Pinot Blanc & Gewurtraminer, Ardèche / Alsace, France

A loud-cloudy, rowdy & luscious zero-zero white from one of France’s top cult natty winemakers! Something happens when winemakers go to Ardèche, the clandestine southeastern chunk of France north of the Rhône Valley that’s flanked by three national parks. It’s like the bermuda triangle, but for creative spirit – a mystical vortex that spits out wines so deeply layered we often have both no words and a flood of poetry to describe them. The bardic wines of lovers & Denmark expats Anders Frederik Steen & Anne Bruun Blauert are the PRIME example. On their 6-hectare estate, they make some of the most stylish & freaky low-intervention natural wines in, honestly, probably the whole world, which come with cool-guy minimalist labels and long names that sound like lyrical & intimate confessions. They also buy grapes from friends near or kinda far for some cuveés – such was the case for this delicate pinot blanc and perfumed gewurz, which are from the Bannworth estate in Alsace. This is the kind of wine you would take a bath in if you were very rich, eccentric & wanted to party. You would drink it through your skin and your eyes, dragging the liquid to your mouth with your cupped palms. When you emerged you’d smell like jasmine, roses & honeyed walnuts and you’d feel like you were pleasantly drunk on not wine but a garden – intoxicated just by what is pretty. But for most of us who will be using the regular glass method, swirl and find white peaches, lychee martini, dogwood, corner store orchids, ‘The Favourite’ by Yorgos Lanthimos, hall of Georgia O’Keefe’s floral works & a perfume about you.