One of the great things about these monthly highlights is that they motivate us at UnscrewMe to taste as much wine as we can 🥳, so we do not run out of interesting impressions to share.

To train our palates and get inspiration for new tastings and events, we also attend trade tastings from time to time 💼. This is great news for everyone, as that way we can recommend you even more diverse and fun wines 🤪.

Extraordinarily Essentiel 🍾

• Wine: Essentiel 2010
• Producer: Maison Collard-Picard
• Region: Épernay, Champagne, France 🇫🇷
• Story:
  A few weeks ago I went to the great Taste Champagne event in London 🍾. I did not make it through every single bottle, but I managed to taste quite a range of Champagnes on that afternoon. I was particularly interested in smaller operations, such as growers who control the entire production process from start to end.
  Most of the wines were delicious. But the Essentiel 2010 by Collard-Picard was probably my favourite one of the entire event 🎉. It was extraordinarily refreshing with nice notes of lemon and an interesting balance.
  I also had a little chat with the winemaker who explained his approach and the various techniques used to make his wines. I always find it exciting to meet the people behind the bottles 🤓.

Fascinating Furmint 🍇

• Wine: 2015 Padihegy Furmint
• Producer: Kardos Winery
• Region: Mád & Rátka, Tokaj, Hungary 🇭🇺
• Story:
  At a wine tasting to promote independent importers and wine merchants organised by Wines of Hungary UK at 67 Pall Mall, I came across this intriguing white wine made from Furmint grapes by winemaker Kardos Winery, represented via importer Boutinot Wines.
  The grapes come from old vines 🍇 in the Padihegy area, and for this wine the producer focuses particularly on the terroir to bring out the best expression of the soil and location 🗺. Something I might not have expected is that they use Hungarian oak during fermentation with wild yeast, I thought it would most likely be stainless steel tanks or maybe concrete eggs. None of that matters, as the only reason we include this wine here is the taste. The appealing blend of floral notes with lime, stone fruit flavours and mineral character reminded me a little bit of a great Riesling — in all the best ways, of course 👍.
  While reading about this wine, we finally looked up what makes Hungarian oak different 🌳. Last year, when we organised a tasting with Bulgarian wines 🇧🇬, we already noticed that we regularly preferred the ones aged in Hungarian oak. Now we know why: there are different kinds of oak trees which produce wood with different characteristics which in turn produce different flavours when used for ageing wine.

Unusual Ukrainian 🍷

• Wine: 2015 Grande Reserve Cabernet-Merlot
• Producer: Shabo
• Region: Odessa, Ukraine 🇺🇦
• Story:
  Here we have two classic red wine grape varieties in a Bordeaux-style blend aged for 12 months in French oak 🍷. Nothing exciting, right? There is a little twist, since this wine is from the Odessa region in Ukraine, right by the Black Sea 🌊.
  A good friend of mine opened this bottle at a wine dinner recently. I knew that there is wine being made in Ukraine, but I did not know how good it is. Surprisingly for me, this red wine was right to my taste. This wine was interesting and complex 💡 with flavours of ripe red fruit, even slightly jammy, combined with sharp raspberry notes highlighting the acidity and balanced by cherry and black pepper on the palate, finishing off with savoury mushroom, forest floor characteristics.
  This wine has also been 🏆 awarded with a Bronze Medal at the Decanter World Wine Awards 2018.

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We’re always happy to hear about new restaurants with great wine lists, newly opened wine bars in London or just a nice wine you discovered recently.

If you have any recommendations, please let us know! Either comment on here or get in touch via social media through Twitter @unscrewmeapp, Facebook UnscrewMe or Instagram @unscrewmeapp.

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With June already drawing to an end within a couple of days, we at UnscrewMe are already busy filling up the calendar for July. Expect plenty of rosé wine tastings over the hot summer months ☀️.

(Almost as much as we like wine, we like coffee ☕️. That’s why we’re lucky that Department of Coffee and Social Affairs in Paddington, Notes Coffee in Moorgate and Clerkenwell Grind reliably produce cup after cup, helping us to structure our thoughts and keep typing.)

First published in June 2019.
Also available at https://medium.com/unscrewme/june-2019-wine-highlights-4f227e6de1c