September is bringing us some wine clubs to take notes about: rich, textural whites, a staple red, and familiar grapes from unfamiliar regions. Particularly excited about this one as we hope to be through the dog days and into the proper wine drinking weather soon enough. Wine club one members will note that they have a choice between Bobinet and Cascina degli Ulivi. Hope to see you at the tasting on Sunday where we will open them all!

WINE CLUB 1

Denis Lattard Roussanne 2023

There are easier positions to defend than low-acid white wine. I understand how fruitless the endeavor can feel. We have been taught to reach instinctively for freshness, tension, and lift—to regard acidity as the architecture that keeps a white wine standing. I love those wines, too. But I have a particular affection for the ones built according to a different geometry: dense with fruit, viscous in texture, generous in alcohol, moving broadly across the palate rather than racing toward the finish. Emily knows this about me. When she asked me to write about Domaine Lattard’s 2023 Roussanne, she may not have handed me a soapbox outright, but she certainly left one within reach.

In the Rhône, Roussanne is capable of everything I find compelling in these nebulous whites. It can be golden, herbal, waxy, and warm—a wine less concerned with refreshment than with inhabiting the full dimensions of its form. Given the appropriate context, what may initially read as weight begins to feel like generosity. What appears to lack movement may simply be moving differently. This Roussanne arrives in your hands just as summer in Chicago begins to wane. September may still offer several convincing imitations of July, but we can feel the season turning. Our pace s l o w s. Attention begins returning inward. Before long, we will find ourselves alone in our apartments, wondering where everyone has gone and what they are thinking. Perhaps this is why September has always retained, for me, the feeling of going back to school. Even after the classrooms disappear, the season presents itself as a threshold: a chance to gather what we have learned and decide which practices we will carry with us into the quieter months. I would like to propose consumption as one of them.

Consumption is ordinarily understood as an ending. We eat the meal, drink the bottle, finish the book, watch the film. The object disappears and the appetite is satisfied. But to create a practice of consumption is to treat that encounter as a beginning—to allow pleasure to become a catalyst for curiosity. Taste offers an especially intimate place to begin. Before it becomes expertise, vocabulary, or judgment, taste is private and self-directed: the meeting point between an object and a body carrying its own accumulation of memories. There is no universally correct response to that meeting. But our responses can become more attentive, informed, patient, and articulate. We can learn to notice what draws us closer, what creates resistance, and what continues to occupy our thoughts after the immediate sensation has passed. Lattard’s Roussanne provides particularly fertile material for the practice.

Brothers Denis and Luc farm seven hectares in Autichamp, in the Drôme, where the landscape of the Rhône Valley begins its gradual turn toward Provence. Their vines have been farmed organically since planting, with phytotherapy, natural ground cover, and green manure used to sustain the life of the soil. Since 2008, their wines have been made without external cellar inputs and are bottled without added sulfur.

Their Roussanne is fermented primarily in older barrels, preserving the fruit without imposing the flavor of new oak. It is golden and full, carrying Mott’s®, mango, and citrus into cooler suggestions of anise and menthol. Its richness is not corrected into narrowness. The wine is allowed to occupy space. You may find pleasure in that generosity immediately. You may recognize something familiar in its warmth, or be surprised by the way its weight is interrupted by an herbal current. The point is not that we must all arrive at the same conclusion (!!) The point is to remain present for the encounter: to consider what we are sensing, what we associate with it, and where it might lead us next. Perhaps toward fennel and seafood while summer still lingers; perhaps toward a chicken fragrant with forty cloves of garlic when the windows finally close.

Our lives are both the continued research of consumption and the medium through which that research is conducted. Everything we taste, read, hear, watch, and touch becomes part of the private archive from which we make decisions, create gestures, and imagine ourselves. A personal practice of consumption gives that accumulation shape. It helps us form a voice. This feels increasingly consequential! We are living through a technological transformation designed, in part, to anticipate our desires: to recommend the next bottle, song, restaurant, book, or idea before curiosity has had time to wander there on its own. These tools may expand our access to the world, but they also make it remarkably easy to outsource the formation of taste. Spooky shit, to put it plainly.

To cultivate our own is a small act of preservation; of resistance. It does not require rejecting guidance, expertise, or the pleasure of a good recommendation—this bottle reached you through one, after all. It asks only that we remain active participants in what follows. Summer makes curiosity easy. The world is outside our door, continually offering somewhere to go and someone to meet. The deeper practice begins when the invitation is no longer waiting for us. Before we retreat indoors, consider what you will bring inside: a bottle, certainly, but also a state of readiness—curious, patient, and open to possibility.

Open the Lattard! Consume. See where it takes you.

Lauren

Cascina degli Ulivi Semplicemente Rosso 2023

I like to recommend to customers everyday wines, wines that are good for any occasion, “bistro” wines (though more on that distinction later), but the best are without doubt table wines. Pop one open and just chat and snack with friends, don’t fuss about it too much, if you don’t finish it you can keep it in the fridge and have a glass tomorrow as well. From Italy, these are often called vino sfuso or contadino and refer to jugs or barrels brewed for in-house consumption and not necessarily deemed worthy enough for sale to clients. The table wine designation belies a wine that’s imperfect but functional. There is however an upper-echelon of the category where this month’s Semplicimente Rosso sits right near the top, and acts as a perfect introduction to the story of the late Stefano Bellotti and his family’s domaine Cascina degli Ulivi.

After living in bustling Genoa as a young man, Stefano wished for a rural existence and began work reviving a small farm about an hour away owned by his family in the mid 1970s. Enchanted by wine after participating in the harvests every year since a young kid, he came to understand that grapes were the most important crop of their area (Novi Ligure, province of Alessandria) and slowly took over more vineyards to care for. Right as the push for more standardized, commercial wine took hold throughout Europe, the pressure to adopt a chemical agriculture really spooked Stefano, who instead turned to the then highly misunderstood biodynamics, an esoteric farming agenda aimed at maintaining healthy soil in your fields. For decades he quietly pioneered the practice of natural wine and developed a reputation for building a busy ecosystem in the vines and a vision in the cellar that packaged all of that life in his bottles by executing a straightforward fermentation process without any additives. In his later years his disciples would talk about him like a shaman, producing some of the most memorable Italian sans soufre wines ever made. The fact that he also kept up the Semplicimente bottlings every year, sealed with a crown cap and offered at a modest tariff, is a blessing to anybody interested in real wine.

I am sitting now at Bar Renée in Burlington, lucky that they actually have a bottle of this to open and taste as I gleefully finish this writeup. It is a blend of 50% Dolcetto picked in September and 50% Barbera harvested deeper into Autumn by his daughter Ilaria associates which shows a dark, barky profile with a mean streak of acid and deep purply fruits. I can’t imagine a better all-purpose red wine on the planet. Stefano was asked by his importer in 2011 about the concept of Semplicimente which I thought was good to share with everyone here. Enjoy!

“So I decided, instead of making serious wine, I just wanted to make wine. Wine to drink. I make a red and a white. It worked out really well because instead of making wines that you have to intellectualize, I’ve also produced ones that just win you over, a wine you don’t think about, that you take great pleasure in drinking. You don’t need to worry what about the region or the varietal or the nose or whatever. When you do this you are intellectualizing wine, and wine doesn’t give a shit about being intellectual. So it’s “Simply” red or white: you bring them to the table and you don’t think about it, you just drink it. That’s it.”

Mac

Calvez-Bobinet Piak! Blanc 2025

I am always drawn in by the wines from Calvez-Bobinet. Their labels are simple and playful, the clear glass bottles invite me to imagine thirstily, what might that hue taste like? Winemakers Sébastien and Emeline farm and vinify predominantly chenin and cabernet franc, traditional varietals of the Loire valley where Sébastien’s family have been making wine for eight generations. Having just two varietals (mostly! I believe they harvest a bit of pineau d’aunis) to play with in the cave, Eméline and Sébastien make chenin for easy drinking and chenin for special occasions, cab franc for a Tuesday night and cab franc to be savored. Piak! Blanc belongs to their collection of cuvées intended for any occasion. Lightly honey-colored, balancing refreshing acid and round fruit with a hint of warming spice, Piak! Blanc is a blanc de noir, made with cabernet franc. I love that Eméline and Sébastien show cab franc in this way: fresh, generous, immediate, and that they can bring a white to the table that isn’t chenin (even though I always want chenin…) despite it being the only white grape they grow. It’s been a topic of conversation at the shop lately that straightforward whites are few and far between from natural wine producers lately. Copious discourse has made “orange wine” into a punchline and “skin contact” into a dog whistle. But in wine making there are simply grapes, and grapes have skins, and wine makers get to decide how much time the skins and the juices will spend together. This bottling of Piak! Blanc shows just a hint of color, a lingering sun-warmth that makes this not quite a “straightforward” white, but a blanc nonetheless, capable of refreshing and restoring.

McCullough

WINE CLUB 2

Louis Terral Hildegarde

This month’s wine club features the work of Louis Terral: auteur winemaker (and mayor) of the village of Mérignat in the French Alps. Mérignat is historically famous for Bugey-Cerdon, a sweet, pink sparkling wine. Terral is the only winemaker in the village who uses his high-altitude plots to make dry, still red wine from Gamay. The cold alpine climate gives the wine its distinct, crisp acidity and fresh fruit flavors. Terral names a lot of his wines after iconoclastic women. In addition to the bottle for this month’s wine club, our shop offers Magdelena for Mary Magdalene and Lucie for Lucie Aubrac, a member of the French resistance.

Hildegarde is a nod to the beloved historical figure Hildegard von Bingen born in this month in 1098. Yes, she was a Virgo. A notable polymath, Hildegard is highly regarded for her skills as a mystic, musician, pharmacist, visionary, and catholic theologian. She is one of the most famous composers of the medieval era and wrote sacred vocal music that was both pure and meditative. Her music is monophonic, meaning it consists of a single vocal line without chords or harmony; there are more surviving chants by Hildegard than any other composer from the Middle Ages.

