelled his love for Spain.
In addition to Pingus, Sissek also oversees Psi, a project that relies on a network of small growers and their respective plots of old vines across Ribera del Duero.
Sissek is preparing to launch the first Psi Gran Reserva, from the 2016 vintage, which he presented in London recently, along with Psi 2024 (£26.30 Corney & Barrow).
He also brought with him various barrel samples from different soleras of his Jerez wines: the Viña Corrales Fino (£37.25 Corney & Barrow) from Pago Bilbaína, and the Viña La Cruz Fino-Amontillado, from a plot in Pago Macharnudo; fascinating, dynamic snapshots of a work – and enduring, strong passion – in process.
Do great wines take time?
The strapline of the Libération Tardive Foundation is ‘Great wines take time’, and since I was kindly invited to one of their dinners, focusing on several back vintages of Brunello di Montalcino, I thought I’d go along to see for myself to what extent this is the case.
The London-based not-for-profit foundation, founded in 2024, has a stated goal of reshaping perspectives when it comes to long ageing of 10 years or more, and aims to ‘connect like-minded producers, consumers, trade and intermediaries’.
In each of the three flights of three wines from three vintages (each flight was from a single estate, but the wines sometimes varied), I preferred the ‘middle’ vintage: San Felice’s Campogiovanni Il Quercione Riserva 2011 in the first flight, Ciacci Piccolomini d’Aragona’s 2007 (from magnum) in the second light, and Col d’Orcia’s 2004 in the final flight.
Do great wines take time? Sure, if the quality is there to begin with.
But we’re also at a point now where you can drink wines from 20 or 30 years ago that were made in a very different style to today.
The answer is that it’s not a fair fight, and everyone’s tastes are different. For me, wines can definitely be too old – but catch a quality wine at its zenith (whatever that means for you) and you’ll just know it’s right!
Getting technical in Sussex
Tony Milanowski (left) and Mark Driver
In March, I travelled to Rathfinny to taste the results of a winemaking trial, alongside owner Mark Driver and winemaker Tony Milanowski.
Since its 2016 vintage, the sparkling wine producer has implemented innovative technology to stabilise its wines that uses 95% less energy.
Stabilisation in sparkling wine is crucial , removing ions that can later cause crystals to form, creating a ‘gushing’ effect on opening.
Most wineries use ‘contact seeding’, an energy-intensive process that involves chilling the wine in large tanks to sub-zero temperatures and seeding it with finely ground crystals to encourage the formation of larger crystals that can be filtered out.
Rathfinny has invested in an electrodialysis (ED) machine, which passes the wine through charged membranes to selectively remove the ions.
More widely adopted in the New World, ED is still rare in the northern hemisphere, even in Champagne, and Rathfinny has pioneered its use in the UK.
Following the 2022 vintage, the producer set aside 40 bottles that had been cold-stabilised in the traditional way, especially for the trial, to see how the different methods affect the final wine.
Tasting the ED and cold-stabilised bottles of the (unreleased) Classic Cuvée 2022 alongside each other, there was a marked difference, the former showing brighter acidity, less oxidation and more fruit purity.
A fascinating exercise, and worth getting my head around the technology for!
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Content written and compiled by the Decanter Team