your guide to online independent wine and drink merchants in the UK.

WineDrop.co.uk is an independent online wine merchant which offers an extraordinarily wide range of wines, spirits and beers. Their list features wines from all the usual suspects, but also from Greece, Hungary, Romania, Japan, Uruguay and Brazil amongst others.
Brazil is an unusual choice – the Rio Sol Seco Cabernet Sauvignon is “Warm fruit and a little edge. Pleasingly soft palate with modest length of flavour – emminently quaffable but something of a curiosity! It is the only wine in the world produced at 8 degrees South – indeed it used to be said that wine was impossible to produce in the North East of Brazil (São Francisco Valley, Pernambuco Province), as vines grow continuously all year, and each plant completes a growing cycle in only five months – so two vintages in a year are the norm!
(The EU will probably ban this soon – so try a bottle whilst you can!) ”

You are bound to find something different and interesting here, although there is no indication of any tastings to sample any of their offerings before you buy. There are also some West Country ciders and ales on offer.

Our aim is to offer a friendly and prompt wine delivery service for one of the widest range of competitively priced wines on the net, to offer a touch of old fashioned wine merchant service in an on line wine merchant world!
New to Pinot Grigio? or thoroughly bored with it, come to us! Fifty years of professional sniffing-tasting-spit…should have given us just that little bit of extra experience. Getting soft with age, quality comes first for us, value for money follows. Having always been free to do so, we strive to buy as individually as possible. We like the classics of the Old World but we are also responsive to developments in the New – after all in the early 80s we were the first in the UK to import a comprehensive range of Australian wines from Penfold’s – sadly now such a shadow of their former selves.

WineDrop.co.uk, 3 Alphin Centre, Exeter,  Devon, EX2 8RG
T: 0139 220 3019 E: orderdrop@winedrop.co.uk

http://www.winedrop.co.uk/contact.asp

The Birmingham Wine School will be at the Taste of Birmingham 2009 event from 9-12 July 2009.

Imagine a summer’s day picnic in a beautiful city park. Now multiply it by lots of friends. Invite the best restaurants in the West Midlands to contribute the food, and discerning wine merchants to bring the wine… Welcome to Taste of Birmingham 2009.

Birmingham Wine School will be on Stand 4 in the small producers market where you can enter a free competition to win a bottle of vintage Veuve Clicquot Champagne – plus learn more about BWS and the extensive range of courses it offers this summer and autumn.

The Taste of Birmingham is predominantly a celebration of food, although there are a number of smaller and large wine, beer and spirit purveyors attending.

More info on Taste of Birmingham

More info on Birmigham Wine School

Spanish specialist independent wine merchant and importer Decanter Wines offers a small but very interesting ranige of Spanish Wines.
As well as a good range of young and older Riojas, there are good selections from the Spanish end of Douro Valley including some excellent Ribera del Duero DO.

The DO (denomination of origin) for Uiiel-Requina is a new one to many new to quality Spanish winesand is best known for a blending process called ‘doble pasta’, which helps to produce very intense wines. The initial pressings are left in the tank after the juice has been run off, then another batch of grapes is placed on top of the original skins and the whole process starts again. This juice is, not surprisingly, high in extract and contributes to the intensity of the final product.

Utiel-Requena lies to the west of Valencia and takes its name from the two towns – Utiel and Requena – which lie 15km apart within the DO. The largest and most inland of the Valencia region’s three DOs, the vineyards of Utiel-Requena rise to between 600-900m above sea level, on an undulating plain surrounded by mountains.
Utiel-Requena produces the most robust and powerful reds of Valencia’s three DOs, predominantly using the Bobal, grape. This variety lends itself perfectly to making fresh, fruity rosés, and growers from this region claim they produce Spain’s best rosados.

Also on offer are some serious old Spanish brandy, and brandy and balsamic brandy.

Good website at www.decanterwines.co.uk, packed with good information on Spanish wine and food, with good tasting notes from a couple who clearly know a lot about Spain and Spanish wines.

Decanter Wines Limited, Little Porch, Yarm Way, Leatherhead, Surrey KT22 8RQ

T:01372 376127 E: info@decanterwines.co.uk

The Butlers Wine Cellar is hosting a tasting of Portuguese and Spanish Wines in Brighton on 24 July 2009, including some more unusual grape varieties.

Portugal is…..One of my (Henry) favourite wine making countries at the moment. It doesn’t always get it right or produce wine of excellence, but I think there is a lot of honesty here and wines that are very representative of the area they priginate from. We feel we have been very selective with our range, honing it down to some very good examples.. PRICE: £17.50

As for Spain, the list is also expanding with some of the more unfashionable areas such as Utiel Requiel and Jumilla!

The Butlers Wine Cellar, 247 Queen’s Park Road, Brighton, BN2 9XJ

T: 01273 698724  E:henry@butlers-winecellar.co.uk

Another Languedoc specialist to explore is Sanglier Wines at http://www.sanglier-wines.co.uk/.
Based in north London, the name comes from the local Languedoc Wild Boar which is common to the region and “while loved by hunters and meat eaters, they constantly prove a challenge to the vineyard owners and their fencing due to a love of grapes. As, like the Wild Boars, we have a passion for high quality grapes, Sanglier Wines seemed an appropriate name!”