Hildegarde is a red wine made from gamay grapes aged in neutral oak barrels. Aromatic, but unexpectedly light and delicate with just enough tannins for an extremely satisfying finish. Much like the music of Hildegard von Bingen, this wine has an elegant quality to it. Its beautiful, moody red color is quite apropos in the wine’s connection to dark ages catholicism. Hildegarde’s gothic appearance and drinkability make it the perfect pairing to the transition into autumn. With this wine, we recommend listening to Hildegarde’s “Ave Maria, O Auctix Vite” over a medieval roast goose (or poultry is also perfect).

Dorothy

Domaine Thuronis Esprit Vendangeur 2024

I put Thuronis in wine club this month because I am excited by the wines. Though now tasked to explain myself I find it hard. Rummaging through my mental rolodex I have: tasted at Psychic Salon (last stop of the day very grounding), dinner together at Mijoté (a sweet and gracious presence at the table), making a little stockpile of the wines at Elske so I would have them on hand for pairings. All important to me, but no singular experience encapsulates the affection for and pull I have toward the wine. Is it the labels? The two hobbit like silhouettes (presumably winemakers Astrid and Alexandre) drinking wine, simple and perhaps under designed, just the way I like it. And also yes, kind of but I’m missing something there too.

Struggling to get it together I texted my friend and colleague Kyra to get her input. She says any time she asks them for specifics they say “just cuz”. As if the gesture of making is intuitively obvious, giving the wines a regular sheen. Which is perhaps precisely the thing I find so attractive about them, thinking of them as members of a genre alongside luminaries like Simon Busser and Gérald Oustric.

In our circle we have a fetish for the regular, wearing our passion for it like a badge. It’s easy to identify the extraordinary, but the subtly confident and cool is harder to detect. And in the case of Thuronis the ease of the “just cuz” permeates the wines in a way that’s very relaxing to even the oversaturated palate. Finally, some refreshment both for mind and spirit.

But it also begs the question for me of “what is regular”? The Lerouxels make their wine in Malepère, unique in the Languedoc for its plantings of Bordeaux varieties like Cabernet Franc and Côt which are better suited to the wetter climate that is the result of the convergence of both Atlantic and Mediterranean climactic influences. An oddity in the context of a region known from Grenache, Carignan, and Syrah, but still mostly known for reds and rosés. You will notice this month has two whites. Even stranger. And like their red brethren they are Northern grapes in a strange, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. While our Southern French shelves heave with reds of all shades, the Lerouxels keep a large portion of their production dedicated to whites, both sparkling and still.

To feel like this is also regular is a wonder to me, making something feel effortless that on closer look is quite strange. Not to mention that they eschew use of sulfur in production but DO use sandstone amphore inspired by a trip to Georgia (of course). If this is where we’ve put the bar we are so lucky. And thank you to all of the producers and cavistes who have made this our ordinary.

Drink this wine on a completely regular day with a normal meal that doesn’t feel special at all. Keep it regular.

Emily

xx Emily, Ethan, Mac, Dave, McCullough, Dorothy, Lauren, Lily

September Tasting Calendar

9/6 - Wine Club Tasting

9/13 - Babass & Jean-Christophe Garnier

9/20 - Sablonnettes

9/27 - Dorsal

If you’ve read this far— thank you! If you aren’t in the club, we hope these write-ups make for great reading. If you are interested in joining the club, just email us at diverseywine@gmail.com, call us at 773/360-7264 or swing by the shop in person. It starts at $60 per month and includes discounts, free tastings and a little pamphlet that at times has a “family” recipe or movie recommendation.

I just started working at Diversey and what a beautiful world it is. I consider myself to be a novice, having really just started learning about wine roughly a year ago. I knew about 3 things then --- 1. Red goes with red meat and white for fish/poultry, 2. Sancerre is a “nice” white? 3. Every single person thinks differently about every single wine that exists. I had tried natural wine a few years ago and knew I enjoyed it, but I didn’t really understand why, I guess I also didn’t really understand what it was. Emily started showing me the ropes at the restaurant we both worked at, and I found myself quickly attracted to the fact that it was experimental. I liked that it lacked rules and intervention, a certain special relinquishing of control. I found myself attracted to wines that really let these elements shine through. The language in which her and my other coworkers used to describe it all made me fall in love a bit more each day. I began actually resonating with wine for once in my life. I felt wine as a full body experience rather than just a taste. This tasting is about Caleb Leisures and Pete Bloomberg’s of Llewelyn wines. Wines I have a certain soft spot for...

At my restaurant job, I saw so many people turn their nose up at domestic wine when I would suggest it, and still being new, I had to ask why? I didn’t understand it(especially after having just tried a sip of Dorsal’s Monsoon thinking it might be one of the best wines I’ve ever had). There wasn’t really an answer other than people think it’s less high brow or refined, which doesn’t really suffice for me. There’s a beautiful and special craft happening here for a lot of reasons, many that I’m still learning about. I like to think it’s because the U.S. makers lack the pressure of historical craft which allotts for a certain sense of freedom. Giving way to really unique experimentation that comes from the states, that I think is really apparent through these wines were going to be tasting.

Both makers are a one man operation based in Northern California. Leisure is located in Sebastopol, which is about an hour drive north from the bay area where Pete Bloomberg is working out of. They each farm about 1/3 of the grapes they use from a few acres they are growing in Sonoma and Mendocino County. The other grapes are from friends. I think it’s important to point out too, that Pete was Caleb’s assistant for some time when he was initially starting out. Then both Caleb, Pete, and Devin and Jenna from Dorsal(also assistants to Caleb) were all making wine separately, but together out of one facility in Cloverdale. There’s a language of collaboration present in all these wines which is why I think it’s really exciting to be able to taste Calebs and Petes wines next to each other. You can taste their through lines and how one has learned from the other.

Caleb uses traditional Georgian stoneware vessels called qveri for the wines to spend their time in, in an effort to form connection with the old world and talk to these traditions; a form of collaboration with the past. Pete’s wines verge on the more experimental side of things which gives them always an ethereal quality that’s hard to pin down. They taste familiar and entirely unique. His collaboration is with stillness. The beauty of collaboration and community reign true here. Learning from the people close to you changes the game and helps produce something a lot more meaningful. Drinking these wines feel personal, like they’re letting you in on their favorite secret.

-Lily

Currently Available:

Caleb Leisure 2022 Just Under There $25 (Cabernet Sauvignon/Zinfandel)

Caleb Leisure 2023 Ab Ovo $28 (Syrah, Mourvedre, Viognier, Friulano)

Llewelyn 2025 Touch of Grey $34 (Pinot Noir)

Llewelyn 2024 Whole Earth $42 (Gewurztraminer)

I called Renaud Guettier underrated on our Instagram a few weeks ago and our friend DJ Piazza of Disco Liquids lightly poked fun at me as the wines are technically well regarded in our little circle. In response, I told him that I was thinking big picture. Which is technically true I was, outside of natural wine world (so small!) I’m not sure how or even if his wines really rate. And I’ve been working in the West Loop for so long it’s second nature to put things in the context of “all wine, technically”. Which is sort of where I find myself situating Bugey ahead of our tasting.

For me, I guess like for DJ with Renaud, the wines feel obvious, Bugey is now a fixture of the shop in a way. I had my first bottle from François Grinand just a few months after the doors opened. Mac had popped a bottle of Couffe Chien for his mom and I shared a glass with her at the picnic table that used to sit near the West wall of the store. Everything was new to me at the time so in a way everything was the same and I didn’t clock the obscurity of the region. It was impossibly crisp, but dimensional in a way I had never had before. Like it crystalized the second it hit your tongue. Magic! More to come for me for sure, but wines from this time feel like songs I liked as a teenager and revisiting them gets my heart beating in a way all its own. That’s the little picture, the big picture says otherwise.

I googled Bugey to plant my feet (and mind and words) more firmly in reality. The descriptions underneath the links read “hidden” “secret” “tiny” “small” “obscure” and there is an emphasis on its most known export, Bugey-Cerdon; the strawberried-sweet pink sparkler that I ran into the ground as a dessert pairing at Elske but actually prefer as an aperitif. The wines we’re pouring on Sunday take an even more minor spot in the grand scheme of things. Dry, varietal wines that feel like they borrow from the surrounding regions of Savoie, Jura, and Beaujolais but with a dialect of their own thanks to the producers dedicated to the style.

On Sunday we’ll pour wine from our stalwart François Grinand and newer to the area (but also the mayor of his town) Louis Terral. The wines are both distinct to the rest in the shop as well as to one another. And I’ve never tasted them side by side so I’m looking forward to the opportunity and forthcoming conversation with you all.

-Emily

Thank you to Michele Meltzer from Irving Bottle for sharing her thoughts & photos from her visit to Louis Terral.

Currently Available:

Louis Terral 2023 Magdalena $43 (Gamay)

Louis Terral 2019 Einar $48 (Chardonnay)

Louis Terral 2023 Lucie $45 (Gamay)

Louis Terral 2023 Hildegarde $45 (Gamay)

François Grinand 2022 Persanne $50 (Mondeuse)

François Grinand 2022 Les Ermitures $50 (Gamay)

François Grinand 2022 Les Etapes $50 (Pinot Noir)

My first time in Sardegna began with ecstatic anticipation for a place whose cuisine and wine I had long romanticized, and where the rugged coastlines and Mars-like interiors of this historically contested island promised a memorable adventure. After collecting the last available automatic rental car from the Alghero airport, Grayson, RC and myself headed to the beach for a quick dip and piece of fish for lunch to wash off the sweat of our early AM Ryanair experience. Our hearts sank as we got back to the car to find its windows smashed and most of our belongings (including Reilly’s passport) thieved, setting off a chase for a blue dot on a stolen laptop and an engagement with the Sassari police none of us could have imagined dealing with. Such a disaster could have easily threatened the trip continuing on at all but as headstrong travelers we were determined to find what we were looking for over the course of a few days moving from the north of the island starting with Tenute Dettori and finishing the trip in the capital, Cagliari.

Weary from dealing with the cops and reckoning with the loss of our property, we were nonetheless warmly received at Dettori several hours later than expected for a wind-down dinner and visit to their new cellar late into that evening. Dettori is a mid-size producer known for their refining of the ubiquitous (if inevitable) style of bombastic, powerful wines Sardegna is best known for. At their best, they simply overwhelm the drinker with maxx-ed out impressions of sun, fruit, alcohol and tannin. For natural wines they feel honestly modern. The three of us were all fans of Dettori ahead of the visit, but came away feeling slightly misunderstood for our interest and mildly condescended about what difference there is between chemical and organic agriculture (aka Real Wine 101). After a sleep on the property we had our sights set on the main reason for coming to Sardegna in the first place, Gianfranco Manca and the poetic wines of Panevino.

