Bodega Chacra, in the Rio Negro region of Patagonia, is one of the finest wine producers in Argentina. We’ve written about their Pinot Noir production earlier, and today we’ve taken a look at their delicious Mainqué Chardonnay.
The 2021 harvest was early with great acidity and fresh fruit. 


The wine was fermented in barrels without malolactic, spending 11 months in barrique.
It’s 100% Chardonnay with aging 18% in concrete eggs, 25% in stainless steel tanks and 57% in French oak barrels (12% new) for 10 months. 


It’s an elegant and beautiful wine, that pairs excellent with food.

Dirk van der Niepoort is the most famous and respected wine wizard in Portugal. Famed for making some of the most sought after Vintage port wine there is and for constantly expanding his horizons. 
A few years back he made headlines in the wine industry when he bought a vineyard and a winery a bit south of the Douro valley. The area was called Bairrada and could as best be described as an underdog in the Portuguese wine scene. It had some fame back in the 40s for making juicy, light and delicate wines with high acidity and low alcohol. Making them excellent for aging as well. But that was many years ago and what little fame they had was long perished. 
But Dirk was inspired and went in full throttle trying to recreate and even go beyond what they did back in the 40s. And after just a few years he succeeded. The wizard had made a magic potion in the forgotten world of Bairrada. 
Today you’ll find this great wine a Vinmonopolet in the 2018 vintage, which was excellent. 
The grape is called Baga and is a tricky little thing to get right. But when you do, it’s one hell of a juice maker.


On a side note. To most of us, including myself, Portugal is a fairly unknown territory when it comes to wine. Sales records from Vinmonopolet support this. And there is no reason we shouldn’t indulge in the many high quality wines from this beautiful country. So if you wanna have a nice introduction to quality wine from Portugal, check out this treasure from the wizard.

On the western most point of Sicily, 12km outside the small town of Marsala, lives a man called Marco de Bartoli. He’s an old legend in the wine industry, especially known for saving the production of the Sicilian sweet wine Marsala. Marco de Bartoli is also known for making an outstanding white wine on the Grillo grape, and now he’s made the best one in three decades.
The Grillo grape is widely used in Sicily. Though to grow and low yields, but it has features worth fighting for. First of all it handles the soaring heat of Sicily excellent. It also features great acidity and is naturally high in sugars.

Although they make reds and whites it’s the Rosé we’ll be presenting this week. Different Plots located on different soils along the La Cadière-d’Azur and Le Castellet. The soils are mostly limestone and some very clayey soils. This makes for Fresh and mineral wines. The grapes are organically grown and hand harvested with selection done both in the field and in the cellar. ​

May, spring and delicious pink juice. Rosé season is here in all its glory. 
Traditionally this wine is considered a somewhat fresh of the shelves wine, meant for immediate consumption and not for your cellar. It’s mostly a light and very drinkable wine, and often from Provence or Piemonte. But this year we’ll challenge this with a fantastic bottle from Greece. It has character, bold flavours, a brilliant colour and it can be enjoyed now, but will also cellar for years.


Winemaker Apostolos Thymiopoulos has risen as one of the great stars of the Greek wine scene. He and his family has been into farming and agriculture for generations, but Apostolos only made his first wines in 2005. He truly believes in sustainable viticulture and minimum intervention during the whole winemaking process. Apostolos applies this philosophy to produce ten different expressions of Xinomavro, a renowned variety of Northern Greece, trying to reveal every aspect of its potential.


This week we’re digging into his somewhat unknown rosé. And we’ll be bold and say that this is the coolest rosé you’ll drink this year.
Grapes for this rosé are sourced from several small vineyards in and around the village of Fytia, inland west of Athens. Elevation is between 450-650 meters and vineyards are cooled by both inland mountain winds and from the sea about 40km away. Grapes are macerated for 12 hours, then fermented with wild yeasts in stainless steel tanks for 5 to 6 months. The wine is matured in used 500 litre barrels for 5 months.

​We have featured the wines of The Thymiopoulos family before. Just a few weeks ago we featured the rosé, but the Xinomavro grape can also make a fine red wine. Apostolos Thymiopoulos is a winemaker known for understanding the grape variety better than anyone. When he took on the family estate located in the north of Greece, in central Macedonia, he stopped selling the grapes his ancestors had sold to other neighboring wineries in order to start making his own wines. He now makes elegant wines with a Mediterranean character.

​It’s May and time to put the red wine away and start focusing on the whites! With the warmer weather we automatically drift towards with wines just like we want reds in autumn and winter. This week we have gone for a particular favourite from the Piemonte. Like it’s more famous red Piemonte grape, the Nebbiolo,  the Arneis grape is a almost exclusively grown in the famous northern Italian province. Historically the grape was mostly used in a blend with Nebbiolo to soften the the red wines and make them more drinkable sooner. But with the popularity of single grape varieties the Arneis grape was almost lost to time. Fortunately it has bounced back and now there are some fine white wines coming from Piemonte featuring this underrated grape.

The Giovanni Rosso family have farmed vineyards in Serralunga d'Alba,as long as the family can remember but not always producing their own wines. For generations they would cultivate the grapes and make wine for other brands to resell. But during the early 1980's Giovanni Rosso restructured the vineyards with the aim of growing the best fruit but it was his son Davide who finally put the family name on the wines and starting producing the wines himself. 

Giovanni Rosso Roero Arneis - 195,- kr

As always when it comes to Arneis it is so fresh and fruity on the nose. Clear citrus notes, leaning towards orange and grapefruit. Great acidity and very long in the mouth. The citrus continues here and there is a pleasant weight to the wine that makes it feel long and good. Very good as an aperitif but will go well with shrimp. Try it as an alternative to Chablis!​

Far north in Spain lies Castilla y León, one of the country’s 17 autonomous regions and the largest. But with only about 2,4 million people, there is a lot of land for agriculture. And that’s good, because the region produces some of the finest wines in Spain. Mostly reds and Tempranillo being the main grape. The whites are more rare, but the ones made are often with exceptional quality. ​