Devenish Wines, Portland, ME (2025)

12/28/2025

Francois Pinon Vouvray Brut 2022! Beautiful elegant gentle sparkling Chenin!

Available at Night Mares, Maine and Loire, Now You're Cooking, Round Pond Cheese Co, Bow Beverage, Folk, Bread and Friends, Sissle and Daughters, Saint George Pizza, Flight Deck Brewing, Tess Market, and Carousel

Julien Pinon makes this Methode Traditionelle sparkling Vouvray from slightly earlier harvested grapes across their holdings. These grapes with slightly higher acidity are hand harvested and then ferment for 4-6 weeks with native yeast in neutral barrels and then gets racked and spends 2-3 months on the fine lees. It gets a light filtration and is then bottled to go through a secondary fermentation in the bottle. It spends about 2 years aging in the bottles before getting disgorged and has a dosage of 6 grams. In some vintages it has a bit of residual sweetness but I don’t notice any in this bottling of the wine.

12/24/2025

Champagne Chavost Blanc d'Assemblage Brut Nature! Delicious and elegant natural fermentation zero dosage and no sulfur added Champagne! It's great for breakfast!

Available at Maine and Loire as well as First Fig

Champagne Chavost is a smallish coop of farmers with 5.5 hectares that are certified organic. Current chef de cave Fabian took over management in 2019 and somehow managed to convince all the various (approx 70) small land owners to let him create a new line of Champagnes that were native fermentation, zero dosage, and without additives. That Fabian could pull that off makes me think you should run for parliament! But then maybe we'd be deprived of this lovely and surprisingly affordable Champagne

12/23/2025

Conestabile della Staffa Pino! Yes, Pinot Noir from Umbria and it rocks! Available at Monte's Fine Foods, Crooked Face Creamery, Black Birch, Golden Harvest, Lady of the Vine, Vinolio, and the Abbey

Back in the 1950s there was a push to plant Pinot Noir in Umbria. So clones were brought in from Burgundy and vineyards were planted… but the world moved on and most vineyards were replanted. Danilo read about this and started looking for some of these old vines. The clones that had been planted have since been mostly abandoned in Burgundy so Danilo was particularly interested. About 5 years ago he found and old farmer who had some of these old vines! The farmer swore up and down that it was “Nero Buono” (good dark grapes). Danilo said ok sir, but may I have some cuttings the next time you prune? Danilo got the cuttings, grafted them at Conestabile della Staffa, and now 5 years later the vines are finally producing enough grapes that he bottled it for the first time! So this is the first ever Pinot Noir from Conestabile della Staffa. 10 cases came into the country! I bought all that was left (81 bottles) as I was tasting it with him because this is delicious!

Aroma: deep red concentrated cherry with a touch of cooked cranberry, a little whiff of spruce tips in the spring, and a bit of concentrated raspberry. This has an attractive and concentrated fruit driven aroma but it's not just a one-trick pony; there are some subtle background heady aromatic herbal aromas too, particularly fresh thyme. The precision and poise of the fruit flavors makes me think of Pinot Noir but some of the actual flavors are very much Central Italy

Taste: vibrant concentrated raspberry, some strawberry, then strawberry candy; the fruit is supple and lovely and Pinot Noir but then there's an underlying structure to the wine that is more focused and rocky than I associate with Pinot. It has a stiffer more mineraly backbone. The finish of the wine has a heady hibiscus pomegranate kind of flavor to it. High toned and ethereal seeming thanks to subtle lingering tannin this is a lovely and expressive wine!

12/23/2025

Zlatan Otok 'Bilo Idro' Plavac 2022

Available at Vinolio, The Crooked Spoon, Now You're Cooking, New Morning, Zu Bakery, The Clown, Golden Harvest, Great Cranberry General, Regards, Vessel and Vine, and the Blue Hill Wine Shop

100% Plavac Mali from vines in Sibenik. The vineyards are on steep slopes with thin red clay soil over limestone rock like on Hvar. The grapes are organically farmed with virtually no intervention in the vineyard. They’re hand harvested and ferment with native yeast for 8 days on the skins in stainless steel. The wine is racked off and then ages 18 months resting in stainless steel.