As the crow flies the island is not massive, but getting from place to place takes a very long time as the roads are both old and windy if you are to veer at all from the main highway. We had Gianfranco expecting us and were communicating with his with WhatsApp, but there had been a massive cell service outage throughout Europe during our visit not to mention the quality of the signal to begin with out in the dunes outside of his village of Nurri so we were a bit nervous about becoming lost. I had been reading about and drinking the Panevino wines for so many years now, Gianfranco had been introduced to me way back as this outsider, old gentleman who tinkered away in his cellar beneath the desert that I was caught off guard when he met us with a youthful energy and enthusiasm I’d expect from someone my own age. His daughter was on her way out of the house in uniform as a volunteer firefighter on call for the ever present threat of wild blazes that have engulfed huge patches of farmland in this part of the Sardinian interior, including Gianfranco’s vines. His teenage son popped out of his Fifa cave in a hut across the walking path to wave hello. We settled on the veranda beside his house around 4PM and were given two options: a) go out to see the vineyards first and taste wines after or b) have an apero, relax, and see if we had time for the vines before sunset. Thirsty, we went with the second. Almost immediately we felt at home with this man, whose translucent mind and uncharacteristic self-deprecation gave way to a brilliant history of perseverance and the carving out of a truly singular identity as a winemaker in the middle of nowhere.

Like with Dettori, most people familiar with the Panevino oeuvre point to a range of massive, alcoholic, volatile red wines with confusingly alike labels that offer an uncertain amount of drinking pleasure. Lesser known are his patio pounders which we guzzled down fast like his pet nat of rosé, cloudy negoce white, and experimental semi-carbo red. My Italian is not what it once was but the four of us managed to introduce ourselves in our capacity as wine professionals from America and explain our passion for wine in a way that clicked with Gianfranco right away. We learned about his disparate but diehard clients around the world, mainly the Japanese (always a good sign). That he was almost finished building a new cellar but needed the money from the sale of a batch of wines that weren’t all perfect. That climate change was bordering on climate catastrophe around here and that heartless sheep farmers routinely burn their land in the hopes of a cynical government benefit, only for winds to pick up and incinerate his ancient grapevines.

Slouchedly we are invited to go see some of these sites in his old truck after cocktail hour. They are about 10 minutes from the house. It is an experience since working professionally with wine that I will always remember. Still wickedly hot, as the sun slowly sets we get to explore around seven individual parcels, most planted with local Sardinian varieties and some aged beyond 100 years old, each exposition, soil, and slope slightly different. The old plants are incredible. We get to see the Alvas vineyard, planted with only white grapes, and get to imagine what it’s like to farm a black diamond ski slope uphill. We also see the vineyard used to make the cuvee Shugisucci which Psychic Wines had just used for a recent wine club, our street cred with GF instantly boosted. Expecting to head back to our AirBnb and looking forward to a random pizza with a few Panevino bottles purchased to-go, we are invited to sit for a meal back at the patio that his wife Elena has been preparing for us. Gianfranco heads downstairs and grabs one of every wine that he has in bottle. As we further explore the reds, my Italian translation skills get clearer, we discuss things beyond wine and have a beautifully prepared dinner of potatoes and lamb. We learn that Brian Johnson, second lead vocalist of AC/DC, called the number on one of his bottles in the middle of the night one time from London to exclaim that his 2012 Suchinonau (aka “moon man”) was the best wine he had ever tried in his life. We learn that the name of the domaine Panevino had continuously misled clients and importers to believe he once was a famous operator of a local bakery (not true). He brings out a book of poetry by Dylan Thomas with incredible local sheepsmilk cheese and a bottle of the epic Girotondo. This is what it’s all about.

-Mac

Currently Available:

2023 Survivor Bianco $55 (Vermentino)

2023 Survivor Rosato $55 (Cannonau, Monica, Carignano)

2024 ‘Onna Bianco $49 (Vermentino, Vernaccia, Trebbiano)

2024 L’Ontano Vicino $47 (Carignano, Muristeddu)

2024 Boxi e Crocu $49 (free-run juice blend of all reds)

2024 Tanka Scuriosa $56 (Monica, Tintillu)

2024 ‘Onna Rosso $56 (Barbera, Montepulciano, Nero di Mandas)

2024 Mandare’ $56 (field blend, slight residual sugar)

Before sitting down to write this, I reopened an old voice memo.

It was recorded late one evening in the summer of 2023, after a day spent walking Bockenheim vineyards with Jonas Brand of Brand Brothers and his wife, Pauline Baumberger, of Glow Glow Wines. Around the table sat importers, buyers, sommeliers, friends—people whose lives have, in one way or another, become intertwined with these wines. Like most memorable dinners, the bottles outlasted the meal. We talked late into the evening about the past season’s drought; Berlin restaurants; cover crops; Daniel’s first child; regrouting bathroom tile; and the increasingly complicated language we use to describe wine. Listening back now, what strikes me isn’t just the conversation itself, but the sound of people trying to better understand the work they all care so deeply about.

One exchange, in particular, has stayed with me.

We were talking about increasingly unpredictable growing seasons and the pressure many producers face to smooth out the differences from one vintage to the next. I asked Jonas how he thinks about consistency when the conditions surrounding him have become anything but. His answer was remarkably simple.

“We don’t change our system. We just run it through, and the outcome is the vintage.”

Three years later, it’s still this sentiment I return to.

There is a tendency, particularly in conversations surrounding natural wine, to celebrate unpredictability as though surprise itself were the highest virtue. But sitting across the table from Jonas, it became clear that he wasn’t interested in making the same wine every year, nor was he interested in making a different one simply for the sake of novelty.

For Brand, consistency isn’t achieved by smoothing away the differences from one vintage to the next. The farming remains rooted in the same convictions, the same care, the same trust in the land. The cellar, however, evolves where it should. Just that evening, Jonas excitedly showed us a new topping-up system they’d employed after seeing it on Anders Frederik Steen’s Instagram—a reminder that remaining recognizable doesn’t mean remaining static. New techniques are explored, better ideas are adopted, but always in service of the same underlying philosophy. The weather does what it will, and the wine becomes a record of that season rather than an attempt to erase it.

Perhaps that’s part of the reason why Brand have always felt so recognizable to me. Not because every bottle tastes alike, but because every bottle reflects the same way of seeing the world. A cooler year carries more tension. A warmer vintage may feel broader, more generous, more complete. The differences are real because the seasons are real. What remains is the unmistakable through-line of a producer willing to let those differences be seen.

As professionals of some sort, we spend an extraordinary amount of time talking about whether a wine is “correct,” “clean,” or “typical.” We spend just as much time trying to help people understand why one vintage differs from another, why one bottle costs what it does, why a wine they loved three years ago might taste different today. But after spending time with Jonas, I found myself thinking about a different question entirely: What if the greatest gift a bottle can offer isn’t consistency, but context?

Every vintage is a small document of the year that made it. A brief record of what the earth asked of the people tending it, and how they answered in return. A bottle doesn’t preserve perfection. It preserves a year. Long after the meal is over and the glasses have been cleared away, a bottle remains one of the few things capable of carrying a fleeting season forward. It remembers the warmth of a summer, the strain of a drought, the generosity of a harvest. It allows us, however briefly, to encounter a place not as we imagine it, but as it actually was.

The Brands have spent the better part of a decade reminding us that great farming doesn’t seek to overcome those realities—it honors them. Their wines are energetic, transparent, and unmistakably alive not because they chase consistency of flavor, but because they practice consistency of values. Vintage after vintage, what you’re tasting isn’t repetition. It’s integrity. Whether this weekend is your first encounter with them or the latest in a long line of bottles you’ve shared with friends, I hope you’ll taste more than fruit, acidity, or texture. I hope you’ll recognize the quiet confidence of producers who have chosen, year after year, to remain faithful to the work itself. In a world that seems to ask us to constantly reinvent ourselves, there’s something quietly radical about remaining recognizable.

x LHL

photos are from my July 2023 visit :)

Currently Available:

2024 Pet Nat $36 (Sylvaner, Pinot Blanc)

2022 Ancestral Orange $36 (Müller Thurgau)

2024 Pet Nat Rosé $36 (Pinot Noir, Blauer Portugeiser)

2023 Wildersatz $26 (Field Blend)

2023 Riesling Pur $33

2024 Pinot Noir Pur $35

We can’t believe it’s August either! Watch this space (Substack) for important announcements down the road but for now we are excited to share our wine club picks with you.

WINE CLUB

Pick up is Sunday, August 2nd! Noon to 3. This tasting and the subsequent Sunday tastings are free for wine club members. Otherwise, it’s $10.

WINE CLUB 1: 2021 Weingut Brand Wildrosé and 2023 Glow Glow Weiss

WINE CLUB 2: 2023 La Grapperie Pink B… and Premières Tries

xoxo, Bradford, Mac, Dave, Emily, McCullough

August’s Tasting Calendar is following island time but we will pour other wines from Weingut Brand on August 9th. We’ll announce on the gram and email when the time is right.

If you’ve read this far— thank you! If you aren’t in the club, we hope these write-ups make for great reading. If you are interested in joining the club, just email us at diverseywine@gmail.com, call us at 773/360-7264 or swing by the shop in person. It starts at $60 per month and includes discounts, a little pamphlet that at times has a “Movie Corner” or a family recipe, and free tastings.

During a trip to the wine salons in the Loire Valley last February one of the highlights of our itinerary was Bois Zero, a fair organized by Baptiste Cousin, son of revolutionary instigator Olivier Cousin and steward with his partner Gaëlle of the domaine Le Batossay. This is a relatively intimate but well-attended tasting featuring a cast of Baptiste’s friends held in his farmhouse. It’s a good mix of some splashy names, a few upstarts, and wise old timers alike. In these early winter gatherings you are tasting a lot of wines that are not quite finished from the past year’s harvest, and being in the Loire region that means lots of whites with a bit of sweetness or dusty petrichoral reds that have yet to round themselves into balance. After visiting a few tables with fare like this, we were escorted to meet Damien Bastian Goddard from the foothills of the French Alps and reset.

