Philippe Tessier is an OG Loire Valley Naturalista. Decades, now, they've been making cracklingly fresh wines full of that life force that you get from the best low-intervention wines. He checks all the mandatory boxes. Farming: organic. Sulfur: low to none. Yeasts: natural.
Pascal Doquet owns some of the choicest parcels in Champagne, in premier and grand cru sites like Vertus and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger in the Côte de Blancs. His work is meticulous. His wines are fabulous. Why are they still so under the radar?
We are always on the lookout for new and exciting winemakers who express their unique perspective displayed through excellent winemaking chops. When we find a winemaker that fits this mold we will take a chance on them especially when the wines are as good as those made by Cary Quintana.
Lots of regions around the world attempt to produce sparkling wines these days, but there’s good reason to think that California is one of the most promising. Here, there is already a proven success growing the at least two of Champagne’s major grapes: Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Here, too, you have an incredible diversity of climate and soils – look hard enough, and surely you will find something perfect for sparklers.
Ribera del Duero just might be the most unlikely place for a darling of the natural wine world to practice his art, and yet that’s where we find Goyo Garcia, who’s been crafting wines that toe the line between earthy and ethereal for nearly two decades.
Ornellaia is about as big a name as you find in Italian wine. Launched by Ludovico Antinori in the early 1980s, just as Bolgheri, the Tuscan coastal region, was (re-)opening to viticulture, it has become a (if not the) benchmark Cabernet-based Super Tuscan.
The Tissot family has been making wine in the Jura for decades — Stéphane's father André started the domaine in 1962, and Stéphane's first vintage was in 1989, at just 19. Almost immediately, Stéphane decided to move towards organic farming, achieving organic certification in 1999 and biodynamic certification in 2004. Today, Tissot is the start of the region, making soulful, vibrant, terroir-expressive wines.
What is it with Italian athletes and wine? One of our favorite new producers in Piedmont is Olek Bondonia, former champion snowboarder. Today, we offer one of our favorite new producers from Lambrusco, and it turns out he was a world-class Muay Thai martial artist!
Burlotto's most famous wine -- and most expensive -- is their point-crushing Monvigliero Barolo. A great wine for sure, like all their Barolos. But if you ever go to visit the family in their castello up at the top of the tiny village of Verduno, you'll discover that the wine closest to the family's heart isn't even made with Nebbiolo. It's a bottle of Pelaverga Piccolo "Little Pelaverga".
One of our obsessions at Flatiron Wines is the every-day wines that you find in wine regions across the world – the wines that the locals actually drink, as opposed to the typically more expensive wines that are for export and sales. We’ve written extensively about Dolcetto in this context, not to mention more obscure wines like Pinot Auxerrois in Alsace. Today, we turn to another very fun category of these sorts of wines: 1-liter bottles of Gruner Veltliner.
Textura is a small winery in Portugal’s Dão region — quite possibly our favorite Portuguese region for fresh, crisp, lightly aromatic whites and juicy, complex reds with a dash of salinity. The elegant, mineral-driven wines produced here have led some to call the region Portugal’s answer to Burgundy.
Tarlant has been making Grower Champagne since all the way back in the 1920s, when Louis Tarlant helped the Champagne AOC to gain international fame. Ever since then, the family has produced beautiful bubblies entirely from fruit they've harvested themselves.
![Stylized image of Tarlant Champagne Brut Nature Zero [2015 Base] NV](http://sf.flatiron-wines.com/cdn/shop/articles/unnamed_97_{width}x.jpg?v=1724962537)