Mixed Bag Vol. 18

Lately, there's been too many boring lineups. Sure, they've been tasty, but boring nonetheless. A certain longing, a certain pain pierced through me when I realised my dear wine companions have been enduring this mediocrity whilst harbouring a hole in their souls that only a proper mixed bag could fill. You know, the classic mess - basically just whatever's in my backpack. Random bottles that I can narratively connect into something cohesive, though it'll look like that crazy conspiracy theory map guy meme.

But I'll give it a go! I've been toying with the idea of comparing Cinsaults from Sadie Family and Matassa for ages (like a few months now). There are many ways to do this, but a mixed bag format is the easiest. And what else needs mixing in? Right, let's throw in a bottle from the Azores, something incomprehensible from Vinho Verde, a rosé from Cambridge's only winery, a Pinot-Chardonnay blend from the States, plus a gorgeous bottle of PYCM, albeit a touch young. And a bottle of historic proportions - Oslavje 1997, a monumentally important year for orange wine history. Note: still in 0.75L format!

To tickle the nostalgia even further, we're gathering in the office! Perfect.

Kelley Fox Wines Willamette Blanc 2020

Grabbed this as a throwaway welcome drink experiment, just something to kick things off. Well, fuck me - turns out this blend is anything but "simple."

Oxidative from the start, like she's channeling some Jura energy through Oregon. Salt and yellow fruits wrestling with nuts and spices, then this caramel-citrus thing. Yes, it's salty again on the palate (the sea salt thing isn't subtle), somewhat bitter, running a touch too warm for comfort. But the structure! This has bones, architecture, a reason for existing beyond just "hello, welcome, have some wine."

The warmth is my only real complaint - feels like it's wearing a winter coat in September. But there's something beautiful in how unapologetically serious this "welcome drink" turned out to be. Kelley Fox making statements even when you're not expecting them.

Gutter&Stars Punka MVB Rosé 2024

Cambridge's only winery, run by wine journalist Chris Wilson in a Grade II listed windmill basement from 1847. Started in 2020 during lockdown. This is their experimental wild child - the "MVB" stands for "Multi-Vineyard Blend." Mostly 2024 whites with 2023 Pinot that spent a year in oak before blending. Proper English eccentricity - who else would make rosé like this?

65% Sauvignon Blanc (Creeksea Place, Essex), 18% Ortega, 9% Bacchus (both from Yew Tree, Oxfordshire), 8% Pinot Noir (Missing Gate, Essex, 2023 vintage). The Pinot aged 12 months in oak before addition. Whites fermented in stainless steel. Just 230 bottles made, bottled Feb 2025. Unfined, unfiltered, vegan-friendly. Wild strawberry, wood notes, richness from the Sauvignon and Ortega. Around 11-12% ABV is typical for English wine.

G&S surprises me twice now. Listen, this isn't deep or complex rosé - who cares? It's stupidly drinkable, the kind you want to gulp rather than contemplate. Cornelian cherry, strawberry, rhubarb somehow meeting cream and wet stones. Proper minerality and acid without that cloying beach-wine sweetness that makes you hate pink wine. The palate's like drinking fancy kompot - round, satisfying, just fucking delicious. This windmill winery gets it: sometimes wine just needs to be joyful.

Anselmo Mendes Pardusco Private 2022

The resurrection of a medieval wine style - "Pardusco" was what northern Portugal shipped to England in the 14th century. Light-coloured reds with moderate alcohol that age forever. They called them "mature wines from Monção" to distinguish them from regular Vinho Verde. Anselmo's taken this forgotten tradition and made it relevant again - only a handful of producers dare to age red Vinho Verde this long.

100% Alvarelhão (locally called Brancelho), hand-harvested in small boxes. Fermented in stainless steel, then 24 months in used 400L French oak barrels. Red Vinho Verde that thinks it's aged Burgundy. 12% ABV, high acidity (6 g/L), pH 3.6. Pale ruby colour, more like a dark rosé. Expect strawberry, cherry, cedar, and leather notes masked by racing acidity.