Piercing right through our fatiguing palates, his crystalline whites and delicate, peppery reds set a high standard for the entire week of tastings. Damien has spent the last decade building his repertoire after working with Ganevat in Rotalier (Jura) and Les Dominique Lucas (Haute Savoie,) winemakers known for their depth and finesse farming in cooler climates. Expanding from his hobbyist scale in 2019, he purchased 4 hectares of vines not far from Lake Geneva, mostly planted with Chasselas, a neutral grape from which he makes a number of chiseled and beautiful whites reminiscent of drinking icy Alpine spring water. His plots sit on steep slopes above land formed by old glaciers full of limestone, capable of yielding grapes with a ton of concentration and quality.

Damien is a pensive, soft-spoken character but carries a cheeky streak typical of French producers who recognize they aren’t in control of nature and relish in their role as stewards of historically important land. As the grandson of one of the founders of the appellation Savoie as it is known today, the name “Ça Boit Libre” is a play on words assuring drinkers the wine has been tagged as chemical-free while also representing the duality of the importance of the appellation system and what complications it might bring about for a unconventional producer like Damien. Without doubt, his wines are true representations of place and whose poise would win over a number of classical wine curmudgeons, trust me!

On Sunday we will open:

~Mac

Currently Available:

2024 Mon Blanc de Secours $32 (Chasselas)

2024 Mon Blanc des Haltes $38 (Chasselas)

2024 Mon Blanc des Copains $33 (Chasselas/Jacquere)

2024 Mon Blanc Orangé $38 (Chasselas)

2024 Ton Rouge de Table $46 (Gamay)

2024 Ton Rouge du Lac $46 (Pinot Noir)

_{evergreen photo of Gianmarco Antonuzzi of Le Coste, Joan Ramon, and Laureano Serres of Mendall at Brumaire (photo: August Marron)}

We’ve done a lot of writing about Joan Ramon Escoda; painting him as party boy, motocross champion, rock star adjacent figure in a Catalan wine bar, and subversive modernist. And for as much as all of those things are true and important to know I feel curious to let go of the persona this round.

I was just writing about his Cabernet Franc cuvée, Coll del Sabater, for my restaurant job. We’re due to serve it with the beef pastrami & BBQ carrot course that rounds out the savory end of the tasting menu. I round out the usual notes, like producer facts, tasting notes, etc. with an explanation of myself. Why I put the wine here at this time. I don’t know if the staff really needs, likes, or can make sense of these notes; It’s mostly just for me to feel like there’s a reason for what I’m doing and this week I got to reference one of my favorite pieces of folk science which is that ingesting hot things in the summer is good for you actually.

Red wine isn’t actually “hot” per se. Sometimes when we can feel the alcohol burn our throats we call it hot but that’s not what I mean in this context. There’s a few way of thinking about it, the most basic being that red is a warm color and we can’t help but be reminded of a flame or the heat in our cheeks when the blood rushes to them. This follows to the flavors we associate with red wine: spices, leather, overripe berries charged up by the sun. The Escoda wines certainly feel charged. His importer, Josh Eubank, notes that the reds this release saw an extended élevage that adds to the opulent feeling of the juice.

This Sunday Dave and I will be opening the recent arrivals from the domaine. I recommend stopping by, to drink red wine in the summer can help you feel the heat of something sticky, rich, and a little sweet. Bring the heat in so you don’t feel such a contrast on your skin.

~Emily

Currently Available:

2024 Bassotets $27 (Garnatxa Blanca Maceration)

2023 Nas del Gegant $29 (Red field blend)

2023 Coll del Sabater $37 (Cabernet Franc)

2023 Les Paradetes $38 (Carinyena/Garnatxa Negra)

2024 Brutal Gold Edition $48 (Sumoll)

Tomorrow we are tasting wines from Yoyo. Yoyo is the nickname of Laurence Manya Krief, a winemaker tending 5 hectares of vines near Banyuls-sur-Mer on the coast of the Roussillon. Yoyo is from nearby city Perpignan, and returned there to convert vineyards between the mountains and the sea to organic farming over 2 decades ago.

Her wines have typically appeared in the shop with a single cuvée on the shelf. Production is small, but the appetite is big for her wines at fine restaurants and bars in Paris and beyond. For me, a bottle is always memorable, as the wines seem to possess great contrast and depth.

In my early days as a retail wine professional, I relied on selling only my favorite wines, and using that fact to sway buyers. It’s my favorite. I went to that well a lot. A more seasoned colleague eventually told me that maybe I should lean on it less. That was a great suggestion, but I then found something kind of meaningless instead: It’s dry. Typically people found relief in this note. But by what metric was the wine dry? On certain terms, most wines on the American market are dry. And why is it a relief?

I would not call Yoyo wines dry. They are wet. They are juicy. They channel the energy of the Midwestern fruit belt berry-rich summer. I always recall a Powerpoint slide from a French wine class I took once entitled Grenache: the Seductress. It often has a light color appearing approachable enough, with soft tannins but a full body.

They come from my favorite (!) wine region, the Roussillon. Sometimes it’s fun to drink against the season but enjoying a certain kind of Roussillon wine that has a characteristic salt spray, surf SPF aromatic and sun-tanned fruit on a summer’s evening just can’t be beat.

We hope you will come discover them with us!

~Cub

Currently Available:

2025 Akoibon $66 (70% Grenache, 30% Mourvèdre)

2025 KM31 $69 (Grenache and Carignan Blanc, Gris, and Noir)

2025 Négra $45 (90% Carignan, 10% Grenache Blanc, Gris, and Noir)

2025 Alta $38 (Carignan Blanc and Gris and Grenache Blanc)

We have arrived to July. We hope that your fútbol team is winning. If not, they’ll try again! They always do. There is much to discuss so let’s start with:

Some Important Dates

We will be open for regular hours this holiday weekend!

Our beloved Jean-Paul is flying the coop aka “beginning graduate studies” in or around “Ann Arbor.” Our champagne freak, Georgian cultural attaché and host-with-the-most’s last day is July 9th. We will miss the guy. Swing by next Thursday to bid him adieu with a glass of wine or two.

We’re having a pizza party on July 16th! Will from Ashanta Wines will be in town and pouring his wines. Oscar of Silvia’s Pizza will be making fresh pies and offering $5 slices. What else do you need to know?

Join Gather CSA!

There is perhaps no better month. Midwestern produce is looking very beautiful. Local meats are always good for eating outside. Gather is run by our friend and expert butcher, McCullough. She offered some words on the CSA:

Gather CSA is a subscription grocery program that aims to ground your home cooking in the region and the season. We are a two person team with expertise in butchery, photography, and brewing beer, and a love of local food. The philosophy of the CSA, or community supported agriculture, informs our work. Subscribers choose one of our four box options and receive their CSA box every two weeks. In turn, we order hundreds of pounds of peak-season local produce and dairy directly from a network of regional farms each month. We purchase whole beef and lamb from producers we know, and have it custom processed by skilled butchers at Nordik Meats in Viroqua, WI. We supplement our whole animal purchasing with chicken, pork, and more from local farmers using regenerative practices. Each Gather CSA box reflects a moment in time and place, and the shared intention of all who grow, harvest, process, and transport these goods to create a nourishing alternative to conventional industrial agriculture.

I (Dave) work the Saturday pickup shift and for a while McCullough and I have been chatting about the various reasons people are drawn to this method of sourcing food for their home. People support things like Gather because they think the food tastes better (it does), or because it’s more nutritious (it is) or because it’s a more sustainable food system (duh). These are, not coincidentally, the same kinds of reasons people are drawn into the shop, and why or how people like me fall all the way down into our little corner of the world. So naturally I’ve been a Gather subscriber since the beginning. Usually on Saturdays after my shift I treat myself to a simple unadorned chop on the grill, and use the free space in my brain to figure out what to do with the more ambitious or time-intensive cuts, fantasizing all the while about potential pairings. Tonight it’s Durkhanai Ayubi’s sabzi recipe with some Catalpa lamb shoulder and an ice cold bottle of Simon Busser’s Cahors, counterprogramming the heatwave: livin’ good in the neighborhood!

WINE CLUB

Pick up is Sunday, July 5th! Noon to 3. This tasting and the subsequent Sunday tastings are free for wine club members. Otherwise, it’s $10.

WINE CLUB 1: 2024 Costarossa Farm Selene and 2025 Les cigales dans la fourmilière La Polonaise

WINE CLUB 2: 2025 Lamoresca Rosato and Nerocapitano Frappato

xoxo, Bradford, Eva, Jean-Paul (ONE LAST TIME!), Ariana, Sofia, Mac, Dave

July’s Tasting Calendar is following island time. We’ll announce on the gram and email when the time is right.

If you’ve read this far— thank you! If you aren’t in the club, we hope these write-ups make for great reading. If you are interested in joining the club, just email us at diverseywine@gmail.com, call us at 773/360-7264 or swing by the shop in person. It starts at $60 per month and includes discounts, a little pamphlet that at times has a “Movie Corner” or a family recipe, and free tastings.

After our birthday party last month, Mac’s mom sent us all some pictures she had taken of Diversey’s opening day. Sitting partially hidden in one snap on the bottom shelf were some bottles of Lamoresca. I checked the ‘books,’ and indeed, the Rosso and Nerocapitano, including some mags of the latter, were top players in the first week of Diversey’s life. Later that summer, when the Rosato arrived, it basically took over the drinking life of those of us who frequented the shop—both in terms of sheer presence, with a bottle appearing at most conceivable opportunities, and just because we just talked all the time about how good it was and why other wines weren’t as good.

Which is just to say - we’ve been fans of these wines for a long time, and are thrilled to welcome them back to the shop with a fresh batch of several cuvées in reasonable quantity, and some of the best olive oil in the business. If you’ve had the wines before, see you this weekend. If you’re not familiar with the project, read on to get up to speed.

