Writers who make wine

A look at two writers who are making some impressive wine including a recommendation for a nice bottle of Essex Burgundy.

When a writer friend turns up at lunch with a bottle of wine he has made himself, I don’t know about you but my alarm bells start ringing. I imagine it’s going to be the wine equivalent of the sort of homebrew that people at school used to make.

What I certainly wasn’t expecting was one of my wines of the year. High altitude Spanish grenache is one of my favourite types of wine and this was a brilliant example: perfumed, supple, with crunchy raspberry fruit, a pronounced floral note and little orange peel and finely honed tannins. With only 13% alcohol, it tasted like the grapes had been picked at just the right time. 

If I had tasted it in a wine bar I would think it was some cult producer from Sierra de Gredos instead it’s made by a Californian writer in Montsant in California called Miquel Hudin who wrote something for this site before. As well as being being an expert on Catalan wine, every year since 2014 he has made a little too from bought-in grapes under the Quel Celler label. The wine I tasted was the Eix ‘El Basssot’ 2021 (click on the link for technical information and to buy).

Apart from briefly taking a course in winemaking in Priorat which he didn’t finish, Hudin doesn’t have any technical training. No studying at UC Davis or Montpelier. Not does he have his own winery so has used five different locations over the years. WIne making is rudimentary as he explained:

“Foot stomp it in a large, open plastic tub and from that point on, just do hand punchdowns. Maceration depends a lot upon ‘vibe’ of the year but is usually around 10 days. Then I press it off and move it to a stainless steel tank. Once the alcoholic fermentation finishes, I rack it off into another tank and then let it sit until the tasting ‘vibe’ seems right and bottle it somewhere in the summer following the harvest.”

Hudin uses wild yeasts and a little sulphur dioxide on bottling but these are very much not ‘natural wines’. There’s no bizarre flavours. They don’t taste like they’re made by an amateur at all. He outlined what he’s looking for in a wine: “That balancing point of freshness without sacrificing complexity. Alcohol that’s low without sacrificing depth. It should speak to both the variety and the place of origin (“terroir” if you will) and no aspect of the winemaking should jab you in the face.”

It hasn’t all been plain sailing. He’s made some less good wines due to getting substandard grapes including a batch that were free. “Learning from 2014, 2016, and 2019, I realized grape control was mandatory if I was to keep doing this. So about a month before it seems they’ll be ripe I use dog walks as an excuse to go visit where I’ll be picking, checking alcohol levels as well as stem maturity,” he said. 

I’m not the only one who is a fan. Top wine writer Simon Reilly described the Hudin’s Garnacha 2022 as one of his wines of the year this year.  Sadly it’s not easy to get hold of Hudin’s wines in Britain though he can ship across continent Europe. Get in touch on his website. 

Nice drop of Essex Burgundy...

There’s another writer closer to home whose wines are easier to get hold of. His name is Chris Wilson and he has a winery in Cambridge called Gutters & Stars which has become something of a cult producer. But back in 2021 when he sent me his first vintage to try, a 2020 Chardonnay called Daylight Upon Magic, I had a similar to reaction to seeing Hudin’s wine. 

As fellow wine journalists we used to nod at each other across crowded wine tastings. I was dimly aware that he’d trained at Plumpton College (England’s best and only wine school) but I have to admit, I wasn’t that keen to try his wine, but eventually I opened Daylight Upon Magic around Christmas 2021 and not only did I think it was good, I thought it was up there with the best chardonnays from England. A few years ago, that would have been damning with faint praise but no longer, such is the speed with which English wine is changing. 

Wilson works from a tiny winery beneath an old windmill in Cambridge.  Everything has to go down the steep steps and small doorway so limits the equipment he can use, which has to be on a Lilliputian scale as a result. He uses a mixture of 220 litre fermenters, second-hand barrels from Pouilly Fuisse in Burgundy and a plastic container that looks like a dinosaur egg to make all his wines. He reckoned start-up costs were about £10,000. The most expensive items were the pump, press and a bottling machine.  Space is so limited that he takes the white grapes to Flint in Norfolk for pressing, about an hour and a half’s drive away. 

Like Hudin, he buys in grapes, often from Essex, which is probably the best place in England ot grow chardonnay and pinot noir. Everything is done by hand, in some vintages his children have helped out with destemming which is done with a piece of chicken wire stretcted onto a wooden frame. 

As a former freelance journalist he loves the scrappy wheeler dealer aspect of the job. Wilson’s skills as a journalist have helped market the wines too. The name of the winery, the windmill location and the wines themselves are all named after songs - ‘I Wanna be Adored Bacchus’ perfectly aimed at all the centrist dads out there - helping create a brand identity for which many bigger and more established wineries would kill. He sells mainly direct to customers or to local restaurants producing about 10,000 bottles a year with no plans to expand. 

His latest wine has just been released. Called Star 69 it’s another Essex Burgundy with the grapes coming from Missing Gate vineyard in the Crouch Valley and fermented in French oak casks. It’s a fascinating wine, initially limey and taut but opens up with a spiced baked apple note and a full creamy texture. After an evening open it was positively opulent. 

Yours for £33. Click on link below to buy. I’d highly recommend it. 

In fact, everything I’ve had from Gutter & Stars, which comes from the Oscar Wilde quote “we are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars”, a reference to his Wilson’s lack of money but big ambitions, has been excellent. Like Hudin, there’s what could be described as a ‘natural’ or low-intervention ethos but the wines taste very classic - right up my street.

I asked Hudin whether he ever thought of doing a Wilson and becoming a full time winemaker. He wrote: “Tempted, sure. There’s a brutal reality in that winemaking is going to have a tough go over the next few years, much like writing about wine. I should probably focus a great deal more of my energy on winning a generous lottery prize or seducing a rich heiress so that I can indeed “have it all”. You don’t go into wine to make a lot of money. That’s one thing it has in common with writing.