The Seguinot family has been in Chablis since at least 1590 and this estate is now managed by Daniel Seguinot and his daughters, Emilie and Laurence. It covers 20 hectares on a south west facing slope in this most northern region in Burgundy. 

Thee family makes four different wine styles from Chablis, ranging from Petit Chablis and  Chablis to the two Premier Cru, Fourchaume, and Homme Mort.

This wine offers very good value for money and highlights this classic traditional home of the much loved Chardonnay grape.

It's easy to see why this wine has won gold medals in its long history; the intense aromatic appeal of Turkish Delight and old fashioned red roses is deliciously well balanced in this lovely white from Marlborough.

Whitehaven Wines began life in 1994 as a romantic business for a couple of corporate escapees, Sue and Greg White, who had given up life in the rat race of Auckland for another kind of life aboard their yacht. When sailing around the country, they took shelter in the Marlborough Sounds from Pacific storms and fell in love with the region. An easy thing to do when harbouring in the spectacularly pristine waters of the Sounds. They decided to settle there on terra firma once more and try their hands at wine production, hiring a winemaker and beginning a business which has now been around for 26 years. Greg has sadly passed away now, leaving a legacy as well as his wife and daughter, Sam, to run the winery. Their winemaker is Peter Jackson.

Clearview Sea Red is a deliciously full bodied sweet wine made from a blend of red grapes and fortified to retain sweetness, raising its alcohol to 17% ABV, producing a big, loveable cuddly sweetie. Ideal for drinking with cheddar cheese on a cold night by a warm fire or anytime you're looking for a delicious sweetie. 

Clearview Estate sprang to life in 1986 when Tim Turvey and  business partner Helma van den Bergare purchased the neglected but historic Vidal's No.2 Vineyard at Te Awanga in coastal Hawke's Bay. This is their take on fortified dessert reds such as port, displaying a weighty, unctuous palate of dense berry fruits and plums, which finishes dry and long. The wine is blended across vintages and the base variety is Malbec. Drink now for a fruitier style or cellar carefully for several years.

About Clearview Estate

Clearview Estate is one of oldest, most well established wineries in Hawke's Bay and is situated on the Te Awanga Coast, south of Napier. It's a great place to visit for tastings at the cellar door as well as lunch in the dappled shade of the established courtyard area. The winery was founded by Tim Turvey, winemaker and co-owner. The current winemaker is the multi talented Matt Kirby.

Move aside, cheeky little anything red  fora bottle of this gorgeous French rouge from the Southern Rhone Valley. Its pretty purple colour gives way to a red fruited, lightly spicy tasting wine with smooth tannins, a medium body and a fresh finish. This wine is made by the Perrin Family, owners of Château de Beaucastel, which makes some of the greatest reds in the Rhone Valley. 

* This wine is made from a blend of grapes grown in the Southern Rhone Valley and it was formerly a Cotes du Ventoux but is now a blended rouge from a wider area. 

Domaine des Pothiers makes wines from Gamay Noir, the Beaujolais grape, only this producer is in the Cote Roannaise, in the northern Loire Valley. Eclipse is a pale pink sparkling wine made solely with Gamay Noir, using the Methode Ancestral technique; the oldest winemaking method to create sparkling wines via a fermentation in the bottle. This style is now affectionately known in wine circles as Pet Nat; an abbreviation for petillant natural, due to being naturally sparkling following its second ferment in the bottle. Unlike champagne, which is made this way, pet nat is not disgorged, so this style retains lees and therefore a touch of cloudiness. 

This bubbly is medium dry with 9% ABV, and really well balanced by crisp zingy acidity and savoury flavours. A great aperitif style.

A proprietary estate red blend sourced mainly from the warm, inland soils of Bridge Pa Triangle and Gimblett Gravels. Plummy Merlot and spicy Syrah dominant flavours complexed by additions of Tempranillo, Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. Generous, soft, red fruits with easing going drinkability.

Superb value Spanish red made from 50% Monastrell with 50% Syrah to add structure to the dark cherries, raspberries, crushed boysenberries and red plum flavours in this lovely wine. Complex notes come from a hint of vanilla spice on the nose and the body is medium, soft and silky.

Flinty, dry and distinctively herbaceous with beautifully balanced tropical notes. This lovely lively wine puts Martinborough's best foot forward in this refreshingly succulent Sauvignon Blanc from Craggy Range, a family owned company based in Hawke's Bay which also now owns a significant proportion of vineyard land in Martinborough, all of it in the beautiful Te Muna Valley. 

This top notch Martinborough Sauvignon Blanc tastes of flinty freshness with notes of tropical fruit. It is named Te Muna on the label, in homage to its site, and is made from grapes grown on the lower terrace of the winery's substantial vineyard holdings at Te Muna Road. New vines are now in the ground further along the road on higher terraces and will come onstream for use in Sauvignon Blanc produced by this winery in future.

