There is merit to intellectualizing the things we love. So much of my time is spent playing tetris with wine: identifying holes on the shop’s shelves (why don’t we have any chenin?), analyzing overstocks (how did we end up with nine Rhone reds?), conjuring up the memory of Jean-Marc Pillot’s last vintage (perfect), brainstorming on how to sell more collectible Barolo (hold a class), and considering how to convey the ungeneralizable terroir of the Canary Islands to someone who has only experienced reds that smell like tire fire from this tiny, but wildly diverse archipelago off the western coast of Africa (read a treatise on Canary geology). I wish my brain didn’t trap every cost and price and cuvée that exists within our four walls as related to its aromas and flavors as compared to every other bottle on the shelf, but alas, my mind is busy. 

There is also merit to simply enjoying the things we love. Clearly, I am prone to cerebral rabbit holes about my professions; I have a terminal degree in writing fiction because I love letting my imagination run wild, and I opened a wine shop because I couldn’t stop thinking about grapes and soil. But I have also overdone it on occasion, left to ask myself the question, why, exactly, am I doing this? Which generally means it is time to sit down and be quiet and listen. In relation to wine, it’s the time to sit down and open a bottle and let the spirit of the thing wash over me for the pure sake of enjoyment.

So this month is simply about summer pleasure, no thinking required. Of course, these wines have been made with much intellectual care and deep intuitive feeling and you are welcome to bound down the rabbit hole with us, but, more than that, it is simply your job to enjoy them. —Leslie Pariseau

Anima Mundi "Cami del Xops" Catalonia, Spain 2024

Plato’s theory of the “anima mundi” or “world soul” describes the Cosmos as a conscious living creature with a soul created by the demiurge, a divine craftsman, who imbued it with order and harmony. Agustí Torello Roca takes a similar approach, with the faith that wine is part of the anima mundi, conveying order and harmony via soil, grapes, and the human relationship to nature. The winemaker for AT Roca, another label focused on classic methode-champenoise, which we carry at the shop, Roca created Anima Mundi as a translator of the clay and calcareous soils of the Alt Penedès using the single fermentation style for sparkling to underscore the wines’ terroir. 

Despite its cork being famously difficult to disgorge, pinned down by what looks like a giant staple, I’ve loved Roca’s Cami del Xops since I was introduced to it by now New Yorker and onetime local wine educator Jonathan Gray. Made up of Xarel-lo, a famously mineral grape, and Macabeo, also known as Viura in Rioja, this cuvée is made in an the métode ancestral style, meaning it’s wild yeast-fermented in steel and big, old barrels and then bottled before the fermentation ends, capturing CO2 and creating a lovely, frothy wine that ages on its spent yeasts. With a backbone of tart acid and a froth of salty, mineral bubbles, it’s a wine that’s perfect for cutting through humidity, swampy nights, and sweaty dance parties. —LP

Peter Lauer "Barrel X" Riesling, Mosel, Germany 2025

If you were able to sit in on our Riesling class a year or so back you know our feelings about this grape variety and the wide spectrum it spans in intensity, style and sweetness. You know that it can be a subtle chameleon based on vineyard site and that people have many opinions on which producer makes the best Riesling. If you could not make it that evening, you may have mixed feelings about the grape. There is no shame in not loving ALL Rieslings; there is, however, shame in not LOVING Lauer Riesling.

When I think of the Lauer wines the word “striking” comes to mind again and again—the lightning in a bottle that the best of this variety are capable of. Sharp, long, mouthwatering, and blinding with brightness. They are unique, clever, and a perfect echo of their surroundings. The steep, sun speckled hills of the Lauer plots in the Saar region of Germany are legendary. The perfect mix of warmth from above and the reflection off of the Mosel. The deep slate soils. The cool breezes that sweep through the twists and turns of riverside villages. Here, fifth-generation steward Florian Lauer extracts this magic from his family's sites in the village of Ayl.

For the slightly off-dry Barrel X, Florian has also sourced fruit from the neighboring villages of Saarburg, Wawern, and Wiltingen. Florian says, “From Ayl and Wawern, the wine gains the fruit and power, from Saarburg the racy acidity, and from Wiltingen, the spice.” As always, 100-percent native yeasts are used to ferment the wines in stainless steel tanks. 

