Top 5 Wines of August🍷

Hey guys!

August is wrapped up, which means it’s time for our monthly bottle recap. August was filled with great wine dinners, bottle shares, and even a trip to Paris, so this one was tough to get to just five. Hope you enjoy!

Location: Burgundy, France 🇫🇷

Variety: Aligoté

I’m really enjoying the wines of Pierre-Olivier Garcia right now. He’s someone I think of as part of the new generation of Burgundy, and his Aligoté is a cuvée I’ve been especially excited about.

I was lucky enough to meet Pierre, or “Pineau,” as his friends call him, back in March on a trip to Burgundy with his importer and my good friend, Tom. We spent a long lunch together, toured the cellar, and tasted through barrel samples of the wines. It was a really special visit and his domaine has quickly become one of my favorite estates in the region, for both his reds and whites.

Fast forward to this month, when I had lunch at the beautiful Bar Chimera (which is now open for lunch btw) and opened a bottle of his 2024 Aligoté, alongside some Hainanese chicken and rice. It was such a good pairing and another reminder of why I’m so excited about Pineau’s wines.

The wine had notes of citrus peel, green apple, white flowers, and crushed stone, with a palate that’s crisp, textured, and incredibly easy to drink. A bottle I’d happily order again and again.

Location: Bordeaux, France 🇫🇷

Varieties: Petit Manseng, Petit Courbu

This was the bottle from my August trip to Paris that really made me stop and think. It was a warm day outside Delicatessen Place, and I happened to bump into a few friends who had just finished blind tasting a bottle. They poured me a glass without telling me what it was, and I immediately started guessing: Chenin? Savagnin? Maybe even something from Jurançon, one of my new favorite regions, and a region we recently filmed a series about featuring Doamine Lajibe & Doamine de L’Apollin. It was flinty, citrusy, sharp, and layered, everything I want from a white wine really.

Lo and behold, it was a wine from Sadon Huguet, a producer I admittedly knew absolutely nothing about. Even more surprising was seeing it was from Bordeaux.

I had just returned from Bordeaux myself this past July and have been getting more and more interested in the new wave of producers doing things differently there, names like Clos du Jaugueyron, Uchida, Closserie des Moussis, Terre de Dubien, Ormiale, and Southold, to name a few.

It felt like this bottle found me at exactly the right point in my journey deeper into Bordeaux. A white made from Petit Manseng and Petit Courbu that had me thinking about Jurançon, only to come from a region I’ve already been trying to understand beyond its more famous names. More than anything, it made me curious about what else is happening in this historic region, and what other bottles I’ve been missing.

Location: Meursault, Burgundy, France 🇫🇷

Variety: Chardonnay

This was a very special bottle, and a celebratory one as well. We were celebrating my girlfriend’s birthday at Le George, one of the nicest restaurants I’ve been to in Paris thus far, and decided it was the perfect occasion to open something special.

For those unfamiliar, Jean-Marc Roulot is one of the great winemakers of Meursault, and Burgundy as a whole. His wines are known for their precision, freshness, and ability to beautifully express each individual vineyard. Clos des Bouchères is a particularly special cuvée too: a Meursault Premier Cru and monopole of the domaine, meaning Roulot controls the entire enclosed vineyard.

The wine was stunning. Citrus, white florals, and subtly smoky, with an incredible minerality, and seemingly endless finish. Honestly a top wine of the year for me.

Location: Sonoma County, California 🇺🇸

Variety: Sauvignon Blanc

In my opinion, Matt Taylor is making some of the most exciting wines in America right now. My brother and I were first introduced to his wines through a bottle of Komorebi Vineyard Pinot Noir that we opened for our Great American Natural Wine series, and we were blown away. Then, as fate would have it, we actually got to meet Matt at the SLO Coast & Friends Wine Fair while driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco in June. I can happily say that as good as the wines are, the person behind them is even better.

Matt was generous enough to share his 2023 Mammoth Rock Sauvignon Blanc with us, and the story behind this wine only made me love it more. He told us about a trip he took through the Loire Valley with superstar sommelier Pascaline Lepeltier, tasting with some of the region’s great producers and collecting vine clippings along the way. By the end of the trip, he had secured Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc vines from producers like Richard Leroy and Mark Angeli, which he brought back to California and planted at Mammoth Rock in Sonoma County.

Those vines are now mature enough to produce fruit for winemaking, and this 2023 Sauvignon Blanc is the first release. The wine absolutely lived up to my expectations. Fresh and tropical, with incredible energy and tension running through the palate.

It was quite literally the best Sauvignon Blanc I’ve had from the United States, and honestly, one of the best Sauvignon Blancs I can remember drinking. A special bottle from a special place, made by a special winemaker. Thanks again to Matt for sharing this one with us.

Location: Loire Valley, France 🇫🇷

Variety: Cabernet Franc

I’ve quickly been converted into a Cabernet Franc person, and no producer has me more convinced right now than Domaine du Collier in Saumur. It’s a producer I was introduced to by my girlfriend, and the first time she blinded me on one of their wines, I was completely thrown. I was dead set on either a more extracted Pinot Noir from Burgundy or a lightly macerated Syrah from the Rhône. The wine had so much range that I couldn’t believe it was Cabernet Franc.

Jumping forward to last week, we had the chance to drink some wine with fellow wine enthusiast and NBA champion, Josh Hart, of the New York Knicks. We wanted to bring something fun to blind him on, and while doing some wine shopping at Crush Wine Co., I stumbled across a bottle of Domaine du Collier “La Ripaille” and I immediately knew that was the bottle.

You can watch Josh’s blind tasting here, and, to his credit, he got pretty close. The wine was delicate and plush, with dark red fruit, spice, and this beautiful stoney / mineral quality to it. Seriously one of the best wines we drank that day with Josh, and easily one of my favorite bottles of the Summer.

September’s shipment is coming up, and we’re really excited about this month’s selection! There are some great wines in the lineup, including one particularly special bottle that I had the chance to help with during last year’s harvest, which I can’t wait to share more about soon.

As always, if you run into any issues with your shipment, reach out to [email protected] and the Table22 team will be happy to help!

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That’s all for this month! Let us know what your favorite bottle was, we’re always curious to see what everyone’s drinking.

Thanks so much for reading, and as always, drink responsibly! 🥂