ANDERS FREDERIK STEEN & ANNE BRUUN BLAUERT
Once I Had A Choice of Being Better 2021
Ardèche, France
A blend of Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc harvested with their friends at Domaine du Mazel in Valvignères. The grapes were picked and pressed together, slowly over a period of four days in an old pressoir before being transferred to barriques for two years. A pretty shade of gold in the glass, it is gently perfumed with stone fruits and flowers, whilst the palate displays the kind of purity and harmony one would expect from long élevage. A wine full of southern charm, so suited to autumn.
Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
Anders Frederik Steen and Anne Bruun Blauert make their thoughtful and highly original wines from “grapes and only grapes”.
Anders began making wine in 2013 when he first started purchasing fruit from winemakers he admired and making wine alongside his friend, legendary Jura winemaker, Jean-Marc Brignot. The couple and their young family have now settled in the beautiful village of Valvignères in the Ardèche. The many varieties grown here thrive on a perfect mix of clay and limestone and the vineyards are full of life, having been tended organically for decades.
As well as their own vineyards, the two also harvest grapes with their friends Gérald and Jocelyne Oustric of La Mazel in Valvignères and further afield with the Bannwarth family in Obermorschwihr, Alsace.
In his previous life Anders was both a chef and sommelier, working at the best restaurants in his native Denmark. This experience informs the couple’s winemaking, in that a little like a kitchen working with the seasons, they do not seek to follow rules or conventions and do not feel the need to make the same wines each year. Instead, as they harvest, they taste the grapes and begin to imagine the kind of wine they might be able to make. Layers of flavour and texture are brought about through slow presses, oxygen and canny blends.
It is a refreshingly free, creative approach that yields thought provoking, sometimes challenging wines that are truly one of a kind.