The story of the project is familiar in its outlines. Filippo Rizzo grew up in the Sicilian town of San Michele di Ganzaria, in the middle of Sicily and even for Sicily kind of the middle of nowhere. He met his wife Nancy, a Belgian woman hitchhiking through Italy, and followed her back to Belgium where he opened an restaurant, got exposed and became dedicated to the current of natural wine (not least through his wine rep, Frank Cornelissen, (lol)), before returning to San Michele to make wine in his hometown. The farm is now a thriving biodiverse blend of olives, prickly pears and grapes (mostly Nero d’Avola, Frappato, and Vermentino), split between the original property and a mountain reserve on the nearby Monte Stagno, the most recent phase of the project (see map up top). The preserve on Stagno is an extension of Filippo, Nancy, and their son Simon’s vision to combat the otherwise overwhelming wheat and cereal monoculture of the area, and now houses carob and eucalyptus—as well as snakes and porcupines—amongst the cacti and vines.

All the vines at both sites are on a mix of clay or sandy soils. The new vines at Monte Stagno, including some Nerello Mascalese (clones from Frank C) and Catarratto are trained gobelet style instead of the guyot-training dominant at the original site. Despite the intense heat of the island’s interior, the high elevation of Lamoresca’s sites (400-500m above sea level) keeps the whole lineup is shockingly bright and drinkable, with comparatively modest levels of alcohol. The winemaking is straightforward and conducted in a combination of concrete and wood (and steel for the Rosato). Macerations are brief on the Rosato and the whites, and quite extended for the reds, with lots of punching down. The bulk of the wines are aged for a year in old Slavonian oak vats, with the reserve wines seeing an extra year, often in concrete, and some bottle aging before release. The fresher wines are racked for clarity, but nothing is filtered or fined, and while Filippo uses sulfites more readily than some producers we stock, he’s still in the strive-to-avoid-it camp.

None of this speaks adequately to how special and good these wines are. Ambitious organic and regenerative farming on unlikely surface, a balance of typicity, tradition and freakishly seamless integration into some major currents of natural wine from Italy and beyond, a mindbogglingly graceful cohabitation of depth and refreshment in the glass—none of these are to be taken lightly, of course. But what comes up again and again in discussions of Lamoresca is the communication of place, terroir in the broad sense, that the wines achieve. Having never been to Sicily, I suppose I’ll have to take everyone’s word for it. What I can say is that in the fantasia of Sicily that lives in my mind, experiences borne of drinking the bottles produced by Filippo, Nancy and their family are load-bearing—and that this Sicilian imaginary grows richer and more textured with every glass.

~Dave

Currently Available:

2025 Bianco $47 (Vermentino di Corso)

2025 Rosato $40 (40% Frappato, 50% Nero d’Avola, 10% Zibibbo)

2025 Nerocapitano $40 (Frappato)

2025 Rosso $47 (55% Frappato, 40% Nero d’Avola, 5% Grenache)

I was just in Miami visiting my parents and made sure my trip coincided with mango season. In the neighborhood I grew up in, most houses are framed by a tall, old mango tree with thick leaves. Towards the end of May, their fruit start growing and by June, mangos are everywhere. My parents used to send me out with a broom to clandestinely knock down some mangos from neighbors’ trees and, over time, I figured out which trees had the best ones and which neighbors would be least likely to catch me in the act. On this trip, I “stole” one or two mangos a day from the best trees around my parents house. These were early-season mangos. With each passing day, the tartness lightened and a sweet, floral undertone would emerge. The best mangos are the ones surrounded by native flowers and trees. They always seemed to turn the most red and always had the most intense flavors. I also strongly believe that ones that are half-exposed to the sun are preferable. I wont guess the science behind it, but to me, it seems like the sun beams in a ripping acidity that the shady side tempers with a kind of crispness. These are the freshest mangos and the ones that would wake me from a humidity-driven stupor every afternoon.

All fruits do this I suppose. I’m really describing the difference between underripe and ripe fruit and about the benefits of plant diversity but the breadth of floral tones and the evolution of acidity in mangos always feels like a pleasant surprise, second only to that of our beloved grape, and made me think of the racing freshness and bright acidity of wines like No Control.

This Sunday we’re tasting wines made by Vincent Marie, under the name No Control, in the small town of Volvic in the Auvergne. Vincent and his wines are often describe as punk or rock ’n’ roll: high acid, ripe fruit, and a real liveliness. He is indeed a confirmed rock ’n’ roll fan and often names his cuvées with some rock reference. But the kind of “edge” the wines carry seem, to me, to also come from the desire to attain the most fresh and ripe feeling from the Gamay, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Chardonnay, Sauvignon, Sylvaner and Pinot Auxerrois he farms.

I often think freshness means a kind of lightness or ease to the drinkability of a wine. You don’t have to think much about it: it’s fresh and so its just yummy. But No Control wines are, frankly, often not that easy to drink. High, volatile acidity can often feel like a zap in the mouth but these wines are still fresh in the way Miami mangos are fresh (but with less of a tropical or sweet slant). The wines show you its fruit before any other notes in a way that make you think of the vine itself and the various degrees of sunlight, rain, or nutrients its surroundings offered. That kind of feeling, for some reason, is always invigorating.

Vincent does everything by hand, plows with a horse, and often has no pre-determined plans for macerating or aging his wines. Every year, the plan changes according to what the fruit wants and the cuvées then change noticeably year to year. This is part of how he attains freshness.

We’d strongly recommend drinking these wines outside, hopefully, during a grilling session. They can wake anyone up from a concrete summer heat stupor. Ideally, you’d grill some meat and vegetables. If I can make one more recommendation, I’d urge you to consider getting quality, locally sourced meats from our friends at Gather CSA! If you’ve been coming by on Saturdays, you might have noticed McCullough handing large boxes of locally sourced meats she butchered herself to a bunch of happy looking people. If you’re interested, here are the details.

Sofia

Currently Available:

2022 Magma Rock ($50). Gamay.

2022 Rockaille Billy ($48). Gamay.

2023 Incendie & Pillage ($48). 70% Gamay, 30% Pinot Noir.

2023 Babinou II ($35). Muscat, Chardonnay, Trousseau, Gamay, Chenin Blanc.

“Etteilla's cards are really disconcerting. They offer pictures which do not conform to any known system or artistic standard. Their iconography has no equivalent in any of the widespread books of emblemata or symbols. They obviously have not been found in Court de Gébelin's text, which kept close to the traditional Tarot de Marseille (even in reversing the Hanged Man, for there are examples of such a mistake). Even the virtues are not classical at all, in spite of a rich range of representations. However, we know for certain that Alliette already had these pictures in mind as early as 1783. His direct iconographical sources are as yet unknown.”

—A Wicked Pack of Cards: Origins of the Occult Tarot (Michael Dummett, Ronald Decker, and Thierry Depaulis)

I don’t really know anything about tarot. It was only because worried I was mispronouncing the word “Etteilla,” the name of Anne Disabato and Noelle Vandendriessche’s collaborative wine project, that I looked it up and learned it comes out of cartomancy. The pen name for a mythical figure in the history of cards, Jean-Baptiste Alliette, Etteilla (get it?) is a foundational figure in tarot lore, known as the first to “popularize fortune-telling with playing cards” and thought to be responsible for much of the meanings, symbols, and designs that form the system, as well as the name of the most popular and enduring decks.

Or at least I think so—I’ve only been reading one source, quoted up top, that I stumbled on because one of the authors is a philosopher I like. And I confess, as I fall down the history, I’m still pretty puzzled by the whole operation. What Anne and Noelle call the “faith in extreme plasticity” that tarot shares with natural winemaking is still more illuminating to me from wine to tarot than the reverse. Nevertheless, I am always charmed by finding another structure of comparison for wine, another home for the interplay of structure, chance, interpretation, tradition and the unknown—and this is certainly a new one.

Even in the loose contours, this source of inspiration does help me understand the wines—shedding light on the open-minded creativity they wield in confrontations with the generations of accumulated meaning to be found in vineyards across Northern California. Certainly seems to me that some of the great fun to be had in ‘reading’ the new vintage of Remi, a macerated Sauvignon Blanc from Clear Lake, lies in picking out antecedent orange sauvignons while acknowledging that none of them can really tell you enough about the buzzing tropical fruit drying out your tongue. A good reminder of the natural wine’s capacity for productive but unresolvable mysteries. Or maybe I’ve just gotten lost in emblemata.

Swing through on Sunday and we’ll pull some corks. A blend of bubbles and still, white and red, and some apples for good measure. Yum.

Dave

Currently Available:

NV Le Chaos ($28). Apple/Grape Bubbles.

2025 jou jou ($30). Amphora Viognier from Clear Lake.

2023 jou jou ($30). Amphora White Wine from Clear Lake.

2025 Remi ($28). Sauvignon Blanc from Clear Lake.

2023 ilios ($26). Syrah from Cuatro Esquinas.

Rabbit, rabbit! Time for some wine club. We hope you drink these outside.

WINE CLUB 1

2024 Barbara Lebled Gamay Sans Toi OR Cheers! by Tommy

There are many wines that come and go on our shelves. One’s that are gone before some folks even knew they were there. Working with numerous small producers it’s a big challenge to keep the shelves stocked with mainstays. That is how we like it. It gives way to more opportunities to try new wines and new producers.

This has very often been the case with the wines of A la Vôtre produced by Laurent Lebled. The guy makes incredible carbonic macerated wines that lends itself to a punch of juiciness and drinkability with his wines. They’ve always been a friendly price point, and I would always find myself grabbing the next bottle. Actually, he is one of the first natty producers I remember stumbling across. Well, his wines have been hard to come by on a consistent basis the last few years in Chicago, but thankfully his daughter, Barbara, has begun making her own wines from the same vineyard.

The current vineyard where a majority of grapes come for Laurent’s wines and all of Barbara’s wines was newly acquired by Laurent in 2019. A whopping 10 hectares in the historic heart of the Loire Valley in Touraine (previously he had a total of 5 hectares around Touraine to farm). With double the land to farm he had to seek help, and so he asked Barbara to lend a hand. (Just down the road from them in Cheverny is another father daughter duo in Thierry and Zöe Puzelat of Clos du tue Boeuf). Barbara agreed to take on running the entirety of the 10 hectares. In return she would vinify 2.5 hectares to make her own wine, and Laurent would take the rest. Down the road, the goal is for her and her father to be splitting the estate fifty fifty.

