Featured Explorer Club Wines:

2019 Weingut Ziereisen | "Heugumberger" Gutedel (Chasselas) | Baden, Germany

Stony, lissome and light, with the faintest hint of astringency in the tail, it slides down the throat as easily a hot knife slices through butter.

The Markgräferland is, together with the Bodensee, the southernmost part of Baden. The soils here are predominantly limestone, which is immediately suggestive of a kinship with Burgundy, especially as there are remarkable climatic similarities between the two regions. Hanspeter Ziereisen is a huge personality whom everyone seems to know. He and his endlessly good-humoured wife, Edeltraud, preside over a compact domaine with an influence out of proportion to its size. He makes wines in a resolutely individual way, having long ago given up the notion of conforming to the straitened mind-set of the local wine authorities. Consequently, most of them are not submitted for approval as AO Baden wines, but rather are sold as lowly “regional” wines – albeit the most expensive of them are amongst the dearest wines of Germany. Call this the “Sassicaia Syndrome”.

Without subscribing to the strictest dogmas of “Natural” wine, Ziereisen’s products can be described as nothing but. All vineyard work is manual, all oak barrels are local, no chemicals are employed in the vineyards, fermentations are spontaneous, no wines are filtered and everything is given time to relax on the lees before bottling and in the bottle before release – even if this runs counter to the cycles of the commercial clock. Each product is given a fanciful name in the local dialect, which is strongly influenced by the strange sonorities spoken across the border in Switzerland. Welcome to the wacky world of Ziereisen.

It is characteristic of Ziereisen’s originality that he should hang his hat by the regional specialty grape known locally as Gutedel (but better known as Chasselas in France and Fendant in Switzerland). Indeed, his most expensive (and staggeringly so) product is a version of this grape given the full Montrachet treatment. To our plebeian tastes, however, it is this basic wine that best conveys the irresistible charm of this under-appreciated and simply delicious grape variety. @weingutziereisen  

2019 Clos de l'Amandaie | "Heritage" Old Vine Carignan | Languedoc-Rousillion, France

Beautiful, medium weight, spice box, red and dark fruit, delicate violet on the nose.

"Heritage from the last generation, old vines of Carignan, only no added sulphites wines." (Winery)

For six generations, the Peytavy family has taken turns on the slopes of Clos de l'Amandaie in the beautiful town of Aumelas, 25 km north-west of Montpellier. Each generation brings its touch of modernization and signs the influence of its time while drawing on the advice of the elders. It was in 2002 that the son Philippe and Stéphanie his wife took up the torch. It is thanks to the meeting of an enthusiast, who contracted the virus of winemaking with his grandfather, and a native Mauritian who came to France to complete her university course that this beautiful adventure of Clos de l'Amandaie was born. @closdelamandaie

TASTING ROOM AT ZIEREISEN
PHILIPPE & STEPHANIE PEYTAVY
ANCIENT ALMOND TREE OF CLOS L'AMANDAIE
HANSPETER AND EDELTRAUD ZIEREISEN

Explorer Club Up to $34.95/month

Two bottles each month for up to $34.95. Explore the world of wine while developing your palate by enjoying a monthly delivery of wines that represent value and authenticity, hand-selected by the experts at Mission Wines!