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.
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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.