Oh, strawberry (I love that)! Then chalk, cedar, raspberry tumbling together. Flowers and blood - that iron thing that makes you wonder if wine can be vampiric. Leather too, like old books in a humid library. The palate is impossibly delicate, silky somehow despite green tannins trying to rough things up. That Vinho Verde acidity races through everything, keeping it tense and mineral. This medieval ghost of a wine style - pale red that spent two years in old oak - shouldn't work in 2025. But here we are, drinking something that transcends time. Anselmo resurrecting the dead and making them dance.

Radikon Oslavje 1997

Historical orange wine from when Stanko Radikon was pioneering the style. 1997 was just two years after they returned to skin contact (inspired by neighbour Gravner). This is before they went zero sulphur (2002), before the special 500ml bottles, when they were still figuring things out. You're drinking history - this is when orange wine was being invented in its modern form. Stanko passed in 2016; his son Saša runs things now.

Chardonnay/Pinot Grigio/Sauvignon blend (roughly 40/30/30 back then), fermented with skins for 3-4 months in oak vats. Years of ageing in massive Slavonian oak casks, then more years in their special 500ml bottles with those tiny corks designed for ageing. 14%+ ABV. Well past peak - expect oxidative notes, dried fruits, nuts, honey, and bruised apple. But also that unmistakable Radikon texture and philosophy.

Pure delight - the name doesn't lie, this thing actually dances. Rose-scented Turkish delight wrapped in bright red berries and electric spice. Tom Lubbe's carbonic magic turning ancient Cinsault into something weightless but profound. The palate's a perfect contradiction: featherlight body with serious mineral backbone, vibrant acid keeping everything tense, just enough youthful grip to remind you this isn't some simple glou-glou. It's clean, precise, deeply expressive - like watching a ballerina who could also kick your ass. This is why natural wine matters: when it's done right, nothing else feels this alive. Oops, did I say it?

Matassa french disko cinsault 2022

Tom Lubbe's carbonic take on ancient Cinsault vines in Roussillon. Tom's a New Zealander who grew up in South Africa, worked with Eben Sadie, then moved to this tiny village of 300 people in France. Worked with Gérard Gauby, married his sister, and started Matassa in 2003. Natural wine royalty - zero additions, biodynamic farming, the works. The name's perfect - this wine really does dance.

100+ year old Cinsault vines on limestone, marl and schist. Whole bunch carbonic maceration, gentle pressing, nine months in cement tanks. Zero SO2 added, ever. 12.5% ABV. Bottled unfined, unfiltered. Tom makes tiny quantities - this is cult juice. Pure red fruit, herbs, that carbonic lift, but with this underlying minerality from ancient vines. Drinks like silk but has this nervous energy.

Blood and raw meat from the start - proper primal stuff. Then cranberry creeps in with roses, earth, underbrush, spices layering up. Extremely subtle despite that savage opening, loaded with nuances that keep revealing themselves. Cool, complex, the finish goes on forever. Watched this evolve in a glass, getting more beautiful with each minute - the kind of wine that makes you regret opening it too early. Still needs cellar time but this was my last bottle. Fuck. Eben's iron-rich slate soils giving Cinsault this mineral violence wrapped in silk. The puff adder strikes gently but leaves you paralyzed.

Sadie Family Pofadder 2022

Eben Sadie's love letter to Cinsault from Swartland's iron-rich slate soils. Named after the Cape puff adder (the most dangerous snake in South Africa) that killed a vineyard worker in the 1940s. Old vine Cinsault from Kasteelberg mountain - Eben calls it "the Pinot Noir of Swartland." This is South African Cinsault at its most serious, and critics are losing their minds - Tim Atkin gave it 96 points.

50% whole cluster, 50% destemmed, fermented in open-top fermenters with gentle punch-downs. 20-28 days on skins, then into 40-year-old foudres for 11 months, final month in concrete. 14% ABV but carries it brilliantly. Iron-rich slate terroir gives it this mineral backbone - hence the matching red wax seal. Only 5,000 bottles made. Eben says it's their best Cinsault since 2012.

Wow. Volcanic anxiety in a bottle that somehow seduces you. Green apples and apricot meeting lemon pith and lime zest, all lifted by this mineral core that goes deep - salt, flint, crushed volcanic stone. The texture's the real trick: oily and lightly creamy with this waxy thing that adds dimension without weight. Medium-high concentration, vibrant acid, the finish just keeps going with citrus and minerals. It's crisp but quietly seductive, like the Atlantic Ocean learned to flirt. Paired it with Appenzeller and Gruyère - absolute blast. Those Alpine cheeses with Azorean volcanic tension? Magic.

