👍 Recommendations from 🎭 Theatre of Wine's Oktoberfest 🥳
Meeting a friendly tasting crowd and making unexpected wine discoveries. Sounds like the perfect Saturday afternoon, right?! 🍾
We have been following the generally very interesting tasting programme run by the Theatre of Wine shops for many years. Earlier this year on my way to a Thai dinner 🇹🇭 with friends at Singburi in Leytonstone, I stopped at the Theatre of Wine shop on the highstreet to grab a wine matching our dinner plans. Needless to say that I walked out with more than one bottle in my bag, plus some tasting notes for the three bottles they had open in the shop.
We also still vividly remember the exciting evening when we met innovative winemaker Georgiev/Milkov from Bulgaria 🇧🇬 at the Theatre of Wine shop in Tufnell Park (N19), together with our friends from The Jolly Merchants.
Recently, we finally made it to their third shop in Greenwich. I’m afraid there is no price for having visited all three of them, but if there would be, we would have earned it now! 🏆 It was a relaxed, informal walk-around tasting showcasing 20 of their wines. The broad selection of mostly fairly new vintages included light & bright wines reminding us of nice summer days as well as warmer and bolder bottles to prepare for longer, cooler nights - maybe with plenty of charcuterie and cheese?!
It was a great opportunity to chat to some of the staff, learn more about their portfolio, and exchange recommendations and tasting notes with other wine enthusiasts. Overall, a very friendly and rather interesting experience with a couple of unexpected discoveries.
It’s no surprise that the sparkling wine kicking off the tasting was a winner. However, only two white wines made our list of favourites, which we did not expect. Uncharacteristically for us, as we tend to prefer white wines, we were pretty impressed with a whopping eight of the eleven reds! 😃
If you are looking for inspirations to for your next wine dinner or just need something for a relaxed evening with friends, here our very personal recommendations for every occasion:
- 🍾 Refreshing & Fun:
Pago de Tharsys Dominio Requena Cava Brut Nature NV
(🛒 £14.30)
🌍 Region: Utiel Requena, Valencia, Spain 🇪🇸
🍇 Grapes: Macabeu, Parellada & Xarello
✍️ A very enjoyable Cava, a traditional method sparkling wine from Spain. We liked the taste of ripe stone fruits and the nice texture. Probably more fruit-driven than other sparkling wines like Champagne, but that’s not a bad thing. - ⚪️ Ripe Riesling:
Weingut Rosner Langenlois Riesling 2022
(🛒 £20.00)
🌍 Region: Kamptal DAC, Austria 🇦🇹
✍️ The nose appeared a bit subtle at first, then the taste showed everything we like about Riesling. The wine felt rich and even a bit oily in the mouth, balanced by vibrant acidity and bold peach flavours. Easily one of our favourites wines of the entire tasting. - ⚪️ Sweaty Trainers:
Vignoble Guillaume Chardonnay 2022
(🛒 £19.50)
🌍 Region: Franche-Comté, France 🇫🇷
✍️ Along with my friends, I would never have guessed this is a Chardonnay. Perhaps unfairly, my initial association when sniffing the glass was “sweaty trainers” 👟 - and as I run at least twice a week, I know exactly what I’m talking about. Weirdly, it wasn’t necessarily a bad smell 🤷♂️. To me, this wine tasted very much like a fortified wine without the high alcohol. With concentrated raisin and prune flavours combined with a hint of herbaceous, savoury notes, this was really quite an interesting Chardonnay to try!
- 🔴 Refreshing Strawberries:
Terra Quilia Falcorubens Col Fondo Lambrusco dell’Emilia 2019
(🛒 £20.10)
🌍 Region: Lambrusco di Grasparossa, Italy 🇮🇹
✍️ A nice, light red wine with a bit of a sparkle. Full of refreshing acidity and strawberry notes, we thought this a very enjoyable summer wine. Well, actually, we enjoyed it in winter too! - 🔴 Smooth Seduction:
Poggio delle Grazie Corvina Quadrivium 2017
(🛒 £21.20)
🌍 Region: IGT Verona, Veneto, Italy 🇮🇹
✍️ Made from Corvina grapes, like for example Bardolino or Valpolicelly wines as well, this light red was another winner for us. I tasted slightly darker fruit flavours and more texture than in the Lambrusco. Yet it was very easy to drink and fabulously smooth. 👍 - 🔴 Quite Bright:
Vignoble de la Jarnoterie Angèle Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil 2022
(🛒 £21.10)
🌍 Region: Loire, France 🇫🇷
🍇 Grape: Cabernet Franc
✍️ We’re often fans of single-varietal Cabernet Franc wines, especially from the Loire region. This lovely and bright red wine expressed all we like about this grape. - 🔴 Bowl of Forest Fruits:
Jasci & Marchesani Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2022
(🛒 £13.70)
🌍 Region: Montepulciano Classico DOC, Abruzzo, Italy 🇮🇹
✍️ Slowly we were moving towards bolder red wines. For us, the nose of forest fruits & the velvety mouthfeel with smooth tannins combined with a nice fruit character made this our wine of choice to go with a charcuterie board. This was probably our favourite red wine of the tasting. - 🔴 Cheese & Flowers:
Quinta da Fata Clássico 2020
(🛒 £16.80)
🌍 Region: Dão, Portugal 🇵🇹
🍇 Grapes: Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz (also known as Tempranillo), Alfrocheiro, Jaen
✍️ This Portuguese wine immediately won us over with its fine nose. A round, smooth & floral wine, tasting of intense dark flowers & cherry blossom.
With 8 wines out of 20 that we find memorable, it’s already clear that it is diffcult to keep the recommendations we take away from this tasting short. To give you even more options, here three more bonus wines.
Quite a bit more expensive than all the others listed above is the Sylvain Martel Bessay Juliénas 2022 at 🛒 £31.00. It’s a nice, light & pretty typical expression of Gamay grapes from Fleurie in the Beaujolais region in France, made by Domaine Cabissou Juliénas Bessay.
Also at the higher price end of this tasting was the Cims de Porrera Vi de Vila Tinto 2019 from Priorat in the Catalunya region in Spain 🇪🇸 at 🛒 £28.10. This one made from Carinyena and Garnatxa grapes would probably be a good candidate to keep for a couple of years. We liked the strong cherry flavours with a hint of black papper and a bit of oak and smoke notes.
And then there was the Giustini Avoglia Susumaniello 2022 from Salento in the Puglia region in the South of Italy 🇮🇹. Atr 🛒 £13.50 it looks like a bargain. We wanted to include this bottle, because it was made from the very local grape variety called Susumaniello. We’re not even sure whether we ever tried wine from this grape before, so we though it’s definitely something worth mentioning. This is a proper food wine with bold tannins, earthy and forest floot notes, black fruit character and a lot of depth & flavour.
One little detail that I love about Theatre of Wine is their constantly changing selection of wine-related picture postcards. I quickly became a collector and even sometimes take a second set to give to a good wine friend as a surprise. I would even go as far to say that their stores are worth a visit for the arty wine cards alone. But of course, once you’re through the door, it’s hard not to walk out with more than you initially went in for…I’m speaking from personal experience here. 🍷
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First published in December 2024.