Barbara’s first vintage was indeed the 2019 year. She has produced three cuvées featuring Gamay, Côt, and a blend of grapes. We’ll be featuring her Gamay, Gamay Sans Toi, which undergoes a destemmed maceration. Unlike her father’s carbonic macerated wines this has a touch less fruit and more acid that makes for an incredibly vibrant wine. We’ve also included Cheers!, where the bottom of the vats of Gamay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Menu Pineau are all blended together. A wine to be shared with friends soaking in the summer sun.

Barbara and Laurent might produce wines under their own labels and have their own distinctive styles, but they are very much in it together.

2024 LaRuraL Yellow by Jean-Paul

There are some wines that feel designed for a particular moment, and this month’s wine club selection feels almost inseparable from summertime gatherings: a crowded picnic table, charcoal smoke drifting through the air, warm pavement along Lake Michigan, or the first truly hot evening when nobody is ready to go inside yet. Yellow from La Rural feels made exactly for those moments, bright, refreshing, carefree, and best enjoyed surrounded by friends.

La Rural is run by Xavi and Andreu Padrós in Catalunya near the historic town of Santes Creus, where farming remains deeply intertwined with daily life and local tradition. The Padrós family maintains a polyculture farm, vineyards alongside vegetables, olive trees, and the region’s famous calçots (the sweet spring onions that inspire enormous communal feasts each winter and spring). During a recent visit, friends of the shop arrived to find Xavi and Andreu selling freshly harvested calçots straight from the family farm to neighbors and visitors gathering in town for calçotada season. It is the kind of place where wine is not separated from food, agriculture, or community, but simply part of the rhythm of life.

That spirit carries directly into Yellow. Bright and energetic, the wine bursts with citrus, fresh orchard fruit, and a subtle herbal edge, all wrapped in a texture that stays refreshing and dangerously easy to drink. It is expressive without being complicated, a bottle that feels generous, joyful, and immediately welcoming.

More than anything, this is a crowd-pleasing wine in the best sense of the phrase. Bring it to the beach, a park hang, or dinner with friends and it immediately makes sense. Yellow embodies summer: relaxed, vibrant, and meant to be shared.

WINE CLUB 2

2025 Les Foulards Rouge, Octobre by Dave

Okay, so, cards on the table: it’s weird that this is the third primeur wine in the club in four months. It’s actually a coincidence, not a conspiracy, but given the fact that this month’s wine is in some sense a companion piece to a wine from April’s batch, we’d forgive you for harboring some doubts. This month’s wine, Jean-Francois Nicq’s annual stalwart, “Octobre,” was in fact raised (briefly) in the same cellar as April’s “Bateau Ivre.” Which makes sense because the winemakers have shared a cellar, a mule, a house, and a life for the past decade plus.

Unlike Yoyo, Nicq is not from the Roussillon area. He grew up in the north, went to oenology school, spent 1989-2000 gradually nattifying a wine coop in Estézargues, in the Southern Rhone. After a galvanizing encounter with Eric Pfifferling, Nicq struck out on his own even further south, where he started his domaine in Montesquieu-les-Albères, nestled into the Pyrenees twenty minutes inland from Collioure. There he oversees a substantial set of hectares (about 20) of mostly Grenache, Syrah, Carignan, Macabeo, and Muscat. He is, like Pfifferling, a partisan of semi-carbonic maceration with southern fruit, going so far as to chill the grapes before submerging them in Co2, while keeping the leaking free run juice in tank to permit a mild extraction, before lightly pressing everything into barrels for setting and an early bottling.

Sometimes very early indeed: hence “Octobre,” this year’s Syrah, bottled after just ten days fermentation and a month’s settling. It’s a nice companion to Yoyo’s Grenache, with the Syrah lending herbs, spice, and smoke to a nose otherwise gorged with red fruit compote, leading to an attitude towards tannin, earth, or minerality redolent of certain approaches to vermouth in martinis: be sure to take a hard look at it while you pour the gin. While I’m often skeptical of winemakers like Nicq who vocally emphasize that their wines are for drinking young, worrying that a hedonistic embrace of freshness masks an unnecessary defensiveness, there’s some considerable authority linking the primeur with quick gratification. To wit:

There’s a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder called The Wine of St. Martin’s Day. St. Martin’s day is celebrated on November 11^th in remembrance of the Saint’s death in 397, a likely opportunistic grafting of Christian celebration on a pagan occasion marking the end of harvest season and the beginning of a period of feasting and celebration. St. Martin’s Day, appropriately for the patron saint of drunkards often credited with spreading Chenin Blanc throughout the Loire, is also a celebration marked by the first consumption of the new wine of the vintage: the primeur. In Breughel’s painting, an enormous barrel is covered with climbing revelers, bearing pitchers, wooden bowls, and bare hands to try and catch the wine pouring out of a small hole in the barrel’s head. Some are passing wine down to those on the ground below, many of whom are already partied out: fighting, puking, sleeping. The people on the top of the barrel are the ones who seem to be having the most fun, pitchers to their lips or face deep in a bowl, but my favorite is the guy at the very top, face to the sky, holding an empty pitcher at arms length above him, trying to catch the last drops of the new year.

2022 Radikon, Sivi OR Slatnik by Sofia

Something about Radikon made me think of Natalia Ginzburg, one of my favorite authors. I knew she grew up in Turin, but I had this growing suspicion she had something to do with Radikon’s Friuli. Turns out I was right! Her father was born in Trieste and her mother, raised in Milan, is originally from the region. I turned to her book, Family Lexicon, and there it was. In a passage about Triestine expressions and Milanese dialects, Ginzburg writes:

“…Aunt Cecilia, was famous in the family for a particular remark. My mother was telling her how they’d all been worried something terrible had happened to my grandfather when he’d been very late coming home for lunch. In dialect, Aunt Cecilia promptly asked her, “What did you serve for lunch, rice or pasta?”

“Pasta,” my mother responded.

“Good thing you didn’t serve rice or there’s no saying how long he would have been gone.”

Now, what the hell does that mean? I asked many people: Finn, an Italian citizen; Carolina, a former editor; Maya, a writer; Dave, a smart guy. All confused. The suggestion is that nonno would not have enjoyed risotto (probably risotto; milanese, given that they were in Milan) and, thus, avoided the house for a longer stretch of time. Perhaps he prefers the Istrian pastas of Fuži, Pasutice, or Njoki. The autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia and its distinctive culture and foodways rears its head, even in Milan. But he also still came home late even when pasta was on the menu. So, perhaps, the cultural specificity of the family is less important. Maybe, Natalia’s mom was a bad cook and her sister enjoys reminding her. The closest Natalia comes to an explanation is to posit that the Triestine women had a sharp intellect and a commanding energy. They scale up and down in their banter. History and culture can feel both big and small in the face of the particularities of the individual.

I find this a useful way to think about Radikon. There are two main ways people talk about Radikon. The first: the Radikon family makes tannic, aromatic, and complex maceraed wine and are responsible for introducing the style to an international audience. Second: Oslavia, where they cultivate 17 hectares, is a distinct place. I have to share the opening line from celebrity chef Lidia Bastianich’s cookbook La Cucina di Lidia: “As seen on maps of the Adriatic and its environs, the Istrian peninsula is a somewhat suggestive appendage of the crotch formed by the Gulf of Trieste at the juncture of Italy and the former Yugoslavia.” Istria, Lidia’s home, sits right below Oslavia (the groin?). The broader Friuli-Venezia Giulia, much like Alsace, has been subject to different states who have sought to control the area. Observers consider the bloody wars and turbulent past as inalienable from the essence of the region. Both of these facts are true and yet they run the risk of implying that the wines are but the product of the uniqueness of Oslavia and, by extension, the Radikon family.

The wines themselves are also the product of the work of a family. Stanko, the patriarch, alongside his neighbor Josko Gravner, returned to traditional macerated white wines in the late nineties. The reason for the switch was as much practical as it was historical. Stanko’s own father made wines for personal consumption, on skins because it would offer friction, making using a manual press easier. The tannins from the skin also stabilized the wine that had to last for the whole year. When Stanko began making estate wines, sulfur (the other option for stabilizing the wine) was too expensive, so maceration made sense. Over time, the family experimented with the length of maceration of the wines. They believe skins offer the “information” of the vintage– sun, rain, temperature. It also tastes better.

Stanko passed away in 2016 and his son Saša took the helm. Saša developed this month’s cuvee of Sivi, meaning grey in Slovenian. It is Pinot Gris (Grigio) macerated on its skins for 8 to 14 days and aged in barrels for a year. We often think of Pinot Grigio as a white wine but the grey hues of the skin impart a kind of copper (ramato) tone to the wine. Saša has developed his own lighter maceration wines. He also makes choices in the vineyard and cellar with an eye for making wines that remind him of his father. He’s picked up cuvees abandoned by his father, namely, Slatnik, 80% Chardonnay and 20% Tocai. His father gave up on this wine after a particularly bad mudslide ruined some parcels.

The first bottle of wine I ever spent more than $25 on was a bottle of Radikon. I wanted to taste these famous wines from a larger-than-life place and an estate of repute. It was really delicious. I recall recognizing not the “distinctiveness” of the particular place but rather what I felt was the precision and opinion of the hand of the winemaker, who I would soon learn was named Stanko. It’s a different register but just as consequential as picking pasta or rice.

xoxo, Bradford, Eva, Jean-Paul, Ariana, Sofia, Mac, Dave, & Tommy

June Tasting Calendar (and a reminder that if you’re in the club, all tastings are now free! Otherwise $10)

06/07 - Wine Club Pickup

06/14 - !?

06/21 - El Rancho Tasting

06/28 - Lamoresca

If you’ve read this far— thank you! If you aren’t in the club, we hope these write-ups make for great reading. If you are interested in joining the club, just email us at diverseywine@gmail.com, call us at 773/360-7264 or swing by the shop in person. It starts at $60 per month and includes discounts, a little pamphlet that at times has a “Movie Corner” or a family recipe, and free tastings.

