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Grower Spotlights

Grower Spotlights

Bufadors Introduction

Ton Mata and his longtime partner Encarna Castillo—together since 1998 when they met as interns in Champagne—yearned to produce sparkling wine on a truly artisanal scale, using the same technology (or lack thereof) with which Ton’s grandfather began Recaredo in 1924. In the late 2000s, Ton and Encarna purchased a modest 19th century house in the residential neighborhood of Can Rossell de la Serra, just 5 kilometers from Recaredo’s village of Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, aiming to use its pre-existing cellar as space in which to realize their dream of producing a truly homemade sparkling wine.

Grower Spotlights

Foreau’s Peerless Vouvray Brut: Another Side of Chenin Blanc

Nowhere does Chenin Blanc express more beauty than in Vouvray, and the Foreau family’s Domaine du Clos Naudin—a keystone of the RWM portfolio for four decades—produces arguably the finest examples in the entire appellation. From their enviable holdings in the tuffeau heart of the appellation, father and son Philippe and Vincent Foreau shepherd into bottle scintillating, kaleidoscopic wines which vibrate with mineral intensity, maintaining their haunting depth and laser-like precision even at triple-digit levels of residual sugar.

Grower Spotlights

Gianluca Bergianti’s Terrevive: The Spearpoint of Lambrusco’s Vanguard

Utilizing spontaneous initial fermentations, then prompting secondary fermentation with the addition of a splash of unfermented grape must from the same harvest, and bottling with no added sulfur, Gianluca produces sparkling wines which sizzle with life—electrifying, mineral-saturated bottlings that revel in their expressive power. They offer a palpable and exciting drinking experience fully at odds with mainstream Lambrusco’s conservative simplicity; for us, tasting them was like encountering the truth of the region for the first time.

Grower Spotlights

The Iconic Enfer d’Arvier from Danilo Thomain Returns

Thomain’s Enfer d’Arvier is perhaps the most jubilant, boisterous red wine we import from the Valle d’Aosta. Produced entirely from the indigenous Petit Rouge, it’s a homemade wine in every sense of the word: these vertiginous terraces must be worked entirely manually; grapes are hand-harvested, carried just down the road to Danilo’s house, and the wine is made right there—fermented spontaneously, and aged in non-temperature-stabilized steel tanks in his basement two stories below the earth’s surface.