The soil is all rocky limestone both on the island and over on the mainland and all the vineyards face south. Nikola said that they spray with powdered natural sulfate in the vineyards maybe once or twice a year. It’s so hot and dry and rocky that there’s just no moisture and therefore no mildew or peronospera. The slopes on the mainland are steep and quite rocky, but they don’t compare to Hvar. The vineyards are as steep as 60 degrees and it is so rocky and dry that after 50 years of life half of the vines will be dead. They vines are so stressed that they only produce 1/2 a kilo of grapes per vine.

12/22/2025

Champagne Tarlant Champagne 'Zero' Brut NV! One of my favorite Champagnes and an iconic producer. It's always nice when icons live up to their reputation...

Available at Round Pond Cheese Co, Vessel & Vine, Maine & Loire, Lady of the Vine, Kanu, Fog, Folk, Hops and Vine, 44 North, Browne Trading, and Lois’s Natural Market Place

Champagne Tarlant is a legend and rightfully so. We just received a whole pallet of Champagne from direct from France because this is just so darn good! And it was a way to keep the price down. Louis Tarlant was mayor of Oeulliy back in the 1920s and was a leader of the Champagne rebellion in which local farmers blocked the large houses from bringing in grapes and wines from other regions, bottling it, and then passing it off as Champagne. This was the start of the appellation system and the rules defining Champagne. Louis swore he would never sell his grapes to the big houses again and had to start making Champagne himself.

Tarlant farms 14 hectares broken up into 57 SEPARATE PARCELS of vines that are all farmed and harvested separately! That’s crazy! 57 different wines to taste and blend and manage each vintage. Fermentations are 2/3 in barrel and 1/3 in tank. Usually fruit from young vines ferments in tank and the fruit with more character from older vines ferments in barrel. Almost all the barrels are old. Benoit tries to replace 3-5% of the barrels in a given year, but still is usually buying barrels that have already been used for 1 or 2 vintages. Fermentation is long and slow in their cold underground cellar. They do very little, usually just a few stirs of the lees at the end of fermentation to help the yeasts finish off the final little amount of sugar and make sure the wine is totally dry. He generally tries to avoid malolactic fermentation happening, preferring to keep the wines brighter and fresher.

12/21/2025

Clos de la Roilette Fleurie! We just received the new vintage of one of my favorite Beaujolais and 2024 is tasting particularly good!

Available at Maine & Loire, Folk, Bread & Friends, Sissle and Daughters, Vinolio, Bow St Beverage, The Clown, First Fig, Chaval

Iconic Fleuries from Clos de La Roilette” is actually the title on Louis Dressner’s page for this wine. Which is kind of hilarious to think about (it is true, these are iconic Fleuries) because when these vineyards were included in the newly created Fleurie AOC and no longer a part of Moulin a Vent as it had historically been, the previous owner was infuriated and refused to put Fleurie on the label. Instead he named the wine after his prize race horse: Roilette. That was back in the 1920s, but to this day the words “Appellation Fleurie Controlee” are quite small compared to the name Clos de La Roilette. The heirs to the property weren’t too interested in it and in the 1960s it became run down. In 1967 Fernand Coudert bought the property and set about restoring it. In 1984 his son Alain joined him and became wine maker. The combination of the old vines and dense clay soils with trace Manganese in it makes these Gamays deeper and richer than Fleurie’s reputation; it also makes these wines quite age worthy although they are also delicious now.

12/20/2025

Langoureau Puligny Montrachet 1er Cru!

Available at The Wine Seller and Sissle and Daughters

La Garenne is a hill top vineyard with very little top soil and in the past it had a reputation for producing expressive elegant aromatic wines that had finesse but were a little lighter and not too powerful due to the soil and cooler windier conditions. Thanks to global warming though the vineyard is now producing wines that have the finesse and aromatics but with depth and heft to follow through. Unfortunately we only got 3 cases…

12/17/2025

Cantina Sociale di Gattinara Vino Rosso!

Available at Waldoboro Inn, Maine and Loire, The Kennebec Meat Co, Leeward, Perks, Vessel and Vine

Fermented and aged in a big old concrete tank. This is classic, quintessential, honest Peidmontese table wine. This is a blend of Nebbiolo, Barbera, Vespolina, and a touch of Croatina. This current vintage is the prettiest I’ve ever tasted. It’s a great value for a lovely and unique autumn wine.

