ANDERS FREDERIK STEEN & ANNE BRUUN BLAUERT
This Time Could Be the Very Best Time 2025
Ardèche, France
A long, slow direct press of both varieties of grapes, both at the same time – but harvested with one day in-between each other, made over four days. All grapes are from the vineyards of Domaine du Mazel. We harvested Grenache Noir and a part of the Carignan the same day and the rest of Carignan the following day. After the final press, we moved the juice to one of our coldest cellars and filled it into our more than 100 years old Alsatian foudre. Here the following fermentation has taken place, a short fermentation that finished already in the end of November. The brief élevage over winter and spring has been on the lees, which explains the little hinted complex bitterness and the young fruity aromatic profile.
Carignan, Grenache
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.