Adega do Vulcão Ameixâmbar Colheita Selecionada Branco 2023

Volcanic wine from the Azores - one of Europe's most extreme terroirs. These vines grow in pure volcanic ash from the 1957 Capelinhos eruption on Faial and ancient lava fields ("lajidos") on Pico. The Atlantic pounds these islands constantly, and vines are protected by tiny stone walls. This Italian couple fell in love with the Azores in 2008 and decided to make wine where nobody should. Proper Atlantic island madness.

90% Arinto dos Açores, 10% Terrantez do Pico from 400m elevation. Fermented with indigenous yeasts in cement, four months in neutral French oak, then back to cement. The winery only makes a few thousand bottles total. Expect gunpowder minerality, sea spray, green apple, and that volcanic tension that makes these wines electric.

Touch of reduction right away - PYCM's signature move. Citrus, nuts, yellow fruits, then mushrooms creeping in with cream and white flowers. Green apricots too, that underripe tension. The palate's where it gets serious: laser acidity (properly laser, like it could cut glass or your skin), but somehow there's this creamy texture fighting against it. Complex, multilayered, each sip revealing something new. This is Burgundy doing its unique impression perfectly - all that precision and reduction, but with Chassagne's soul intact. Young but already showing why PYCM changed the game. That acid will carry this for decades.

Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Chassagne Montrachet Vielles Vignes 2021

PYCM at his most precise - the man who made Burgundy more like Riesling (Jancis Robinson's famous quote). Four old parcels totalling 0.75ha near the Puligny border, where soils are deeper. Classic reductive style that influenced a generation - no new oak (larger barrels), zero bâtonnage, earlier picking, longer ageing. This is anti-fat Burgundy, all about precision and terroir transparency.

100% Chardonnay from vines averaging 50+ years. Hand-harvested, whole-cluster pressed at higher pressure than normal (PYCM signature - adds phenolic texture). Native yeast fermentation in barrel, no temperature control, no lees stirring. 20 months on fine lees before bottling. The 2021 is particularly successful - great natural balance despite the challenging vintage. Expect citrus, wet stones, that classic PYCM reduction, laser acidity. Built for 15-20 years ageing but already showing beautifully. Young, but the class is obvious.

Touch of reduction right away - PYCM's signature move. Citrus, nuts, yellow fruits, then mushrooms creeping in with cream and white flowers. Green apricots too, that underripe tension. The palate's where it gets serious: laser acidity (properly laser, like it could cut glass or your skin), but somehow there's this creamy texture fighting against it. Complex, multilayered, each sip revealing something new. This is Burgundy doing its unique impression perfectly - all that precision and reduction, but with Chassagne's soul intact. Young but already showing why PYCM changed the game. That acid will carry this for decades.

---

A note about Riesling comparison. That's the famous Jancis Robinson quote from 2008 - she headlined her article about PYCM "Making Chassagne more like Riesling." Brilliant observation that captured what made him revolutionary.

PYCM pioneered a completely different style of white Burgundy when everyone else was chasing richness. Think about traditional Chassagne - fat, buttery, loads of new oak, heavy lees stirring for that creamy texture. Classic "big" Burgundy.

Pierre-Yves went the opposite direction: larger/older barrels (less oak influence), zero bâtonnage (no lees stirring), earlier picking for higher acidity, and deliberately reductive winemaking. The result? Wines that are crystalline, mineral, precise - like great German Riesling. They have that same laser-like acidity, that pure fruit expression without makeup, that sense of transparent terroir.

It's why his wines can be challenging young - all that reduction, the tight structure, the austere precision. But like great Riesling, they age brilliantly. The style influenced an entire generation of Burgundy producers who moved away from the fat, oaky style toward this more chiselled, mineral approach.

Funny thing is, Jancis also made Klaus-Peter Keller famous by comparing his Rieslings to white Burgundy. Only she could create stars in both directions with the same comparison!

Raw scores