A few weekends ago while I was covering a shift for Dave so he could braise lamb for our 8th year anniversary party (bravo!), a couple stopped in to collect their Gather CSA (learn more about that here) and were browsing the shelves casually while their pickup was being organized. They were trying to find another bottle of a wine they bought at Diversey some months ago but didn’t have a photo of the label, so we did our best as a team to suss out what it might have been. A very full, dense orange wine but very fruity and without the drying tannins. A simple hand-drawn label reminiscent of Japanese calligraphy. Of course, it was a wine made by Julie Brosselin from Les Cigales dans la Fourmilière, a firm favorite of ours from the village of Montpeyroux in Southern France’s Herault district.

These wines have a magnetic energy. Playful but never contrived, I love putting them in the hands of wine novices and see them come back to the shop to try the others in the lineup.

Since fusing their lives together some years ago, Julie and her partner Ivo Ferreira created a new winery that allowed them to maintain their solo efforts and also allowed for more collaboration between the two of them. This decision gave life to some new ideas and simple cuvees that are based on embracing the possibilities that the bounty of the Languedoc offers, while sticking to their unique stylistic tendencies and uncompromising natural wine principles. They each farm a couple smaller terroirs whose grapes go into their longer-aged house wines and also buy grapes grown by friends for the fresh stuff.

Perfect for the start of the Summer is what we will open on Sunday, all 2025s (where does the time go, my goodness) that represent the friendly and juicier side of Les Cigales. Wines meant for picnics and Lake hangs, backyard BBQs and little sips between tosses of petanque.

Mac

Currently Available:

2025 La Petite Pepeé ($32). Blanc de Noir of Grenache Noir.

2025 La Polonaise ($30). Muscat à Petit Grain, Grenache Blanc.

2025 Maree Basse ($28). Grenache Noir.

2025 La Petite Crapule ($26). Grenache Noir, Cinsault.

2025 On Verra la Mer ($30). Cinsault.

Thank you, friends, for showing up in full force to celebrate our 8th birthday. We had a blast!

This week, we’re back to our regularly scheduled “Sunday Tasting.” We invite you to join us this Sunday for an afternoon tasting featuring wines from Ashanta, a small California winery focused on thoughtful farming, minimal-intervention winemaking, and expressive terroir driven wines.

Ashanta works with organically farmed vineyards across California, producing wines with energy, balance, and a strong sense of place. Their approach in the cellar is hands-off, allowing the grape to do all the work. The result is a lineup of a wide range of light and heavy wines that feel vibrant, textured, and alive while remaining incredibly easy to enjoy at the table.

We’ll be pouring a selection of wines from 12-3 and enjoying the different vineyards, varieties, and winemaking philosophy behind the project. Whether you have followed Ashanta for a while or are discovering the wines for the first time, we would love to see you.

Jean-Paul

Currently Available:

2022 Callisto ($40). Pinot Noir Blanc.

2023 Amanecer ($27). Tempranillo Rose.

2022 Mawu ($25). Merlot and Chardonnay.

2021 Miyakma ($50). Cabernet Sauvignon.

P.S. Birthday t-shirts and regular t-shirts are still available! $30. Very nice.

BIG RAGER THIS SUNDAY BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!

12-5PM, LAMB SANGERS, EIGHT DOLLAR GLASSES AND CORKAGE! $30 SHIRTS!

SECRET SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS; SECRET PATIO OPEN!

Once we’ve (more or less) recovered from the party, we’re thrilled to be hosting some of our favorite Georgian winemakers in a corner takeover with our friends at Cellar Door. The winemakers will be posting up in the shop from 5-7pm before drifting across the hall to the restaurant for the rest of the evening. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting any of these folks, you know they’re good value, as is ten bucks to taste eight wines with the players responsible. Personally, I find that despite the (recent, relative) popularity of Georgian wine, and the value they offer, the wines can still be a little inscrutable, so having theses folks on hand is a real treat. See ya there!

Here’s what the Roadshow is bringing:

Pheasant’s Tears:

~ 2024 Rkatsiteli Bodbiskhevi ($27)

~ 2024 Poliphonia ($29)

Okro’s Wines:

~ 2023 Rkatsiteli ($30)

~ 2024 Zvari ($24)

Ramaz

~ 2024 Dzvelshavi ($36).

~ 2024 Tsitska Nakhshirgele ($36).

Igavi Wines

~ 2024 Tsolikouri ($36).

~ 2024 Aladasturi ($36).

∞ xoxo ∞, Bradford, Eva, Jean-Paul, Ariana, Sofia, Mac, Dave, & Tommy

[A quick note up front: we turn eight this month, and we’re having a party! May 17th, 12-5. Food and bev for sale, come hungry leave happy. Further details TK.]

This week, we have on offer the wines of Patrick Bouju and Justine Loiseau who make wine in the Auvergne under the name Domaine la Bohème. We don’t need much of an introduction to Bouju, a known quantity in the natural wine world; he’s a friend and teacher to many and has a curiosity and creativity that has led to a sprawling estate and negoce project. Patrick is often credited for putting Auvergne back on the map (along with the Tricots, Pierre Beauger, and others).

Auvergne has become a kind of ground zero for natural winemaking. It’s a kind liminal space that lends itself well to both the classic vin-vivant critique of the AOC system and conventional winemaking alongside the fresh, fruit-forward, and honest aesthetic sensibility that marks natural winemaking. Bouju and Loiseau make their wines in Saint-Georges-sur-Allier, a small town right outside of Clermont-Ferrand, an industrial hub home to the Michelin company. For the most part, Auvergne is still synonymous with industrial production. Its peak winemaking years were in the early 20th century when there were ~26,000 hectares of vines in cultivation. Now, there are roughly 400 hectares shared between 50 or so winemakers. Most of the land has switched over to cash crop industrial agriculture. But in the small bit that remains planted with vines, an even smaller but hearty slice of roughly a dozen winemakers are staunch advocates of zero-sulfite vinification and biodynamic farming. In the case of Bouju and Loiseau, who farm parcels of extremely old vines of Gamay d’Auvergne, everything has to be done by hand—if only because the older parcels are too narrow for any mechanical equipment.

The region is also well known for its dormant volcanoes that tens of thousands of years ago laid a thick layer of lava over limestone and basalt soils. Now, these volcanic soils also offer ideal conditions for carbonic macerations, according to one Jules Chauvet. La Bohème’s wines are always bursting with acidity and, to me, leave hints of the vegetation that grows happily around the vines. I don’t know where I land exactly; I always thought that the high acid, spice, and mineral quality to the wines came from the distinct volcanic soils of Auvergne, but La Bohème’s negoce wines also offer a similar palette. In these wines, the pair works with sound grapes from almost any region (for example, Sauvignon from Touraine or Syrah from the Southwest). Regardless of origin, the cuvées are always bright and inviting. There’s a shared embrace of acidity and fresh fruit that screams, “this wine is alive.”

This quality makes them an ideal spring wines and ideal to drink if contemplating what to plant in one’s garden. A decent segue for the plant sale, don’t you think? While we pour some of La Bohème’s wines, we’ll also have Lissa, the Tomato Lady of Oak Park, in the shop selling her beautiful seedlings. She’ll have tomatoes, of course, along with peppers, cucumbers, herbs, and much more. If you’ve been to one of her sales before, you know that Lissa stocks the rare gear, ready for your pots and beds.

Here’s what we have on offer from Patrick and Justine:

~ 2021 Mol ($33) Syrah, Carignan, Merlot, Cinsault, Muscat d’Alexandrie, Gamay.

~ 2023 Festejar Rosé ($42). Sparkling Gamay d’Auvergne.

~ 2023 G&M ($35). Gewürztraminer & Pinot Gris from Alsace, Muscat d’Alexandrie from Roussillon, Chardonnay from Auvrgne, Ugni Blanc & Grenache Blanc from Hérault. Light pink wine.

~ 2023 G ($36). Gamay d’Auvergne, whole bunch fermentation, aged in steel and clay.

~ 2023 CC ($32) Chardonnay from Auvergne & Chenin Blanc+Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire.

In the spirit of spring, tomatoes, and other leafy vines I leave you with Louise Glück’s famous poem Vespers. — Sofia

In your extended absence, you permit me

use of earth, anticipating

some return on investment. I must report

failure in my assignment, principally

regarding the tomato plants.

I think I should not be encouraged to grow

tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold

the heavy rains, the cold nights that come

so often here, while other regions get

twelve weeks of summer. All this

belongs to you: on the other hand,

I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots

like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart

broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly

multiplying in the rows. I doubt

you have a heart, in our understanding of

that term. You who do not discriminate

between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,

immune to foreshadowing, you may not know

how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,

the red leaves of the maple falling

even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible

for these vines.

Happy belated May Day. We hope you were able to rest. It’s wine club time but before we delve into the wines on offer, we’d like to invite you to our 8th birthday party on May 17th! Details are forthcoming but rest assured there will be food and there will be wine. I (Sofia) was once at a wedding where the rabbi told the crowd that couple would live happily forever because they married on the 8th of that month. He said, drawing the shape in the air with his finger, “if you flip 8 around it’s ∞.” Infinity love for them. 8th birthday = infinity love, infinity happiness.

We will also have our 2nd annual plant sale with Lissa the Oak Park Tomato Lady on Mother’s Day (May 10th!).

WINE CLUB 1

2024 R. O’Neill Latta Mou by Tommy

Wines in the shop are often referred to as living. It is the core of what natural wine is. They are energetic, vibrant, and sometimes they need room to grow, they are constantly evolving and that is part of the beauty. It can be true that wines have different personalities, year to year, month to month, bottle to bottle. It’s not so much about showcasing grape varieties but the entirety of terroir, farming and production. There’s an experimental and curious side that these wines can bring and Riley O’Niell Latta exemplifies that in his winemaking.

Riley makes wine in Los Angeles, where he was born and raised. The fruit for his ferments are collected from the span of California, way up north in Mendocino to the desert south of L.A. in Riverside County. He has access to apples grown in Santa Cruz, passionfruit grown in his parents L.A. backyard, and most recently some vines that have been planted in Malibu. Did you get the chance to enjoy the ROL cuvée Nancy that was previously a part of the wine club? Those were Mendocino grapes. All the fruit makes its way to his unassuming garage-like winery, where the fruit is turned into anything but unassuming.

