Jan van Roekel

Jan or Jean nobody knows and nobody cares, it is what it is which I'll tell you is one hell of an explosive glacial melon pét nat of the finest china bubbles in Johnson’s² baby powder pink. What else? Well, what has always been is that Jan plays hard for the Jura team, believes in hip hop and that a better life is possible in France. One of the only Amsterdammers who doesn’t bike, the only one to visit us here twice and the person to look at my grapes and say “press” so the next day I did (thanks Jan). Furthermore director of tours from the swamplands North to Bojo's bastard salon Bojalien where, chez Romain, he’s been making Gamay since 15 in his cult-merch hoody softly beseeching #free(Olivier)cousin and is no joke big in Japan.

— Jan visited 11 April. Alba-la-Romaine, Ardèche

'Novello', Denny Baldin

There was a time, let's date it pre-natural wine, that my poison of choice was heavily sulphated warm blooded reds. ‘Meal in a glass’ wines, I called them. Wines you could chew on in a blizzard barefoot and you’d be so busy you’d be warm. 

Those days ended when I stopped drinking during the week. The clock would strike 16:59:59 on a Friday and, not feeling like alcoholic jam, I drank beer, that most unlikely gateway drug to Pinot Noir and the wines I drank next. Wines like this.

And the rest is history or at least uninteresting. 

Tasting notes:

“Novello” tastes like blackberry shaved ice with those fizzy crystals in humming with live-wire acidity or how your skin looks after a rave: tight and bright like a moon-lit midnight, balanced on a knife-edge between life and death. It’s volatile like an Alka-Seltzer on speed sucking on sour candy strings and shaking sparklers four at a time with salty fireworks exploding overhead.

//

Novello (a blend of vintages but drunk July 2016)

Denny Baldin

Gamay

Fleurie, Beaujolais

In 2014 Denny wrote a rather zany natural wine manifesto called Super Natural Wine: the Black Revelation Cycle and is one of the initiators of Bojalien, a fringe salon in the Beaujolais for winemakers treated as aliens by the wine world. This year it was held at Romain des Grottes place, here it is in pictures.

Bojalien 2017

Domain des Grottes, Beaujolais, Monday 4 April 2017

*

Thanks to Romaine and Perrine and for ALL THE WINE

Acid-clarity wines

Babass the band

J-P and a drunk me

  
                                                                             Romain 

 All in it together

Again

For the cuvée 

Making the new cuvée (yes, from the leftovers)

Bottling

Corking

Labelling

I've had worse

Big format

\m/