Santini Collective Highlight
We recently received new wines from Santini Collective. The shipment which is our third from them, was long awaited due to delays stemming from a global shortage of shipping containers! Needless to say, we are extremely excited to release these wines to you, the full collection is live in our shop excluding wines sold out prior as part of our Summer 2021 Pre Arrival Offer (are you a mailing list subscriber?).
Please watch our short overview on Santini - one video of three! And read some great reviews from Mike Bennie on behalf of Wine Front, below.
Enjoy!
Santini Collective Macon-Villages 2019 - 93 Points
A French American worked for Kermit Lynch in the USA, ends up in Burgundy making wine with his brothers. He goes the organic fruit route, he makes wine from ‘lesser sung’ appelations and Burgundy locales. Au naturale approach, attempting vin de soif styles with some pizazz.
Bright and yet has all this lovely, hazy, oatmeal and nuttiness going on. Lemon-ginger tea, jasmine, tonic water, cashews and saline minerality. Almost prickly with acidity or a light, barely there fizz too. Sings out of the glass. So pretty, so delicious, so vivacious! Leaps around the palate. I dig.
Mike Bennie
Santini Collective Bourgogne Aligote 2019 - 94 Points
Younger generation winemaker (and brothers) doing intrguing things out of their homebase in Auxey Duresses, including sourcing more broadly, doing some interesting blends and skin fermenting white wines. A producer to watch! This sees three weeks skin ferment.
Textural as all get out, chewy and puckering, very refreshing. Lime, alpine herbs, fennel. Lots of all of that. Almost Italianate tannins here too. Exceptional length and depth yet insane freshness and vitality. Has such energy and drinkability. Serious orange wine!
Mike Bennie
Santini Collective Champlitte 2019 - 93 Points
It’s a quarter chardonnay and three quarters gamay where the gamay berries are fermented whole with the pressed chardonnay juice surrounding those berries. Fun times in Burgundy.
Delicious! A heavy rose vibe here with firm skeleton of tannin and acidity, so bright, tense, refreshing and darn interesting. It’s super fragrant, spicy, shows cherry and berry fruitiness but lots of autumnal characters too. Game meat, amaro-tangy acidity, herbal notes in the mix. Epic!
Mike Bennie
Santini Collective Pinot Beurot 2019 - 94 Points
Chardonnay stained with pinot gris skins to make a very appealing, complex rose style. Quite deep colour too.
Delicious! Has this rose hip tea, rose water thing going on but the wine is dry, real dry, finishes all puckering and bergamot tea pleasingly bitter and earthy, flavours lifted on bright acidity but very savoury one could say. There’s structure here too. It’s pretty as to sniff on too. Thirst-quenching, vibrant, joyous stuff. Such a good thing.
Mike Bennie
Santini Collective Beaujolais Superier 2019 - 92 Points
This fruit comes from much vaunted Pacalet (the cult producer from Burgundy) vines. That’s a pretty big deal for some people.
Light and fine, faintly juicy but more about this sleek, slinky feel and kirsch-meets-amaro-like characters. Lithe and pretty wine, so easy to drink. You wouldn?t say complex, but you would say compelling. Wonderful sense of vitality and energy here. Thirst-quencher galore.
Mike Bennie
Santini Collective Bourgogne Cote Chalonnaise Les Champs Pernin 2019 - 93 Points
Whole bunch and tanks for natural ferment. Au naturale, edgy Burgundy. Thank you.
Svelte, satiny, supple and so darn delicious. Dark cherry, cranberry drink, light candied citrus characters, faint turned earth and undergrowth going on. So much filigree and detail with drinkability through the roof. Pitch perfect, light, fine tannin too. So much going on in small spaces. Beautiful drinking.
Mike Bennie
Santini Collective Grenache Noir 2019 - 95 Points
From up in the north of Provence. Grenache, gently treated.
So floral, so spicy! Almost a vermouth like character here, or a tonic. It’s got amazing, beautiful scents and flavours and a strong ripple of fine, firm tannin too. Almost has the sense of alpine nebbiolo or similar, strewth! Succulent, silky, gliding, firm. An incredible wine.
Mike Bennie
Mike Bennie, Gary Walsh, Campbell Mattinson and Curly Haslam-Coates make up The Wine Front. The Wine Front is a wine review website that specialises in left of centre wines with drinkability as a focus. That being said they are handy with reviewing the classics also!