Back in 2022 I visited Piedmont and in particular Gattinara. Gattinara is a world away from the rolling hills of the Langhe. A main stay of the DOCG is this legendary old Co-op winery: Cantina di Sociale di Gattinara. The Cantina was founded in 1908 by a group of small farmers so that they could start making and selling wine them selves instead of having no option but to sell their grapes to wealthy people who could afford wine making equipment. These are incredible Nebbiolo based wines that are still made in the same old school methods of a century ago.

12/16/2025

La Palazetta Rosso di Montalcino!

Available at the Blue Hill Wine Shop, Rosella, and Night Moves

The rosso is made from hand harvested grapes, from their vineyards. The grapes are sorted in the vineyard and then get a 2 day cold soak before the temperature comes up enough for fermentation to start spontaneously. The wine is aged in smaller French oak tonneaux for 14 months and then 4 months in the bottle before release. This is actually Luca’s favorite wine. The Rosso is more fruit forward than the Brunello; it’s simpler but juicy and great with food. This is Luca’s go to and more honest expression of what he likes. I like that this is classic Sangiovese color

Luca’s father Flavio (nickname Flavino since his grandfather was also Flavio) inherited the farm in 1984. They were growing grapes but also had cows, sheep, and made cheese. Flavino decided to start phasing out the animals in favor of wine and while they were bottling wine earlier he got certified to produce Brunello in the mid 80s and 1988 was their first official release. They have 16 hectares broken up into 4 different distinct parcels, all within sight of the winery, but facing different directions and with very different soils in each. All the vineyards and the wine it produces is declared and produced as Brunello, but then Luca will make selections of the barrels and decide what to release early as Rosso or IGT.

12/15/2025

The cavern on the face of Sveti Nikola, on the island of Hvar

12/15/2025

Langoureau Saint Aubin 1er Cru ‘Les Frionnes’ 2024!

Available at Pulling Corks, Lilly Lupine and Fern, and Aragosta

Les Frionnes is one of the coldest 1er cru vineyards in Saint Aubin. It’s a southeast facing 3 hectare vineyard that makes serious wines with a bit more structure and less dominated by ripe fruit.

I fell in love with Sylvain Langoureau's wines over 20 years ago and I've followed him ever since. These are some of the best white Burgundies I've ever had.

12/13/2025

Zlatan Otok Plavac Hvar 2021!

100% Plavac Mali from the steep vineyards on the side of Sveti Nikolas on Hvar. These are the vines in the pictures here. Small, wind swept, resilient and struggling. The vineyards are rocky, steep, dry, and face south looking towards the dominating sun. Yields are 1/2 a kilo per vine, the farming is natural and very hands off as there’s just no moisture here to worry about. The grapes are hand harvested, destemmed, fermentation is with native yeast in stainless steel temperature controlled fermenters for about 2 weeks and then the fermenting wine spends a third week in large oak fermenters. The wine is taken off the skins and spends a year in 4000-8000L Slavonian and French oak casks. This is a gorgeous Mediterranean red with layers of complexity. It’s mature and delicious and reminds me of aged Tuscan Sangiovese a la Brunello di Montalcino.

Aroma: bright fresh tart red cherry, fresh red raspberry, beautiful dried red cherry, dried rosemary, an oregano. a bit of very ripe fig…It has a lovely floral component of lilac but then also savory aromas of cumin and coriander! It's very pretty, integrated, inviting, and complex. It smells viscerally like the very sunny dry intense environment and aromatic Mediterranean plants that it came from.

Taste: great beautiful fresh red cherry and some raspberry lead off. There's The fruit up front is surprisingly lively with nice acidity here, then the mid palate becomes deeper, bolder, more expansive. There's delicious savory minerality: this tasty subtle saltiness underpinning the mid palate that helps support the fruit. A subtle cocoa kind of flavor comes in that makes me think of a mole sauce, deeper cooked or dried cherry or even chocolate covered cherry!

Zlatan Otok was founded by a humble fisherman on the island of Hvar: Zlatan Plenkovic decided in 1991 to build a winery, restore abandoned terraces on the side of the mountain Sveti Nikolas, and start convincing local farmers to sell him their grapes. That’s right: communism was only a few months gone and a civil war was kicking off, but this guy decides to start building a winery! I wish I’d gotten to meet him.

Devenish Wines

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