I was fortunate to have a visit with Riley recently and taste through some of the ROL wines. Every time I taste them I never know what to expect, and every time I find myself excited for what’s next. They are fresh, uplifting, and a shining reminder of how Reilly’s community inspires these wines.

During harvest the winery is a constant spot to hang out for ever evolving familiar faces to pop by and lend a hand for help. The apple harvest he does at the end of fall becomes a week-long camping trip for friends and family to take part in up in the Santa Cruz mountains. He has cultivated an extreme sense of curiosity with his wines. As if you want to collect them all. Riley is California through and through and so are his wines.

This month we’re happy to offer the 2024 Mou, rosé of Mourvèdre. The grapes are grown off the central coast of California in San Luis Obispo County. When the grapes arrive back to the winery after a 3 plus hour journey they are directly pressed, and left to begin fermenting. A great wine to start the summer with that might remind you of a slice of watermelon in one hand and an agua de jamaica in the other. Drink it with friends and hang by the lake and maybe see the first fireflies of the season

When he talks about his winemaking, Jordi, an 8^th generation winemaker, notes that only recently has he even begun to make the wines his grandfather had set out to make. His wines evoke patience, steadfastness, and optimism and serve as the perfect primer for renewal and recommitment at the start of the new year.

2023 Alex Craighead Wines Home White OR Home Red No. 2 by Sofia with words from Alex

The shop is turning 8 this month. That’s a long time, and I bring it up because it’s a long enough time to get to see some of your favorite winemakers grow and evolve. This month, we’re getting some of the first releases of Alex Craighead’s new project from his home estate in Nelson, New Zealand. Previously, Alex made wines through his project, Kindeli. A shop favorite, the wines were assertive and textural. Now, Alex and his partner, Josefina Venturino, have reduced the size of their operations and make a handful of cuvées out of their Upper Moutere site. These newer wines have a lift and clarity to them. They are the result of Alex and Josefina honing their craft and sensibilities. Alex was generous enough to share some words on the new project that I’ll share with you all:

All of the wines are from my home block. 100% Moutere Clay soils. First plantings in 1993 and fully certified organic in 1998. Existing plantings were Chardonnay, Riesling, Pinot Gris, Gewürztraminer, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Syrah. Began new plantings from 2017 to 2023 of Gamay Noir, Cabernet Franc (grafted on old SB), Vermetino, Chenin Blanc, Mtsvane, and Albariño plus more Gewürztraminer, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir. The idea is blending to create “complete” wines without the necessity of manipulation.

The big difference between this and Kindeli, is that they are only from the home block, and we are aging them longer too. We tend to age in amphora/barrel/tank for 10-12 months and then in tank for another year before bottling and releasing 6 months after that. The idea is to create more refined versions of what we were making previously, and working out issues while in tank as opposed to bottle. We rack the wines pretty frequently to ensure maximum clarity too.

This month, you’ll get your pick of Alex and Josefina’s 2023 Home White or their 2023 Home Red No. 2. Alex reported that the white is “80% Chardonnay, 20% Vermentino. Whole bunch pressed. Fermented in old puncheon. Racked to amphora for 10 months, before being racked to stainless for another 12 months prior to bottle.” The red is 30% Cabernet Franc, 60% Syrah and 10% Pinot Noir. Fully destemmed and co-fermented for 5-7 days. Pressed to stainless and then later racked to amphora for 10 months before being racked to stainless for an additional 12 months prior to bottle, blended with 10% Pinot Noir with some whole cluster. Both would go great with the first outdoor cooking/summer grill of the season. Choose your fighter. Cheers!

WINE CLUB 2

2024 Léonard Dietrich, Granit by Dave

When talking or writing about individual wines or winemakers, we sometimes tend to focus on some of the more easily graspable stuff that clues drinkers into what they’re in for: grape variety, regional traditions, broad strokes of vinification, the personality of the grower, tasting notes. The problem is, from the perspective of the winemaker, these topics are usually unbearably boring, particularly in comparison to what they really want to talk about, which is rocks.

Schist, limestone, basalt, gypsum, flint! Topsoil, subsoil, drainage, thermal mass! Calcium, magnesium, nitrogen, phosphates, iron! Chalk, clay, gravel, granite, slate! If you ever want to cheer up the poor sucker pouring their 44th sample of the day, this is the kind of stuff you want to ask them about.

Léonard Dietrich is one of many winemakers we work with whose desperation to turn the conversation to rocks has led him to put pictures of them on his bottles, and sometime, to simply name the wine after the rocks that are dominant in the vineyard where its grown. Which is how the wine in Club this month, a blend of direct pressed Sylvaner, Riesling, and Gewurtztraminer from an especially granitey parcel in Dietrich’s native Dambach-la-Ville came to be called Granit. Dietrich is a young grower native to Alsace who has been working alongside local natural wine legend Patrick Meyer, and thus far has demonstrated a frankly precocious capacity to express the rich offerings of his vines, scattered around some of the top sites and soils of the region.

I think part of the problem with getting rocks into the popular wine discussion isn’t just the difficulty of mastering geology but finding a way of connecting the vagaries of subsoil substructure to what our experience of the wine is when it finds its way into our mouths or guts. There’s a common form of shorthand where we might say we can “taste” the granite and/or call the wine “mineral,” which is one of those pieces of shop talk whose potential to mislead (the wine doesn’t really taste like granite/most minerals don’t really taste like anything/the minerals from the rocks don’t really make their way into the grapes) has recently drained a lot of the life out of talking about vineyard stone. I’m not sure we should be so hasty to dismiss this little piece of common sense, either because its rational kernel picks up on something still mysterious about vines or because it simply finds on a common thread of experience that we need better language for.

Because there is something about Granit (the wine) that feels neither vegetable nor animal, not the salt that crops up in some of our favorite Spanish juice, but something solid, intense, and immovable at the core of the wine that its dollop of fruit revolves around. It sort of just tastes like water? I had a freezing bottle not too long ago, standing in crowded cold air under a warm sun, the sweat cooling on my back reminding me to replenish my salts, and it went down like a dream. I’m looking forward to another one someday, served just under room temp alongside a lean and rare piece of beef on top of raw garden greens and new potatoes. Wine as dressing, wine as nourishment: we all need more minerals in our diet, right?

2024 Bodega Naranjuez, 2016 Pinot Negra by Sofia

The wines of Bodega Naranjuez appear every so often on our shelves. When we get them, we get one or two cuvées at a time, a treat from the Percy team who, rather than offer us the full lineup whenever Vílchez sends them over, takes care to release these wines when they’re good and ready. The wine for this month’s club is ten years old. Enough years for the wine to have a few lives in the bottle. Vílchez’s wines have a kind of duality. They have an intensity and spontaneity that can smack you in the face. Some cuvées are complete experiments. Some vintages are extra boozy, the likely result of gobsmackingly hot weather in his particular corner of the South of Spain. But they always have a friendliness and vitality that makes the intensity feel more like confidence and the spontaneity feel like an honest representation of its vines and its winemaker.

Marchal is a very small town in Andalusia in a very specific part of Granada. I can’t overstate how hot a place it is; so much so that the town is home to many cave dwellings that maintain a consistent cool and humid climate. It’s nestled at 900 meters (high up there) in the direction of the north face of the Sierra Nevada, the tallest mountain on the Spanish mainland. Marchal is in the Hoya (plains) de Gaudix, a fertile plain that is otherwise surrounded by mountains and arid “badlands.” The soils are mostly composed of red calcareous clay.

Vílchez is often described as both a gentle and slow- moving person and also somewhat of a wildcard. A self- described “true character,” he spends countless hours in his 2-hectare plots farming biodynamically and managing the consequences of low yields. But he also spends a lot of his time at bars, playing guitar, and riding motorcycles. His white wine is named after his bike mechanic, Baco, who allegedly drinks a lot of his wines. In the fall, Antonio will wake up in the middle of the night to perform pigeage. The 2016 vintage we have is composed of Pinot Noir, a somewhat paradoxical varietal to find in the extremely hot and dry climate of the fertile plains of Guadix. Rumor has it Antonio was one of the first to work with Pinot Noir in Spain and I choose to believe that rumor. He also works with many other French varietals.

This month’s Pinot Negra has piercing acidity and bright red fruit and aromas that come with a warmer climate Pinot Noir. It’s got the energy of a great Spanish melodrama. As spring turns into summer, we might find ourselves turning quickly, perhaps too quickly towards cold white wines that refresh and cut the heat. But might I humbly suggest doubling down, if only for a brief moment, on feeling the heat and all the life that comes with it? The melodrama of summer! Bake in the heat. Sweat all over town and drink a red wine with a kick. Share with friends and then jump in the lake.

xoxo, Bradford, Eva, Jean-Paul, Ariana, Sofia, Mac, Dave, & Tommy

May Tasting Calendar (and a reminder that if you’re in the club, all tastings are now free! Otherwise $10)

05/03 - Wine Club Pickup

05/10 - Domaine la Bohème x The Oak Park Tomato Lady Plant Sale

05/17 - Shop Birthday Party!

05/24 -!?

05/31- ?1

If you’ve read this far— thank you! If you aren’t in the club, we hope these write-ups make for great reading. If you are interested in joining the club, just email us at diverseywine@gmail.com, call us at 773/360-7264 or swing by the shop in person. It starts at $60 per month and includes discounts, a little pamphlet that at times has a “Movie Corner” or a family recipe, and free tastings.

This will be a short email! No tasting lineup but a “new” thing we’ve been trying out: SUNDAY SLAMMERS. It’s pretty self-explanatory so we hope to see ya there. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming with our first-Sunday-of-the-month-wine-club tasting next week.

More on that soon. In the meantime, a few scheduling notes:

~ We will be closed this Monday, April 27th (a one time thing) and the following Monday, May 3rd (our regular first Monday of the month closure).

~ We will be closed May 1st for International Workers Day.

~ May 10th, we’re hosting Lissa a.k.a The Tomato Lady of Oak Park for another plant sale! Get your tomato plants, peppers, and many other seedlings from Lissa!

xoxo, Bradford, Eva, Jean-Paul, Ariana, Sofia, Mac, Dave, & Tommy