This vintage of Barrel X is another magic trick of balance and expression. Like drinking midday sun from a wet stone surrounded by citrus trees in a field of tall grasses, then plugged into a wall socket. A gateway drug into the entrancing world of Riesling with the power to get you through another hot, slow summer in steely cool fashion. —Beth Altenbernd

Pablo Fallabrino "Elefante Pisador" Canalones, Uruguay 2025

We don't carry much Uruguayan wine in the shop (exactly one). In fact, I think I can count the number of Uruguayan wines I've tried on one hand. As South America's second smallest country, Uruguay produces far less wine than its neighbors in Chile and Argentina, and exports only a fraction of that. Though it’d be easy to overlook Uruguayan wine for its obscurity, it has more in common with the European wines on our shelves than you’d think. Canelones, Uruguay’s primary winemaking region, has an Atlantic maritime climate often compared to Bordeaux. Most of the grapes vinified in Uruguay came from European immigrants in the late 19th century. The country’s primary grape, Tannat, was actually an import from the French Basque country in the 1870s.

Pablo Fallobrino’s story is a perfect example of Uruguayan winemaking. His grandfather immigrated from Italy in 1920, bringing with him Piemontese varietals like Barbera, Arneis, and Nebbiolo. After learning winemaking from his father and grandfather, Pablo established his single-vineyard estate in 1997. Today, when he’s not surfing, he’s making a wide range of low-intervention wines that blend Uruguayan terroir with the varietals of his ancestors. 

“Elefante Pisador” is his foray into orange wine, a skin-contact Gewürtztraminer. Gewurtztraminer is most often linked to Alsace, where the cool climate allows the grapes plenty of time to develop their aromatic quality while retaining acidity. In the warmer weather of Canelones, Fallabrino compensates with skin contact; a one-week maceration on the skins adds tannin and structure back to the wine, giving it the grip that the tropical climate would otherwise take away. The result is a cloudy orange wine almost reminiscent of a kombucha, with notes of tropical fruit, peach skins, and tart citrus. A perfect introduction to the distinctive wines of Uruguay. —Haley Adams

Collecapretta "Lautizio" Ciliegiolo, Umbria, Italy 2024

Umbria is Italy’s agricultural soul. Land-locked, splashed with sunflower-swept valleys, winding mountainous back roads, and livestock that pay no mind to fences or ditches. Venture a few miles outside of any major city and you’ll find lush farmland redefining the spectrum of green below tiny hilltop towns with Etruscan spires and walls dated centuries before the birth of Christ.  

An hour south of the region’s capital Perugia, Cantina Collecapretta lies swaddled in the Apennine mountains. Down an unmarked dirt road, rife with switchbacks and goat paths you will find one of the most honest, family wineries in all of Italy.  

The Mattiolis’ farm is a scant eight hectares (20ish acres) in the hills above a picturesque high valley planted to herbs, grains, olives, and indigenous grapes. Goats, fowl, and pigs wander the property fertilizing each crop and, eventually, find their way to the table.  The farm itself is occupied by three generations of the family and while Annalisa Mattioli, whose hospitality knows no bounds (I have experienced it for myself), does the heavy lifting in the vineyards and cellar these days, her father, Vittorio is ever-present, tasting, refining.

Their combined efforts in the vineyard and cellar, working strictly based on lunar phases, with Trebbiano, Malvasia, Greco, Ciillegiolo, Barbera, Merlo Nera, and Sangiovese produce wines indelibly linked to place and time.  These wines speak of subtlety, nuance and power; often in a single glass. “Lautizio” bridges this gap for me between cuvées of the beautifully skin-soaked “Scarparo” and the burly, broad shouldered “Il Burbero.” It’s one-hundred-percent Cilliegiolo fermented on indigenous yeast and raised in cement tanks before being racked when the moon says so. All blackberry spice, damp earth, and shimmery vibrance on the back palate, it’s proof that summer reds can be more than just frivoulous glou glou.  —Drew Clowney

4 Monos "Albillo Real" Madrid, Spain 2022

About a month ago, I was in Tenerife in the Canary Islands for a gathering celebrating the anniversary of winemaker Jonatan Garcia’s Orotava project Suertes del Marqués. To mark the occasion, he savvily gathered a group of some of the world’s best winemakers for an epic day of tasting under a tent by the ocean, including Jean-Marc Roulot, Helene Charbaut, Pattes Loups, Raúl Pérez, Ramiro Ibañez, Antonio Maçinita, and so many more. Toward the end of the day, as winemakers began to leave their tables to start a dance party in the rain, some new and old friends gathered to chat and drink the dregs. I discovered that the crew from 4 Monos Vitucultores had abandoned their lovely bottles of Gredos grenache and Albillo at a table in the back and felt it was my duty to rescue them from dumping. 

So I gathered them up, and while the rain came down, we drank of this very old-vine white, its grapes sourced from plantings whose average age is 95-years-old. Pressed whole-cluster (which adds texture) and fermented with indigenous yeast, it’s aged in big barrels for 10 months. The result is a golden, rich, plush wine that feels meant for grilled chicken, thunderstorms, and sunsets off the coast of western Africa, while a bunch of wild winemakers dance with abandon. —LP