How we choose

Behind every bottle in our shop is someone we can introduce to you by name. Some work a single hectare, like Oscar and Thomas of Kaléidoscope in Valais, others around fifty, like Can Ràfols in the Garraf.

In Bandol, the Arlon family used to deliver its grapes to the co-op. Since 2013 they have made the wine themselves, and today the sisters Audrey, Léonie and Justine run the estate. At Frézier in Champagne, the seventh generation works the same plots. In Bierzo, the Fariña brothers from Attis founded Sangarida together with Robustiano’s daughter Lía.

For every bottle in our shop you can read who made it. And where we have not been yet, we say so: we have tasted Kaléidoscope from a distance so far, and the invitation to their cellar stands.

Wineries

Natural wine is not a protected term. We only use it when we know what happened in the cellar: wild fermentation, nothing added, no filtration, at most a little sulphur at bottling. Right now that applies to 3 of our wines, all from Kaléidoscope in Savièse.

That is not many, and it stays that way until the next one convinces us in the glass. Natural wine is not automatically good wine.

Others are closer than their labels suggest. Verónica Romero bottles unfiltered and without added sulphites, Carres and Viña de Eufemia ferment with wild yeasts and mostly skip fining and filtration.

Wineries

In orange wine the skins of white grapes stay in the must while it ferments. They add colour, a little tannin and aromas of dried apricot, tea and herbs. That makes it the white for dishes that would overwhelm an ordinary white wine.

We carry 4 orange wines, and they show how far the method can go: two weeks on the skins for the Paxaradas from Coto de Gomariz, around thirty days for Verónica Romero’s Muda, ten months in clay amphorae for the Doliola from Attis.

We would start with the Sitta Maceración from Albariño. If you like it, take the Doliola next.

Wineries

Two cellars supply most of our 22 sparkling wines: Viña de Eufemia near Requena and Denis Frézier south of Épernay. At Frézier everything happens in house, from pruning to the bottle.

Both houses give the wine a second fermentation in the bottle and then leave it on the lees for years. The grapes differ: Blanc de Blancs means Macabeo and Xarel·lo at Eufemia, and Chardonnay from the Côte des Blancs at Frézier.

Eufemia’s Blanc de Blancs costs around ten francs less. For an apéro with a lot of guests we would pour that one, with oysters rather Frézier’s Terroir Blanc.

Wineries

In the vineyard, permaculture means that whatever belongs there grows between the rows: herbs, shrubs, grass. It protects the soil, keeps it alive and brings back insects and birds that keep pests in check. That helps most in hot, dry summers.

Viña de Eufemia takes this furthest. Around Casas de Eufemia the vineyard is meant to work as an ecosystem, and herbs and shrubs grow between the Bobal vines. In the same village Carres works without chemicals and by the lunar calendar, on plots with vines from 60 to over 100 years old.

In Savièse, Oscar Hauser and Thomas Carl leave waist-high grass between the vines, home to emerald lizards and praying mantises. Coto de Gomariz and Ronsel do Sil, where sheep tend the vineyard, also work biodynamically, and Domaine de la Coquillade has been converting since 2024.

Wineries

For a long time, alcoholic drinks above 1.2 per cent in the EU did not have to list ingredients or nutrition values. For wine, Regulation 2021/2117 changed that: since 8 December 2023 it needs a list of ingredients and a nutrition declaration. For beer and spirits the exemption still applies.

Only the energy value has to be on the label, the rest may sit behind a QR code. Allergens such as sulphites always appear on the bottle itself. Wine produced before the cut-off date may be sold without the new details until stocks run out.

If you find the code on a bottle from the EU, scan it. Whether it lists three ingredients or fifteen tells you a lot.