Sanglier Wines specialises in wines from the Languedoc region of the South of France. We deal direct with individual growers who supply high quality, distinctive wines that bring out the true capabilities of the terroir….
There is a real buzz around the vineyards of the Languedoc now with the production of many low yielding, fantastically high quality wines made to both traditional and innovative, modern methods

Clearly they know the region well, and have sought out some distinctive, but little-known (in the UK) producers, except of course for the globally recognised Mas De Daumas Gassac, although worthy of inclusion as the one estate which established the Languedoc as an innovative and quality wine region. (Less certain why there is Champagne on the list though), They also include an excellent sparkling Cremant de Limoux from Antech.
The core of the list though are the rich wines of appellations such as Fitou AC, Minervois AC and St Chinian AC where they stock the wines of Chateau Viranel.

You can order online, but it seems you can only buy a whole case (unmixed) and you cannot order direct from the wine detail page.

However, one extra which is on offer is the opportunity to stay in their house – more details on their website at

Sanglier Wines

134 Haverstock Hill, London NW3 2AY

T: 07846 688922 E: franceskeane@sanglier-wines.co.uk

Despite its title, Harrogate Medical Wine Society is not just for doctors, which is welcome news if you are interested in tasting some of the top New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc on 16 July 2009.

The Society was founded and run by Dr Bernard Dias

The aim of the society is to further the understanding and appreciation of fine wine through regular tutored wine tastings and visits to vineyards in many parts of the winegrowing world.Membership of the Harrogate Medical Wine Society is not restricted to members of the medical profession and the Society welcomes wine lovers from all walks of life.

Dr Dias is an extraordinarily knowledgeable and enthusiastic wine lover, who was the guiding light behind the annual Harrogate Wine Fair (sadly no longer running) and organises and guides some excellent wine tours to all parts of the wine world through Serendib Promotions.

Harrogate Medical Wine Society

21, St. Leonards Road, Harrogate, N Yorks HG2 8NX

T: 01423 884426  E :info @ harrogatemedicalwinesociety.co.uk

ough Serendib Promotions.

Exhibiting at Bristol’s Wine Festival (10-12 July 2009) will be Domaine Treloar, a small vineyard in the Roussillon region of southern France.

We are a small, high-quality vineyard and winery in the Roussillon, France’s most exciting wine region.Owned and operated by Jonathan Hesford and Rachel Treloar.
As Vignerons Indépendants, we grow all the grapes, make the wine and bottle it at the domaine. We do not buy in fruit or wine from other sources.
We also do all the work in the vineyards and winery ourselves and only employ outside help for pruning and picking.

There are a significant number of British winemakers in France and this domaine is run by ” a bloke from Yorkshire and a girl from New Zealand” , producing Cotes de Roussillon AC, Muscat de Rivesaltes and Vins de Pays d’Oc wines at Trouillas (66 Pyrenees Orientales) south of Perpignan. Open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays for informal visitors, they also offer a “How wine is made” tour. A friendly, informative and thoroughly enjoyable guided tour of the vineyards and winery followed by a tutored tasting of our wines. .

If you cannot get to southern France you can visit their stand at the Bristol Wine Festival (10-12 July 2009) or purchase in the UK from Leon Stolarski Fine Wines or HC Wines.

For more info on the Britsol Wine & Food Festival see www.bristolwineandfoodfair.co.uk – worth a visit to see a number of French and UK Vineyards, major importers and wine merchants plus a wealth of food products.

For more info on Domaine Treloar see www.domainetreloar.com

Aldeby Wine, established in 2008, is an online merchant specialising in the wines of southern France. The challenge with the Languedoc is to separate good quality wines from the sheer volume of bland, branded and bulk wines produced in this historically prolific region. Seeking out smaller and lesser-known independent producers can yield some great discoveries.

The wines produced in the South of France offer a lot to the consumer: they have a great tradition and history of making wine; but they are also capture the spirit of innovation so widespread in Languedoc. Today the wines of the region are very diverse, from character full dry whites to quaffable fruit-packed rosé, and from some superb sweet wines to complex, intriguing and world beating reds.

The two things that link all of the producers we list are the high quality of the wines they produce and the great value for money they offer the UK consumer.

Although the best advice is always to follow the advice of a knowledgeable wine merchant, consumers often choose by the attractiveness of the label, or the seductiveness of the name – hence amongst the offerings from Aldeby are “Le Chemin des Reves” (the road of dreams) and Domaine des 1000 Roses (Domaine of the 1000 roses)!

Certainly one of the star appellations of the region is Pic St Loup – here they offer L’Ermitage du Pic Saint Loup Guilhem Gaucelm 2005 “One of the great icon wines of Languedoc, the Guilhem Gaucelm is made from roughly equal proportions of old vines Grenache and Syrah grown on the southern flank of the Pic Saint Loup mountain. The wine is wonderfully complex with red and dark berry fruits, black olive, black cherry and spice to the fore. This is a superbly balanced masterpiece.

Aldeby Wines appears only to have an online presence – no details of any tastings on the site to provide an opportunity to sample any of the lesser-known wines. Delivery is £6.00 for a case.

Aldeby Wines Limited T: 0116 2742980- contact