Domaine Gamiller Priune, Côtes du Rhône, France 2023 (£18.95, swig.co.uk) What do you look for in a wine merchant? Inclusiveness would be high on my list, by which I mean no snobby condescension or arch comments if you betray that you don’t know your chardonnay from your chablis (or, indeed, that you don’t know that chablis is always made from chardonnay in the eponymous part of northern Burgundy). Enthusiasm, a feeling that your merchant really loves what they sell and wants nothing more than to share it and find the right bottle for you, is another welcome quality, as too is a sense that prices are fair – if not “never knowingly undersold” at least not “always furtively oversold”. Most important though, is the wine itself – that sense that, whatever you buy, you’re in safe hands and likely to end up with something delicious. One retailer that answers all those prerequisites for me is the London-based online specialist, swig.co.uk, which has a range that never seems to miss, filled with fantastic wines such as Priune, an exquisitely pure, deep, plum-and-cherry fruited, supple Rhône red.
Danbury Ridge Pinot Noir, Essex, UK 2022 (£43, swig.co.uk) Swig sources its wines from all over the winemaking world, and in all imaginable styles, but, as with all the best merchants, there’s a recognisable house signature across its portfolio: these are wines that are balanced with a sense of clarity and verve. One of their traditional strengths is South Africa, and the company has been responsible for raising the profile of many of the stars of the new wave of funky, adventurous winemaking that has emerged in the Cape over the past couple of decades: names such as Adi Badenhorst, maker, among other things, of the consistently superb AA Badenhorst Secateurs White, Swartland 2024 (£17.50), a fabulously complex, rich, weighty mouthful of apply chenin blanc loveliness, and Pieter Walser of Blankbottle, the man behind such distinctively delightful, wackily named wines as Orbitofrontal Cortex 2023 (£32.50), a by-turns tangy and creamy, multilayered dry white blend. Latterly, the Swig team have been looking closer to home, turning up such delights as Danbury Ridge’s insouciantly suave immaculately ripe berry-fruited Essex pinot noir red.
Alberto Orte Atlantida Blanco, Jerez, Spain 2022 (£39, swig.co.uk) Pinot is the variety used to make another red highlight of the Swig range, which I was happy to taste at a recent event where the retailer showed off its wares alongside 11 other similarly independent-minded wine importers: Weingut am Schlipf Schneider Spätburgunder vom Kalkstein, Baden, Germany 2022 (£32) is serious pinot noir in a lacy, intricate, lipsmacking style with, as a Stranglers-loving someone in the Swig team puts it unimprovably on the retailer’s website, a “texture like sun”. That phrase would also fit rather nicely with one of Swig’s finds in Valdeorras in Galicia, northwestern Spain: Alberto Orte A Portela 2019 (£27.50) is a red wine from the local mencía that combines the slightly crunchy feel you get in Loire cabernet franc with the graceful fluency of pinot noir. It’s the work of the super-talented winemaker Alberto Orte, who also supplies Swig with the outrageously lovely Atlantida Blanco, an effortlessly evocative unfortified dry white from sherry country in Jerez that feels like an Atlantic breeze-cooled stroll through apple orchards and citrus groves.