Mt Difficulty Pinot Noir is regarded as an icon Pinot Noir from the world's southernmost wine region, the dramatically beautiful mountainous, Central Otago. This wine is made by the Dicey family, one of the first to plant grapes in Bannockburn, south of the Kawarau River. Their pioneering work in this region triggered rapid expansion in the area's modern wine history.

This wine is dry with powerful fruit driven flavours and a smooth, approchoable style, even when this wine is youthful. It drinks well now and can age for a further four to five years. 

Umani Ronchi is an excellent Italian wine producer in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. It's a company that makes a wide range of wines, including this incredibly delicious Montepulciano, which massively over delivers in taste. 

Big, bold and deep in colour, it has powerful dark fruit flavours held together in a smooth full bodied style with spicy notes adding complexity. Medium acidity adds balance to the blend, making for a beautifully integrated wine which is stunning value for money.

Sealed with a screwcap for freshness.

Casal di Serra Verdicchio was first made in 1983 from grapes grown in the Montecarotto Vineyard. It now includes grapes from three other vineyards, all of which are fermented with natural yeasts in stainless steel tanks to preserve freshness and fruit flavours. It is then aged in tank for five months in contact with yeast lees but with no malolactic fermentation. 

Verdicchio tastes great with Seafood, the ideal match with Verdicchio, as is soft cheese.

The Marche region

The altitude vineyards and sea breezes in the warm Mediterranean Marche region both combine to create a wine with vibrant freshness and bright acidity as well as a medium to full body. Verdicchio is nearly always made as a 100% varietal dry white and also lends itself to high quality sparkling wine, thanks to its robust acidity.

The earliest written mention of the Verdicchio grape is in 1569 and it makes some of the most age worthy dry whites in all of Italy, even at relatively modest prices such as this outstanding wine from Umani Ronchi, which is now organically certified and represents one of our greatest hidden treasures on our white wine shelves.

Buy it by the case and watch its tasty flavours unfold over four to five years, potentially longer.

VINEYARD AND FARMING
Planted in 2002, Doctors Flat is a single 3-hectare vineyard in Bannockburn. The schist subsoil was ground off the Cairnmuir Mountains by glacial ice and deposited here about 480,000 years ago. The glacial action and millennia of weathering have
generated an abundance of clay and fine silt in the vineyard gravel. We know soil texture drives wine texture and this vineyard produces Pinot Noir with density, fine tannin and great texture. We farm organically to help grow and sustain soil biology.
In turn the soil microlife harvest and transport nutrient and minerals to the vine. It’s this connection between vineyard and vine that gives Doctors Flat Pinot Noir its character and sense of place.

WINEMAKING
The winemaking is a simple programme of small open tanks, close attention, minimal inputs and a very light hand in the extraction process with only three punch downs. In 2021 20% of the fruit went directly to tank as whole bunches. Fermentation occurred spontaneously and after 21 to 24 days on skins the wine was drained to French oak barrels (22% new). Malolactic was delayed until spring and SO2 not added until late summer. After a full 12 months in barrel the wine was racked to tank for a second winter, then bottled 20 months after harvest.

Central Otago Pinot Noir is one of New Zealand's great wine success stories, especially when it comes from the sun drenched rocky soils of Bannockburn, one of the great sub regions of this majestic area. 

The Mysterious Diggings Vineyard in Bannockburn is on the site of a former gold mine and is a dry, fruit driven and smooth Central Otago Pinot with an accessible price.

This is an outstanding new addition to the much loved Esk Valley stable and it successfully straddles the big buttery Chardonnay style with all the subtleties that wine fans adore about the Chardonnay grape too - namely, its crisp, freshness. 

It is part of the new Esk Valley Artisanal Collection wines, which were launched this year and this one is made from clone 95 vines in Hawke’s Bay. The grapes were fermented in French oak with wild yeasts, which gives this wine its rich and nutty flavours, its seductive savoury notes and its full body.

The finished wine went through 50% malolactic fermentation with lees stirring to accentuate and lift the big flavours in this big wine.

Great flavours of bold and powerful yeasty freshness come from Champagne Bollinger's blend of over 85% Grand and Premier crus (top ranked vineyards in the Champagne region). Bolly is made from the three main Champagne varieties: 60% Pinot Noir, 25% Chardonnay and 15% Meunier. It is cellar aged for twice as long as required by appellation regulations and modestly dosed at between 7 and 8 grams per litre, which beautifully balances the already intense depths of flavour and  structural support from the blend, the fresh acidity from being made with grapes grown in a cool climate and a portion of oak fermentation (larger format and older oak) to encourage gentle, slow oxidative fermentation. 

The taste of Bollinger is dry, toasty, savoury and rich in flavour with elegance from its fresh acidity, depth of flavour and long finish.

Bollinger was founded in 1829.

Bollinger is one of the great champagnes, not only in perception, due to its to its high profile affiliation with Ab Fab and James Bond.