A lively glass full of cricket-pitch cuttings

2018 London CRU With a haunting perfume of elderflower and cricket-pitch cuttings, this scintillating Bacchus should be your go-to apero of the summer.

Matthew Jukes
By
published
in Features

2018 London CRU

2018 London CRU, Baker St Bacchus, England

£15, reduced to £13.50 until 12 August, robersonwine.com

While researching a piece on urban wineries for my monthly column in elite English viticulture journal Vineyard, I found myself in one of the hippest, smallest and most inviting wineries I have ever visited. Aussie winemaker Alex Hurley conducted a winery tour (which took 14 seconds) and then we sat in what every other winery calls the cellar door or visitor centre, but in this cool company looks more like a Byronic dining room, to taste the range.

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In the past, this Fulham-based winery brought grapes in from as far afield as Calatayud and Limoux to make superb wines in our capital 2015 Cabot Sq (£15) is a particularly toothsome biodynamic cabernet from the Languedoc, but the future focus for this exceptional set-up is, rightly, English wine.

Alex has just released a dreamy 2018 Rosaville Rd Pinot Noir Ros (£15), which should grace every dinner party table in the country, but alongside this diva he has a scintillating Bacchus. Here there is a haunting perfume of elderflower and cricket-pitch cuttings, which glides above the citrus pith core. It is lively, perky and lifted with a lust for life that so many pretenders to the Bacchus throne fail to engender.

It is not a wine that needs time to settle and evolve like the raw, stinging-nettle-imbued Bacchuses of the past. It is ready to go and it ought to be your go-to apero of this summer. Ooh, and Alex has arranged a special price for us MoneyWeek acolytes for the next ten days, too!

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (matthewjukes.com).

Matthew Jukes
Matthew Jukes

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.  

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’.  He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner. 

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy.  His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.

 

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