The Insider - November 2024

It’s November and the Fellas mustaches are growing thicker, helped along by some great wine and long nights. We’re dusting off our slow cooker, have bought an extra decanter and are polishing the silver in excited anticipation of those long, rambling winter get togethers. Of course, all that needs a bit of lubrication, so we’ve got some new wines and some old faves in this month’s box that we are sure you will love.

Wine descriptions below, and if you run out, you can order more from The Cellar.

Don’t forget, you can look up past boxes in The Archive.

Quinta do Pinto, Chenin Blanc

[grape/vintage] Chenin Blanc / 2022
[region] Lisboa

Imagine if Dionysus had stolen one of Ceres’s cornucopias overflowing with peaches and melons and pineapples and passion fruit and maybe some lemons and limes and honeysuckle, then waved his divine hands in the air and turned it into a grape, vinified it and poured it into a bottle. Well, you’d have to call it Quinta do Pinto’s “Chenin Blanc”, a lip-smackingly fruity and full and layered wine that is like a deep-tissue massage for your taste buds.

Pairs well with grilled fish, sushi, salads and pasta, cheese platter or simply by the glass.

Ribeiro Santo, "Excellence" Grande Escolha Tinto

[grape/vintage] Alfrocheiro, Tinta Roriz, Tinto Cão, Touriga Naciona / 2018

[region] Dão

Like biting into a rich Christmas cake packed with nuts and fruits and spices and soaked for a year in brandy. Your mouth does a back flip and a yeehaw and basically just collapses in ecstasy. The flavours thicken and deepen and fill your whole body. Coffee and tobacco and dark plums. WTF? Did you die and end up in a Victorian gentleman’s library with a roaring fire in the hearth and a copy of Moby Dick resting on the side table?

Pairs well with duck confit, foie gras, oven-roasted veal, roast kid goat and sausages

Inóspito, Touriga Nacional

[grape/vintage] Touriga Nacional / 2015

[region] Dão

Geographic Wines make wines that are as close to natural as possible – hand harvest, spontaneous, natural fermentation – but they love to play and experiment as well. This Touriga Nacional comes from two distinct small parcels, one in Cima Corgo at 150m altitude, the other in Douro Superior at close to 600m. What you get is a complex, subtle and fresh wine that is like skinny dipping on a moonlit night then drying off with a towel made of raspberries and pepper and cinnamon.

Pairs well with a crispy, thin crust walnut and pear pizza, a flash-seared picanha, or a bacon, blue cheese and pomegranate salad.