Moscato Giallo, Piedmonte, Italy + Savoie, France

A sunset-toned & sweetly perfumed zero-zero skin-contact nectar born in Italy but raised in France! Cult winemaker Jean-Yves Péron trained under the most prestigious winemakers in Bordeaux before moving back to make idiosyncratic & low intervention wines on a patchwork of small parcels in mountainous Savoie, the French alpine town where he grew up. He’s always had a ‘thing’ for Northern Italian skin-contact wines and he was long nodding to that tradition way before the recent orange wine boom. The jacqueres and roussannes of his schisty hills can’t always achieve the ripe florally of his dreams, though, so for this wine and the line of experimental bottles called ‘i Vicini’ – meaning ‘the neighbours – he buys fruit from his friends in Italy.  Before aging in neutral oak barrels the ‘i Vicini Moscato’ rested on its skins for close to three months, expanding its mouthfeel like a vacuum-packed pillow with a hole in its packaging. That said, it’s silkier and less Tim Horton’s steeped tea than you might expect. Take a whiff of orange blossom, queen of Hungary water, del monte fruit cup, guava nectar, Persian love cake, sushi ginger, tamari almonds, packed summer subway car & rock plate of culinary moss at Actinolite. Drink with a rooty Ottolenghi veg dish – like celeriac steaks with curried cafe de Paris sauce – if you like to live deliciously. 

SPECIAL NOTE: This wild wine is best within a few hours of opening! Very delicious, but delicate.