Kopke Fine Ruby Port

Kopke Fine Tawny Port

La Clef du Recit Menetou Salon

While the estate has been around for decades, Le Clef du Recit is newly helmed by Anthony Girard, whose family are well-known as Loire Valley vintners. His brother runs the family biz and young Anthony had a chance to buy some sweet, sweet soil. What is sweet soil in Sancerre? Think Terres Blanches, meaning white earth, or a lot of fractured limestone. The fancy wine people call it Kimmeridgian marl, which maybe you’ve heard about. If not, no worries. It’s near the town of Récy, so the “key” (clef) to the “story” (Récit) is that the land and exposure are ideal for unlocking the character of nervy, mineral laden Sauvignon Blanc, happy to be in such a special place.

La Croix des Orbinieres Sauvignon Blanc

This sweet little vineyard is located in the Loire Valley, halfway between the famous mansions, Chateau Chambord and Chateau Chenonceaux. Most of the vines are a quarter-century old, on clay and silt soils, locally called “sables de Sologne”; Sologne used to be Louis XIII’s hunting grounds, but Sauvignon Blanc is more planted in the region than hunting blinds today.

La Culottee Rose

This 100% Caladoc wine is barrel-fermented, though it is still recognizably rosé in style. Needless to say, barrel-fermented rosé is anomalous anywhere, much less in southern France. The barrels are over-sized, and the wine has no added sulfur or added yeast. Dry, clean and rather full for a rosé, you can nonetheless drink it chilly on a sunny day, just like you would the rest of the rosés you’re slamming this summer.

La Hermandad De La Uva Cabernet Franc

Expensive? For sure. But Silvia Puig named this barrel after Bonnie Tyler because the flavor builds into a "total eclipse" of a crescendo. It trades the typical green notes of Cab Franc for black pepper, violets, and a ripeness born from the Mediterranean sun. With only 270 bottles produced, it is the rarest of the project and built on an absolute refusal to compromise.

La Hermandad De La Uva Garnacha

Silvia Puig names every barrel after how the wine makes her feel, and this one is pure Ella Fitzgerald: deep, complex, and delicate. It’s wine born from brutal volcanic slate, where roots dig 20 meters deep through cracked rock just to find a drink. The result is a soul-stirring red elegant enough for a Michelin-starred table, but just as good for an evening of arguing about life.

La Hermandad De La Uva Syrah

Sourced from the vertiginous, hand-worked terraces of Poboleda, this Syrah is a liquid snapshot of the Priorat mountains. Silvia named the barrel after the author of Hamnet, and the wine is every bit as dramatic as its Shakespearean namesake—loaded with wild rosemary, thyme, and lavender. Only 294 bottles were made for the entire world, and outside of a few elite restaurants in Spain, they’re nearly impossible to find.

La Petite Gargotte

The Comte Tolosan region encompasses famed wine regions: Jurancon, Cahors and Armagnac. Typically, the white wines are based upon neutral grapes like Ugni Blanc, Colombard, and Folle Blanche, or more aromatic grapes like Petit Manseng or Gros Manseng. While few of these grapes have distinctive personalities, if you put them into a harmonious blend, they can be pretty charming.

Ladron del Palacio

The powers behind Bodegas Lo Nuevo are crucial to the modern success of Spanish wine, especially wines from the Levante, the Africa-facing south. Here the Almansa region grows Garnacha, among other traditional Spanish red grapes, but unlike the oxidized, alcoholic wines of yore, the new wines are bright and sunny with all the original fruits from the grape preserved. Bodegas Lo Nuevo would be the first to insist that their success is conditioned upon old vines grown at high altitudes. Here the Garnacha is at nearly 3500 feet, where the otherwise relentlessly warm temperatures see nighttime cooling into the 40s.

Larme en Rose

If you stick around the wine business long enough, you’ll have seen it all. Where once wine coolers were cooler than Liebfraumilch, now hard seltzer is hot (served cold). White Zin was once de rigeur, though it was never French; it was from the good ol’ US of A. But then that became too sweet and the category died. Or seemed to. Because then rosé rose up like a zombie eager for fresh meat, though the current iteration of the pink stuff is more often French than not. Provence is the epicenter of it and the French have figured out how we like it: dry, pale pink, light and refreshing.

Le Cabas Sauvignon Blanc

Gascony ain't just the Three Muskateers, though they have a place in our hearts as well. More than anything, Gascony is foie gras, delicious plums and apricots, rich dinners with Armagnac to follow. But the white grapes grown here are not just for great brandy, they have always been consumed as wine too and the last decade or so has seen an embrace of clean, cold winemaking to preserve the aromas of otherwise neutral grapes like Ugni Blanc or Folle Blanche. It's also seen new plantings of Sauvignon Blanc, a grape that requires no heroic measures to reveal its aromatic riches. Whats fun here is that these same winemaking methods generate something bright and vibrant but without much resemblance to other such Sauvignon Blancs (I'm looking at you, New Zealand), many of which have begun to seem like self-caricature. This one is comfortably itself, needing only an ice bucket and a big glass.